Perfecting the mechanism for protecting, managing, and exploiting forestry land

Currently, the national forestry industry has been planned by the National Assembly with a total land area of 15.85 million hectares. Of which, the forested area is over 14.8 million hectares, including 2.2 million hectares of special-use forests; 4.6 million hectares of protection forests; and more than 7.9 million hectares of production forests. The remaining area is about 1 million hectares of vacant land.

To manage and exploit for the right purposes and achieve high efficiency in this area, competent agencies have issued 65 legal documents for the forestry sector, including 1 Law (Law on Forestry promulgated by the 14^th National Assembly on November 16, 2017, effective from January 1, 2019); 16 Decrees; and the Minister's Circulars and Decisions.

Since the beginning of the year, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has also advised the Government, and the Government has issued 6 Decrees, of which 4 are in the forestry sector.

Regarding Decree No. 91/2024/ND-CP dated July 18, 2024, amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree No. 156, Deputy Minister Nguyen Quoc Tri said that this is a Decree with a very wide scope of application, very diverse relevant subjects, and many difficult contents. Therefore, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has consulted the Government 4 times, and there were up to 18 reports of reception and explanation, corresponding to 19 times of editing and perfecting the draft Decree.

At the conference, in addition to disseminating and introducing some new points of the Decree, delegates in localities had many important opinions after implementing the Decree for nearly 2 weeks.

According to the Deputy Director of Phu Tho Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Decree No. 91/2024/ND-CP has helped the locality remove many difficulties in forest management and protection. However, there is still no consensus on forest management authority, especially for special-use forests. In addition, the administrative procedures between land allocation, forest allocation, land lease, and forest lease still have many inadequacies.

Responding to questions from representatives of localities, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and units such as the Department of Forestry, the Forest Protection Department, and the Legal Department listened to opinions and recommendations and at the same time specifically explained the delegates' opinions surrounding the content of this Decree.

At the same time, the Ministry emphasized the new contents of the Decree. Of which, there are 7 main contents, including: supplementing regulations on adjusting the increase or decrease in the area of types of forests; managing ecological, resort, and entertainment activities in the forest; forest allocation, forest lease, forest recovery, and decision on conversion of forest use purposes; changing forest types; the policy of converting the forest use purpose to other purposes; infrastructure works for protection and sustainable development; and forest environmental services and transitional provisions.

On that basis, Director of the Department of Forestry Tran Quang Bao affirmed that amending and supplementing Decree No. 91/2024/ND-CP was based on the provisions of the Law on Forestry and practical inadequacies to ensure synchronization and consistency with Vietnamese laws, as well as be able to remove difficulties in administrative procedures and forest management regulations.

Besides, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Quoc Tri also hopes that localities will both organize implementation and continue to communicate with all relevant subjects to implement the Decree most effectively.

On July 18, Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang issued Decree No. 91/2024/ND-CP, amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree No. 156/2018/ND-CP dated November 16, 2018, which provides guidance on the 2017 Law on Forestry. In particular, the new supplementation to the Decree regulates that in addition to solutions for forest protection and development, nature conservation, biodiversity preservation, environmental protection, and fire prevention and control, forest owners must also specify solutions for capital, investment resources, methods of organizing eco-tourism, resort, and entertainment activities, and leasing prices for the forest environment.