In recent years, the growth rate of forests in Nghe An has increased rapidly. On average, each year, the whole province has planted about 18,000 - 19,000 hectares of concentrated forests, planted over 4 million scattered trees, bringing the total existing planted forest area to nearly 180,000 hectares.
In many localities, forestry has undergone changes in organization, production structure and awareness; the task of socializing forestry has undergone many positive changes, afforestation activities have been in-depth, overcoming the situation of extensive production, low productivity and efficiency of afforestation. The area of large timber plantations is now estimated at more than 32,000 hectares, accounting for 20% of the province's planted forests. The efficiency of large timber plantations is 2-2.5 times higher when compared to acacia plantations with a cycle of only 4-5 years.
In order to effectively plant raw material forests, in addition to managing seedlings and increasing income for forest workers, Nghe An province has directed localities to focus on investing in intensive forest cultivation as the optimal solution; encouraging people to plant according to FSC standards to increase forest value. According to the plan, in the coming time, the Forest Protection Department will support 6-7 billion VND for forestry units in the province to build improved nursery models for tissue-cultured hybrid acacia seedlings.
The establishment of nurseries to improve the production of forestry seedlings will contribute to raising people's awareness of sustainable forest development associated with forest certification; transferring the process of producing high-quality forestry seedlings; meeting the demand for planting large timber forests. Through the model, it will help farmers have a source of high-quality forestry seedlings.
In the period of 2021-2023, Nghe An province's concentrated forest plantation area is 62,725 ha/55,000 ha of the plan, reaching 114%; the growth rate of forestry production value is always above 5.5%... From a fairly abundant source of wood materials, Nghe An has 45 wood processing enterprises, 98 enterprises producing non-timber forest products. In addition, there are 10,410 individual production and trading establishments of wooden furniture and products from wood and non-timber forest products. 3 biomass pellet factories; 80 rattan and bamboo weaving, civil carpentry and fine art villages; 2 enterprises planting forests, processing and exporting wood chips, namely Thanh Thanh Dat Co., Ltd., Joint Venture Company for planting and producing paper materials. Along with that are Song Lam Paper Factory, Thien Phu Paper Factory processing wood chips. Total processed products of wooden furniture, MDF wood panels, NLG chips, sawn timber, and laminated boards increase continuously every year; the export value of wood products of the province in 2023 reaches 270.25 million USD.
Forest allocation associated with forestry land allocation has helped people access and benefit from many policies of the Party and State on forest protection and development, increasing income for people and communities living near forests. Since then, there has been a positive impact on awareness of forest protection, so the number of violations of forestry laws in recent years has decreased from 642 cases in 2021 to 476 cases in 2023, a decrease of 166 cases. Land allocation, forest allocation, forest management according to planning, along with forest exploitation and protection, are being well implemented by Nghe An.
Mr. Nguyen Danh Hung - Deputy Director of Nghe An Department of Agriculture and Rural Development shared: "With the potential and advantages of forests, in the coming time, the province will continue to direct the propaganda work on protecting forest capital, socializing forestry, effectively preventing acts of encroachment on forest resources, strictly controlling the area of natural forests; actively planting forests, well managing forestry seed sources; exploiting planted forests reasonably, associated with processing technology, and consuming products to increase the added value of planted forest products.
Mr. Tran Quoc Thanh - former Director of Nghe An Department of Science and Technology proposed, on the basis of the approved medicinal plant development plan, to request the Department of Agriculture to develop a project and program for the development of medicinal plants in Nghe An until 2030. On that basis, the districts will develop plans in the area. At the same time, it is necessary to focus on attracting investment from medicinal plant and pharmaceutical processing enterprises to invest in Nghe An to promote the development of the medicinal plant industry.
Dr. Nguyen Thi Minh Tu - Director of the Center for Social Sciences and Humanities of Nghe An province said that the Southwest region of the province has the largest Biosphere Reserve in Southeast Asia. To promote the economic value of forest resources, it is necessary to invest synchronously in economic and social infrastructure, focusing on developing the forest economy in Southwest Nghe An, contributing to creating multiple values under the forest canopy. For example, the advantages of developing the forest economy (forestry trees for wood processing, wooden furniture, etc.), short-term and long-term industrial crops (sugarcane, tea, rubber, etc.), fruit trees (oranges, tangerines, grapefruit, etc.), medicinal plants (focusing on developing high-value medicinal plants in some specific ecological regions, medicinal plants under the forest canopy, etc.), livestock farming (beef cattle, dairy cows, pigs, etc.), other specialty and endemic products, etc. based on applying scientific, technical and technological advances.
Authorities at all levels need to review forestry land planning to promote the effectiveness of forest economy in association with environmental protection and biodiversity. Planning raw material areas. Speeding up the process of land and forest allocation to people. Forest development planning is integrated with the policy of planning medicinal plant development; the policy of planting mixed forests gradually replaces the current pure forest planting of raw material trees. Review all mechanisms and policies, such as land policy, support and encouragement policy, science and technology policy, investment policy and investment attraction policy, human resource training policy... related to forest economy.
Regarding this issue, Dr. Hoang Lien Son - Vietnam Forestry Science Institute proposed to build a supply chain of raw wood for plantation forests for the Western Nghe An region to meet the requirements of legal wood. Specifically, building a supply chain of raw wood that meets GHP requirements with the participation of a third party with the role of connecting supply and demand to organize and develop the raw wood market to ensure legal wood requirements and traceability. The third party is the "supply chain management system and legal wood traceability system that will provide technical solutions applying information technology to operate a synchronous supply chain from the stages of afforestation - exploitation - processing - trade of wood and plantation wood products. The system's participants include 2 core groups of agencies: Technical solution service providers. State forestry management and market surveillance agencies".
An important solution that scientists highly agree on in "suggesting" is to develop and build a chain of links in the economic development of the Southwest region in particular and Nghe An province in general, including in human resource training, investment attraction as well as tourism development. Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Chu - former Chairman of the Board of Directors of the University of East Asia Technology said that Nghe An's economic development in the early stages really needs the support of external resources, but it is to serve the goal of gradually growing internal resources, towards the time when internal resources become a decisive factor. It is necessary to focus on training and nurturing talented human resources. From there, creating an ideal working mechanism for them to freely shine their talents must be the guiding goal throughout...
Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Chu also emphasized the need to invest in transport and communication infrastructure. Especially, developing the road system to each family, hamlet, village, commune, and district is the first thing to do in the group. Likewise, the telecommunications system must reach each individual and each family. Roads and telecommunications are two areas in the top priority group in economic development.
Dr. Le Xuan Sang - Deputy Director of the Vietnam Economic Institute suggested that in order to develop the forest economy, there needs to be a specific orientation associated with solutions to attract FDI enterprises in the new context. In particular, in addition to clearly recognizing the potential and resources of the region to call for investment in key areas such as developing high-tech incubation facilities for agricultural and forestry varieties, especially medicinal plants, and building a chain from creation, production to supplying products to consumers. At the same time, speed up the progress of building and forming a carbon credit market.
Also related to the proposed solution on the necessity of building a chain of links, in the field of tourism development in the Southwest region, tourism businesses are also realizing the strengths of tourism from primeval forests and making efforts to open tours and routes to promote the combined strength between landscape and human resources, indigenous culture, resources, cuisine, etc. to create differences and uniqueness of each region. Regarding this issue, Associate Professor, Dr. Tran Dinh Thien - former Director of the Vietnam Institute of Economic Research emphasized: "To do tourism, there must be a properly invested enterprise to be able to promote economic potential".
