In order to bring into full play of the protective function of coastal forests to respond to climate change and sea level rise, mitigate natural disasters, protect the sea dike system and infrastructure facilities, and preserve bio-diversity, contributing to the socio-economic development and national defense and security consolidation, the Prime Minister on January 22 issued Decision No. 120/QD-TTg to approve the plan on coastal forest protection and development in response to climate change during 2015-20.
The plan sets the targets of expanding the coastal forest coverage to 19.5 percent by 2020 from the current 16.9 percent, and grow an additional 46.058 hectares of forests to have a total coastal forest area of 356.753 hectares.
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| A coastal protection forest in Tran De district, Soc Trang province__Photo: Trung Hieu/VNA |
Five major solutions have been devised in order to achieve the above targets, ranging from land and investment incentives, science and technology development, capacity building and improvement of relevant policies and mechanisms.
Accordingly, coastal land areas lying within the dike protection corridor and those assigned under the forestry development master plan, which have been illegally occupied or improperly used by land users will be recovered for reforestation.
The plan assigns the forest protection duty to all economic sectors, local communities and households, and encourages all forms of associating with local people in coastal areas in developing forests, enabling them to rent land or contribute capital with land use rights for coastal reforestation as planned in combination with aquaculture, agriculture, forestry and eco-tourism.-
