People Participation in Improvement of Forestry Governance and Poverty Alleviation in Vietnam/ ActionAid

Description What is done in the programme or project and why, what results are pursued, who benefits from the activities and who are involved in the implementation.

The project "People Participation in Improvement of Forestry Governance and Poverty Alleviation in Vietnam (PPFG – Vietnam)" aims to create an open and interactive space for people from grassroots communities to participate in national forestry management information system to improve forestry governance and contribute to poverty alleviation in Vietnam. It is designed to fit with objectives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland: (i) to achieve the goals of Finland's development policy; (ii) to achieve Finland's country- and organisation-specific objectives and (iii) to strengthen civil societies and democracies in developing countries paying due regard to the citizens' opinions and needs in the national and international decision-making. With overall objective of "an initiative to improve forestry governance in Vietnam", the project will achieve the purpose of participation of the grassroots communities and people in national forestry management information system is promoted to improve forestry governance and contribute to poverty alleviation in Vietnam. Democratic governance, women's rights, ethnic minority, climate change and poverty reduction are cross cutting themes in all designing, planning, implementing and monitoring project activities. The expected results of the project are: 1) Transparent forest governance is improved through community based forestry management basing on digitalized forest management information system created in Finland funded bilateral FORMIS project (Development of Management Information System for the Forestry Sector in Vietnam); 2) Knowledge and skills of the poor ethnic minority groups in project areas in knowing and using the data from FORMIS are supported to improve accountability in forest governance; 3) Relevant changes in policy and practices to facilitate good forest governance are made basing on evidence of success generated from ground work. The project aims to reach 260,000 women and men, who get improved control over forest through better access to information and institutions. People will get trained and organized to use digital tools, on highly affordable mobile phones. Project is planned to be implemented in 2014 - 2017 in four provinces in Vietnam. The proposed budget is EUR 1,049,652 for three years.