The central province of Binh Thuan has benefitted from a projectrestoring and managing its protective forest, furthering sustainabledevelopment and bio-diversity protection in the locality.

The 5.26 million USD project, sourced from the Japanese Government’sofficial development assistance and Vietnamese state funding, has beenimplemented in six mountainous areas since 2012.

Todate, the project’s managing board has zoned off an area of 4,200hectares for natural forest regeneration while building a 15 kilometreroad as part of the effort to develop forest infrastructure.Furthermore, six forest protection stations have been set up withadequate equipment to effectively control forest fires.

Theproject has made great contributions to raising public awareness in theimportance of rehabilitating the forest and protecting itsbio-diversity.

In a bid to increase the project’s efficiency, theprovincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development is planningto integrate the project’s components with the national “new-style ruralarea” programme, further supporting local residents in the zoned areas.

Binh Thuan is currently home to over 317,000hectares of forest land, accounting for 50 percent of the province’snatural land. These abundant resources play a vital role in regulatingthe climate in the region as well as in the central coastal areas.

However, the province’s acreage of forest land has suffered from degradation, decreasing 31,000 hectares since 2001.-VNA