Consulting Services for Study on the Local Potential Options for Incentive Benefits through Forest Restoration in Ha Tinh Province

With the support of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV), and the Vietnam Administration of Forestry (VNFOREST) are implementing the Forestry/REDD+ project entitled “Advancing Understanding of Natural Forest Carbon Stock Enhancement as part of REDD+”, ENRICH in short, over a period of 3 years, from 2012 – 2014. This project aims to advance the understanding of forest carbon stock enhancement as part of any future REDD+ Agreement through exploring the technical and economic feasibility of different forest carbon stock enhancement strategies in pilot sites in Vietnam. The project will introduce pilot activities and also assist through developing appropriate guidance material and through building capacity amongst communities and government staff, in forest ecosystems in Ha Tinh and Ca Mau provinces.

The ever-green forest ecosystem in Ke Go Nature Reserve (NR) has been selected as one of the pilot sites of ENRICH. The forest of Ke Go NR has previously been classified as production forest and, as a result, has been subject to commercial logging for a number of years. Although there are no human settlements inside the Nature Reserve, villagers from seven adjacent communes utilise the forest resources, including timber, palm leaves, rattans, and other NTFPs. Local people engage in these activities in order to alleviate shortfalls in food production and to generate cash income.

Degradation of natural forest needs to be addressed in a variety of ways and at a range of scales. While site-level interventions are important, they need to achieve a range of post treatment conditions with regard to vegetation structure and composition to improve forest ecosystem resiliency in the long term.

Based on the results of the forest status assessment, ENRICH has been implementing demonstration activities on rehabilitation of natural degraded forest in Sub- Compartment 5, Compartment 326 in Ke Go Nature Reserve with a total area of 60 hectares. The proposed activities of silvicultural measures for forest restoration are: i) Promotion of natural regeneration in combination with enrichment planting; ii) Forest maintenance (include removing liana) and additional tree planting and iii) forest protection and forest fire prevention.

The benefit sharing mechanism for REDD+ is even more challenging due to the existing difference in land tenure and forest management model practices and preliminary assessment of costs and benefits for implementing restoration activities for natural degraded forest plays an important role as a necessary element of working towards the REDD+ strategy for Vietnam. In 2013, with the support of ENRICH project there are more than 30 households in the buffer zone of Ke Go NR contracted to implement the designed restoration activities to improve the quality of current degraded forest in 60 ha of project pilot area. The contracted households got a small subsidy from their labour forces contribution from forest enrichment activities.

The ENRICH project is seeking a suitable international expert to explore the potential option that could be used to incentive multi benefits and participatory payment mechanism under forest restoration programme at provincial level according to REDD+ contexts. The selected consultant will work close and under supervision of Project Manager of ENRICH.

Objective and tasks

The general objective:

-       To provide the potential models for incentivising multiple benefits for the forest carbon stock enhancement for evergreen degraded forest in Ha Tinh province.

Specific tasks:

-       Review existing payment mechanisms under forest protection and development programme of Vietnam.
-       Review existing reports and analyses of benefit distribution systems in Vietnam’s forestry sectors under REDD+ context.
-       Plan and undertake an analysis of options for an efficient and equitable REDD+ benefit distribution in Vietnam that will be consistent with incentivising multiple benefits for forest restoration.
-       Develop an initial report on options for REDD+ incentivise multi benefits and integrated into the Forest and forest land restoration plan of Ha Tinh province (FLRP), and identifying policy and institutional issues that need to be resolve.

Qualifications

The successful consultants should have/be;

-        Proven knowledge and experience in forestry and natural resources management of Viet Nam;
-        Proven knowledge and experience in Benefit Distribution System (BDS);
-        Demonstrated knowledge on REDD+ carbon accounting and sustainable forest management activities;
-       Thorough understanding of socio-economic, Forest Management and development issues in the REDD+ context in Vietnam;
-       Consultant chosen must ensure the timeline given;
-       Fluent in English (writing and speaking).

Request for proposal

Interested consultant is requested to submit:

        i) an expression of interest, stating their relevant experience and capacity to undertake this task;
        ii) a methodology to carry out the task including a table of contents for the synthesis report.
        iii) a detailed workplan including budget.
        (iv) The Curriculum vitae (CV) of the consultant (s) who will carry out the work.

The consultants for this assignment will be selected in accordance with the procedures set out by SNV.

Please find the attached ToR for more details.

Interested candidates should submit their application documents to Ms. Nguyen Thi Quyen, Project assistant, e-mail address: [email protected] of submission is 17:00, Wednesday 9th April, 2014.