Inside the Ta Dung natural reserve in the Central Highlands province of Dak Nong (Illustrative photo: VNA)

The entire project costs over 28.55 trillion VND (1.22 billion USD), of which 7.8 trillion VND is sourced from the state budget, 3.75 trillion VND from official development assistance, and the rest from other sources.

It aims to push the region’s total forest areas to 2.72 million hectares and coverage rate to 49.2 percent by 2030. Other works include managing sustainable forest development, protecting the environment and biodiversity, and offering environmental forestry services.

In order to achieve the targets, the ministry set out key tasks such as protecting the current 2.2 million ha of natural forests and boosting community-based forest management. The planting of 7,100 ha of protection forests and 136,600 ha of production forest were also a part of the plan.

It also requested that relevant agencies and the five Central Highlands provinces work together in implementing the project in a synchronous manner.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Ha Cong Tuan recommended that localities orientate forestry work toward the formation of value chains, expand production forests, and obtaining sustainable forest certificates.

The Central Highlands spans 5.4 million ha with a population of about 5.1 million. The local areas earmarked for forestry development amounted to 3.2 million ha, accounting for 19.9 percent of the country’s total.

In 2018, the region had 2.55 million ha of forests, up 3,502 ha from 2017, with forest coverage rate hitting 46.1 percent.–VNA