Illustrative photo (Photo: VNA)Quang Tri (VNA) – The central province of Quang Tri plans to have atleast 60,000 hectares of forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council(FSC) in the next 10 years, tripling the current FSC area.
By July, the province led the country’s FSC forest development with 20,000hectares. Most of the forests were planted by Ben Hai Forestry Company, Duong 9Forestry Company and Trieu Hai Forestry Company.
The province’s target is considered feasible as it has enormous strength inafforestation while having plans to develop itself into a wood material hub.
Currently, wood supply, particularly that with FSC certification, fails to meetlocal demand. Thirty-eight wood processing mills in the province, which havecombined capacity of nearly 2.2 million tonnes each year, have to purchase some30 percent of their wood from other localities.
In the past year, the province has carried various measures to develop FSCforests. Those include building FSC wood processing value chains, issuingpolicies to encourage local people to plant trees and applying technology toproduce high-quality seedlings.
According to the local agriculture encouragement centre, FSC forests generateincomes of 150-200 million VND (6,400-8,600 USD) per hectare in a 10-yearcycle, 2-3 times higher than that of traditional forests.
The wood industry of Quang Tri hasenjoyed strong growth, ranking second in the country. The province’s timberproducts have been shipped to foreign markets, including the US, Europe, Japan,and the Republic of Korea.-VNA
VNA
