Bac Giang boosts sustainable forestry development hinh anh 1Forests in Bac Giang (Photo: bacgiang.gov.vn)
Bac Giang (VNA) - The northern province of Bac Giang is focusing on sustainably developing its forestry sector, according to Vice Chairman of the provincial People's Committee Le O Pich.

From now to 2025, Bac Giang will intensify the application of new technologies and manage, protect, develop and sustainably use forest areas and land planned for forestry development.

Bac Giang is exerting efforts to promote the potential, role and effects of forests to make an increasingly important contribution to socio-economic development; creating more jobs, raising people's incomes in association with protecting the ecological environment, conserving biodiversity of forest ecosystems, enhancing adaptation to climate change, minimising negative impacts caused by natural disasters, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and absorbing and storing carbon from forests.

From now to 2025, Bac Giang will strive to achieve an average forestry production value growth rate of 5% per year. The province will also implement a structure of three types of forests in accordance with its Prime Minister-approved forestry planning for the 2021-2030 period, with a vision to 2050. Accordingly, by 2025, the planned area of three forest types will be about 142,465 ha, of which 13,688 ha are special-use forests, protection forests about 20,599 ha, and production forests about 108,178 ha. The rate of forest coverage in the province will reach 37.5%.

Each year, Bac Giang province is expected to plant about 8,000 ha of concentrated forests and about 6 million scattered trees, in which the area of large timber trees will account for 30% of the annual planted forest area. By 2025, the province's large timber forest area will reach 17,000 ha, and that certified for sustainable forest management issued by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or the Vietnam Forest Certification Office will be 12,500 ha. The average productivity will be about 22 cubic metres per ha per year; and timber output 1.0 million cubic metres, in which 40% will be processed for export with the export value of wood and forest products reaching about 3.5 trillion VND (141.2 million USD).

Vice Chairman Pich said that Bac Giang will promote the mechanisation and application of science and technology; improve productivity, quality and efficiency of production forests in the direction of optimising the production system, and the value chain of forest products.

Bac Giang will invest in intensive farming and apply techniques to improve the productivity and quality of forests, and plant new varieties with high yield and quality.

In addition, the locality will encourage households, individuals and communities to form groups to develop and implement sustainable forest management plans, and issue sustainable forest management certificates; and at the same time strengthen linkages in production and sale of products, build brands and labels for medical plants.

Bac Giang will also focus on implementing breakthrough solutions in forestry development such as using software to monitor forest fires, forest changes and forest land to monitor and detect deforestation, and improve forest fire prevention and fighting; while using drones to patrol the forests.

According to the Bac Giang Forest Ranger Department, in the first nine months of 2022, the province produced over 36.9 million seedlings of all kinds for afforestation, planted nearly 8,500 hectares of concentrated forest and over 5.1 million scattered trees of all kinds. It exploited a total output of over 787,300 cubic metres, including over 362,000 cubic metres of large timber trees, accounting for 45.9%.

Currently, in Bac Giang province, there are 992 forest product processing and business establishments, including 11 exporters. The export value in the first nine months of 2022 is estimated at 1.7 trillion VND./.
VNA