Consultant – Team Leader for Formulating Sustainable Forest Management Plans for Community Forest Management

Consultancy announcement - CLICK HERE FOR VIETNAMESE

Position: Independent Consultant – Team leader for formulating sustainable forest management plans for community forest management (CFM) in CFM communes in Thanh Hoa province for the USAID Sustainable Forest Management Project, RECOFTC Viet Nam.

Sub-Activity Code: 1.2.5.1 & 1.2.6.1 Developing / implementing sustainable forest management plans for communities contracted land and forests in pilot CFM communes in Thanh Hoa province.

Estimated number of consulting days: about 40 person days, from July to September 20, 2022

Application deadline: 5.00pm. Hanoi local time, June 24, 2022

At RECOFTC, we believe in a future where people live equitably and sustainably in and beside healthy, resilient forests. We take a long-term, landscape-based and inclusive approach to supporting local communities to secure their land and resource rights, stop deforestation, find alternative livelihoods and foster gender equity. We are the only non-profit organization of our kind in Asia and the Pacific. We have more than 30 years of experience working with people and forests, and have built trusting relationships with partners at all levels. Our influence and partnerships extend from multilateral institutions to governments, private sector and local communities. Our innovations, knowledge and initiatives enable countries to foster good forest governance, mitigate and adapt to climate change, and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda.

The USAID Sustainable Forest Management Project (TheProject) will work with the Government of Vietnam (GVN) to reduce carbon emissions associated with deforestation, the degradation of natural forests, and poor plantation management. The Project will implement a “Green Prosperity” approach that strengthens local communities’ ability to protect their natural resource base and reduce emissions while building a strong foundation for sustainable livelihoods and equitable economic growth.

The Project will work in seven provinces (Lao Cai, Son La, Hoa Binh, Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, Quang Tri, Quang Nam) and focus on five objectives:

• Improve and expand community forest management
• Increase conservation-friendly enterprises in forest-dependent communities
• Increase functionality of law enforcement system for forest crimes
• Improve production forest management practices
• Mobilize domestic resources for forest management and protection

The Project is being implemented during the period 2020-2025 by DAI in collaboration with RECOFTC and Preferred by Nature as partners, with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) as the counterpart and the Management Board of Forestry Projects (MBFP) as project owner.

RECOFTC Viet Nam is now inviting applicants for independent consultant on community forest management for formulating sustainable forest management plans for communities in CFM communes in Thanh Hoa province

The activity will be expected to contribute directly to the main indicator: ID2: Number of institutions with improved capacity to address sustainable landscape issues as supported by USG assistance; ID3: Number of laws, policies, regulations, or standards addressing sustainable landscapes formally proposed, adopted, or implemented as supported by USG assistance, ID5-Number of livelihood beneficiaries; and ID8: Number of hectares under improved natural resource management, safeguards or sustainable business practices (in 11 monitoring and evaluation indicators of the Project)

Background

Background

Forest dependent communities’ participation is increasingly recognized as an important factor in effectively maintaining forests. Communities have been engaged into forest management and protection in various forms. Four main types of these engagements include: traditional community forests; introduced community forests; groups of households managing forestlands; and individual households, who all individually own forestland, collaborating in forest management.

Under the Project, the concept of community covers two forms of local people's participation in forest management. The first modality is community forest management (CFM) in which residential communities/villages manage their allocated forests. This also covers the modality where communities manage household’s allocated forests as a community group (community forest household groups). The second modality is community-based forest management (CBFM) in which village communities manage contracted forests with protection forest management boards.

With CFM modality, local communities can access different financial sources, including but not limited to forest protection expenditures, PFES program, NTFP income, joint cooperation/investment and other credit programs to support communities to more effectively fulfill the roles and responsibilities of forest owners under CFM.

In order to strengthen the capacity of communities to manage, protect, sustainable use and develop the allocated forest resources, communities will actively develop SFM Plans with support from the Project. Through this process, communities will effectively perform the role of forest owner to protect the forests, promote multi-purpose of forest, and protect the environment of the forest, increase the supply capacity of forest and ensure the long-term use of forest products, especially NTFPs. Communities can also effectively explore the potential of eco-tourism, cultural tourism, and environmental education. This process strengthens capacity of the community, towards self-sufficiency in part of financial resources through revenue from forest protection, from PFES, from sustainable exploitation of non-timber forest products, from organizing ecotourism activities to contribute to economic development, poverty reduction, and sustainable livelihood improvement.

Composition of the consultant team:

In order to carry out the task of formulating sustainable community forest management plans for communities contracted land and forests in Thanh Hoa province, the Project recruits a community forest consultant team, including:

• Consultant 01:  is a team leader, responsible for coordinating, assigning, supervising team-members during the implementation; directly conduct survey, develop intervention activities, coordinate the implementation of forest investigation and synthesis, formulate sustainable forest management plans for community.
• Consultant 02 – forest inventory: is a team member, responsible for the task of forest inventoryin coordination with team leader and community forest consultant.

