Vietnam Bans Chopping down Natural Forests: PM

Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has affirmed a ban on logging off natural forests to protect more than 2.25 million hectares of natural forests in the Central Highlands regardless of licensed projects. Closing natural forests must be done along with outlining plans to transfer degraded forests to plantations of industrial trees, the PM said at a meeting in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak on June 20. The PM said that the move would require the cooperation of local authorities, public security, procuracy, court, and army to prevent cutting down forests and strictly punish involving people, especially state officials who assume responsibilities for the protection of forests, Mr. Phuc said at the meeting marking the attendance of Public Security Minister To Lam, Central Highlands Steering Committee, and top leaders of five Central Highlands provinces. He said that chairman of the Central Highlands provinces should be the key assuming responsibilities for protecting forests as well as the destroy of forests. Statistics by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development showed that the area and quality of forests in the Central Highlands have been declined for the past years. At the end of 2014, the region had 2.56 million hectares of forestry land, falling 180,000 hectares from 2010. The fall was attributable to replacing forests with industrial trees and fruit farming (110,000 hectares), to infrastructure and hydropower projects (37,800 hectares), to logging, and encroaching of forestry land (122,900 hectares). Over the past three decades, the Central Highlands lost more than 1.5 million hectares of forests or 41% of its woodland. The region targets to raise the forest coverage rate to 59% by 2020. Last year, Vietnam’s lawmakers have urged the National Assembly (NA), the country’s highest legislative body, to issue a resolution on managing woodland amid rampant violations at state plantations that destroy thousands of hectares of forest in the context that a number of violations remain covered up by authorities. (Sai Gon Giai Phong – Liberated Saigon June 22, Vietnamplus.vn June 22, Thanh Nien – Young People June 22)