On March 9, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) Nguyen Quoc Tri had a reception and working session with Mr. Park Chongho, General Director of the Asian Forest Cooperation Organization (AFoCO). Thereby, AFoCO commits to accompany Vietnam's forestry industry in the fight against climate change.
At the beginning of the meeting, AFoCO General Director thanked the Government of Vietnam for its support to the forestry industry in recent times. Mr. Park Chongho expressed the purpose of the business trip to learn, exchange and share information about REDD projects and carbon credit trading projects of the World Bank (WB) in 6 North Central provinces. Set. AFoCO wants to have feasibility study activities after this project from the World Bank to serve as a basis for AFoCO to deploy cooperation and support in these 6 provinces.
In recent years, AFoCO has received support from the Korean Government, with an investment of 15 million USD for activities related to climate change. In addition, AFoCO also calls for external financial resources for the climate change action plan, including the private sector and countries such as Germany, Switzerland and countries with interests in the forestry sector and the region. Asia region. Therefore, Mr. Park Chongho requested the Vietnamese Government to set an overall goal for activities related to climate change so that AFoCO can have a specific work plan.
“Through the action plan on climate change, we hope to continue to have opportunities to cooperate with the Government of Vietnam in the project to restore and enhance the resilience of mangrove forests in Vietnam,” General Director AFoCO Governor expressed.
On his part, Deputy Minister Nguyen Quoc Tri said that for the carbon credit payment program in 06 North Central provinces, after Decree 107/CP-ND was issued, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the WB agreed Get a benefit sharing plan and start implementing it. This is the first program on carbon credits in Vietnam. The Ministry affirms that this will be a model process to specify implementation steps for localities throughout the country to implement.
Deputy Minister Nguyen Quoc Tri hopes that AFoCO will support the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in a number of contents such as: training program implementation staff, at central and local levels; Document the steps and processes to later become standards for the whole country to implement.
In addition, Vietnam's forestry industry also wishes to receive support in implementing the commitment at COP26 on net zero emissions, as well as applying digital technology to support faster access to real-world occurrences. output from the local industry.
AFoCO expressed interest in the field of climate change, which is also a concern of the forestry industry, and wanted to have a more in-depth meeting on this issue as soon as possible.
Deputy Minister Nguyen Quoc Tri completely agrees with Mr. Park about the project to restore coastal mangrove forests to improve climate change resilience in Vietnam. “As a country with a long coastline, Vietnam is considered a country severely affected by climate change. Mangrove forests are the most damaged, so solving the problem of mangrove forests will solve many problems of climate change. This is also an area that requires a lot of time and resources," the Deputy Minister said.
As for AFoCO, in the coming time the organization will have specific plans and projects related to climate change based on the priorities of the Vietnamese Government, and will learn about Vietnam's procedures and processes to award Discuss more about cooperation activities and projects on climate change./.
Source: Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development