The CFM Consultant team will also cooperate with Expert on Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) to ensure proper integration of GESI considerations into planning processes at target communities.

Objective of the consultancy

Formulating SFM plan for forest contracted household groups by collecting, synthesizing and analyzing information/data according to the current regulations under participatory method, integration of gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) considerations. GESI integration is required the participation of at least 35% female and ethnic minorities in the developing process, in which they are motivated to participate effectively in implementing the forest patrolling and protection activities. Women and ethnic minorities are also empowered to participate in management group of CFM model.

CFM plans will be the basis for implementing tasks, including forest protection and development, sustainable use of forest resources, capacity building for household groups to ensure good implementation of sustainable forest management plans in the future.

Tasks

Consultant team leader is responsible for performing the following tasks:

1.      Organise, divide tasks, supervise team’s activities: define the roles and tasks of the team members.

2.      Collect relevant documents:

Collect and synthesize relevant information and documents to formulate sustainable forest management plans for community (CFM plan), includes:

• Information, data on natural condition, social economy.
• Information, data on current situation of forest management, protection, use and development of communities and household groups.
• Other related information, data

3.        Coordinate the implementation of forest investigation tasks:

Coordinate with forest inventory consultant to perform the following tasks:

• Investigation of non-timber forest products,
• Investigation the diversity of forest plants,
• Investigation the diversity of forest vertebrate animals,
• Determination of biomass and reserves of forest carbon

4.        Formulate the participatory forest management and protection plans

The Formulation of forest management and protection plans for community is implemented under Article 11 of “Guideline on community forest management", in which it is necessary to ensure the participation of people in the process of surveying, developing plans for each intervention activities of the plans. This includes following contents:

• Formulate forest protection plans; forest fire prevention and fighting plans
• Formulate forest development plans
  
  • Promoting the forest natural regeneration, forest natural regeneration with additional planting
  • Forest plantation: new planting, replanting
  • Forest nurturing
• Formulate forest exploitation and using plans
  
  • bamboo collecting plans
  • non-timber forest products collecting plans
  • wood collecting plans
• Analysis of costs and net profit.
• Monitoring and evaluation plan
• Coordination plans with relevant parties

5.        Organize village meetings to concur plans

• Discuss information, intervention activities in the forest management and protection plans with local authorities, forest rangers and communities to agree on forest management and protection plans, submit it to the Commune People's Committee for confirmation.
• Hand-over the forest management and protection plans to community

Scale and sites for implementation

The CFM consultant team is expected to develop Plans for the 2 communities:

1. Community in Coc village, Hoi Xuan commune, Quan Hoa district, Thanh Hoa province; area 802 ha.
2. Household group in Vui village, Phu Xuan commune, Quan Hoa district, Thanh Hoa province; area 400 ha.

Anticipated duration, level of effort (LOE), timeline and deliverables

Duration

The estimated time for the consultant team to carry out this task is 40 man-days, expected to start at the beginning of July 2022, and submit the final report on September 20, 2022. Details are in the following table:

LOE

Implementation plan and deliverables

Schedule of formulating 02 sustainable forest management plans for 02 communities in Thanh Hoa province are presented in the table below:

Requirements of deliverables

1.  Minutes of the village meeting: in Vietnamese language, 2 minutes / 1 village, include:

Minutes of the 1^st village meeting: concur the plans, contents of method, coordination for implementation.

Minutes of the 2^nd village meeting: concur the forest protection and development plans

2. Sustainable forest  management plans: in Vietnamese language, include

02 sustainable forest management plans for 02 communities following the forms in “Guideline on community forest management”

Required qualifications

• Vietnamese nationality only
• A master degree or higher, majoring in forest inventory, planning, management and protection or related fields
• Having at least 15 years of experience in the forestry sector, priority to SFM.
• Having in-depth knowledge and understanding of community forest management; experience working with the community.
• Experience and expertise in forest inventory
• Experience and expertise in silviculture
• Experience and skills in writing reports in Vietnamese; Able to use English at work

RECOFTC’s core values

At RECOFTC, our core values are the foundation of our culture and guide all our work. In addition to job specific skills and experience, the applicant should possess the following characteristics, attitudes and skills:

• Embrace innovation
• Adapt to, and learn from, challenges
• Collaborate with partners and stakeholders
• Nurture commitment, responsibility and ownership
• Prioritize sustainability
• Cultivate participation, social inclusion and gender equity

How to apply

Interested individuals are requested to submit their CV and a cover letter indicating why they are suitable for this consultancy along with the expected fee or daily rate and current contact details of three references, to [email protected]. Please quote the consultancy title in the subject line of the email. Only shortlisted individuals will be notified.

For any further information you may need about the consultancy, please contact [email protected].

To learn more about RECOFTC, please visit our website www.recoftc.org