Experiences from Bai Bang with global reflections

28 maj 2013

SIFI seminar at the academy – June 3

Time Monday 03 June, at 13.00–17.00
Venue Kungl. Skogs- och Lantbruksakademien, Drottninggatan 95 B, Stockholm, Sweden
Registration No later than 29 May via this link or through our website www.ksla.se
(cancellation must be made not later than 24 May or we will send an invoice SEK 500 to cover our costs)
Questions Content: Fredrik Ingemarson, fredrik.ingemarson@ksla.se, tel + 46 8 54 54 77 11Registration: Gun Askerö, gun.askero@ksla.se, tel + 46 8 54 54 77 12, +46 701 603 309
Webb No webcastThis conference is financed by the Carl Fredrik von Horns foundation

Background

 

Restoration of degraded forests is very much up on the agenda. The World Resources Institute (WRI) talks about the need to restore two billion ha with degraded land. Restoration work has gone on for long but has met many difficulties along the way. This concerns both intensive industrial plantations and small-scale farm forestry. If programs for restoration shall succeed at a large scale we must try to learn from both successes and failures. This seminar highlights Swedish experiences from the development project in Bai Bang, Vietnam and opens up for a discussion about how these lessons could be used in other parts of the world.

Many plantations have failed

One can easily get the impression that plantations in the South are a great success. In reality many plantations have failed. Many projects run into social problems with increasing attention in the domestic and international media. StoraEnso, Vattenfall, the Diocese of Västerås, SEKAB, ADDAX and others have been engaged in biomass production in the South and evidently with good intentions. These enterprises have, however, experienced problems and heavy criticism. It may be that some of the criticism is unjust, but it seems difficult for Nordic actors to engage in biomass production in the South without running into real problems. Is it too difficult? Many argue that the best solution is to engage farmers in the production, but this is also a true challenge.

The open landscape has been changed into forest

The bare hills around Bai Bang that looked like a desert in the 1980s are now covered with forests. The first plantations were established by state enterprises and co-operatives, but after the economic reforms in 1986 (Doi Moi) farmers started to plant trees as a commercial crop. Today, it is reported that more or less all wood for Bai Bang is directly or indirectly produced by farmers. It is interesting to note that the farmers seem to have adjusted the original “intensive” method to suit their own conditions. The open landscape around Bai Bang has been changed into forest, but in spite of this there is no talk of conflict. The seminar focus on the main reasons behind this success, e.g. the establishment of a reliable market or that land was allocated to farmers?             

 

Program

 

Moderator   Dr. Fredrik Ingemarson, Project Manager for the Secretariat for International Forestry Issues (SIFI), KSLA

 

13.00 Welcome remarks

Carl-Anders Helander, Secretary General and Managing Director, KSLA

13.10 The future of the Vietnam forestry sector

Nghia Dai Tran, the head of the research group in environment and climate change at the Institute of Policy and Strategy in Agriculture and Rural Development (IPSARD)

13.30 Introduction of the Bai Bang development project

Reidar Persson Prof, The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SLU, SIFI 

13.50 Swedish experiences from Bai Bang

Petter Otterstedt, Senior adviser 

14.20 Coffee 
14.40 Lessons learned from Bai Bang

Mats Sandewall, Dr, The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SLU 

15.00 Global reflections

Eva Lindskog, Senior adviser, Stockholm Environmental Institute, SEI

Antti Marjokorpi, Dr, Group Forest Operations, StoraEnso

Jörgen Sandström, Deputy Project Managing Director, ADDAX

Pär Oscarsson, Director, African Opportunities

Mattias Goldmann, Project Manager, Global Utmaning

Ngolia Kimanzu, Senior adviser, Swedish Cooperative Centre

Jan-Erik Nylund, Prof, The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

 

16.00 Discussions with the floor about experiences and implementations

Moderator Fredrik Ingemarson, SIFI, KSLA 

16.45 Winding up

Björn Lundgren, Chair, The Secretariat for International Forestry Issues, SIFI

17.00 Closing of the seminar and mingle

 

SIFI prepared the seminar with round tables and reports, please find more information about the Vietnam project at www.sifi.se. The Institute of Policy and Strategy in Agriculture and Rural Development (IPSARD) and the Stockholm-based Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP) are special invited speakers and guests.
 

More about the SIFI project about Vietnam

https://www.sifi.se/projekt/erfarenheter-fran-vietnam/