Vietnam's Green Revolution

Asia File

The country's forest cover reached 35.8 per cent at the end of 2002. The goal is to take it to 50 per cent in the next few decades

They call him Uncle Quy and follow him wherever he goes. They have also given him a nickname: "The professor with a smile."

Twice a week, his smiling face beams out across the country as he talks to his people on TV telling them why it is important that they should work to expand and protect Vietnam's forests.

He is Vo Quy, professor of biology at the Vietnam National University and president of its Centre for Natural Resources and Environmental Studies that he founded.

For almost 50 years, he has led the battle for conservation in Vietnam and, since the end of the American war in 1975, has been in the forefront of the effort to re-green the war-ravaged country.

That effort is now beginning to bear fruit. Forest development has now become a national culture. Almost every school student in Vietnam plants one to three trees each year as part of their school curriculum.

The entire nation takes to tree planting during the traditional Tet (lunar new year) holidays. Farmers cultivate quick-growing trees around villages and set up home gardens.

At least 70,000 hectares of mangroves have been fully replanted and the shrimp catch is said to be rising. The government says the forest cover reached 35.8 per cent at the end of 2002 and will further increase as the rate of new planting goes up from 2,00,000 a year now to almost 4,00,000 in the near future.

The goal is to take the forest cover to 50 per cent in the next few decades. It was Quy who recommended that goal and had it included in the law on environmental protection that he had drafted for the government in 1989.

Long years of war have denuded vast areas of Vietnam and over 35 per cent of the country is now considered unproductive wasteland. At one stage, in 1993, the forest cover had shrunk to below 20 per cent from at least 43 per cent in 1943.

Although the war had ended in 1975, its devastating effects continued to take their toll. The Americans had sprayed almost 76 million litres of the herbicide Agent Orange over 27 per cent of South Vietnam, affecting more than 2 million hectares of forest.

Over 1,24,000 hectares of mangroves and many thousands of hectares of inland forests were lost. Bombs burned down trees and left the country hideously pockmarked with almost 25 million craters.

After the war, reconstruction further depleted the country's forest reserves. The pressure of population, a lack of coordination among the various levels of the government in the immediate post-war years, irresponsible cultivation methods in the central highlands, and villagers' excessive reliance on burning wood to meet their energy needs also contributed to the decline.

That's where Quy comes in. This 74-year-old defender of Vietnam's forests, who has closely studied the long-term effects of herbicides used in the American war, has spent a lifetime telling people why it is important to conserve and exactly how they should take care of their trees and forests.

But he doesn't preach. He goes to a community, he observes people closely, and he listens to what they have to say. Then he thinks out the solution.

People believe him because he comes through as an honest broker who's always smiling. And he believes in people because, after all, it is they who will make all the difference.

"You have to listen to the people," he says. "You have to let them decide what they need and how they want to get it."

The task isn't easy. It's practically a race against time. Seventy-five per cent of Vietnam's fuel needs are still met from forests, and 25 per cent of the timber needed for construction. Overall, an estimated 1,00,000 hectares of forest are being lost annually.

Regreening the bare hills of the "midlands" is particularly difficult. Erosion, flood and drought have impoverished the soil to such a degree that nothing grows on it easily. Watersheds, which play a critical role in a country with many narrow plains bounded by mountains and the sea, are in poor shape.

But the achievement so far hasn't been a mean one. Vietnam now has nearly 10 million hectares of natural forest, of which half is permanent.

Large restoration projects are underway and the Asian Development Bank is helping to revive the vegetative cover on three vital watersheds in central Vietnam.

Villagers are being consulted on how best to use and protect degraded lands. To reduce the harmful practice of slash-and-burn cultivation, forest communities and ethnic minorities are being granted long-term tenures on the land they cultivate.

Quy hopes all this will help to expand the natural forest area to 14 million hectares by 2010. "However, unfortunately, we have a very long way to travel before we can restore the damage done by the long, uninterrupted years of war," he observes.