WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS:

Application of
Resource Information
Technologies (GIS/GPS/RS) in
Forest Land & Resources Management

October 18 - 20, 1999
Hanoi, Vietnam

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SELECTED ACRONYMS

INTRODUCTION

The forest environment in southeast Asia, and in the Lower Mekong Region (LMR) in particular, is under increasing pressure from agricultural expansion, uncontrolled logging and fuelwood harvesting. Unsustainable levels of forest harvesting and increasing demands from rural populations on forest resources have already depleted large forest areas and have destroyed their productive and protective functions in the process.

Several efforts have been launched recently in the region to sustainably manage forest resources. In addition to the allocation of forest lands to local users, international and local initiatives strive to protect the forest environments judged most critical for biodiversity conservation and environmental protection. Successful implementation of the policies and programs associated with these efforts require reliable, up-to-date information on the geographic distribution and status of forest lands and resources, however.

In practice, central and local planners rely to a large extent on outdated maps at inadequate scales and unreliable statistics as the main sources for decision-making in forest land and resources management. This may lead to estimates -- of available resources, for example-- that in turn are used as the basis for government policies. All too often policies are thus based on serious misjudgments about the actual quantity, quality, location and pressure on local resources. Local conflicts that arise during implementation of land allocation or resource management programs would be largely avoidable if government planners and local decision makers had access to reliable, up-to-date resource information to:

1. correctly assess available forest lands and resources
2. develop appropriate national and regional resource management policies and guidelines,
3. design appropriate forest land and resource management programs and
4. guide and monitor program implementation progress.

Modern resource information technologies like Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS) and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are already employed to collect and manage information on land use and natural resources in the countries of the Lower Mekong Region. Unfortunately, resource information management has not improved to the extent one would expect. In addition, the tools and techniques used do not seem to be regularly reviewed and updated to make the best use of available technology options and recent innovative developments.

In recognition of this situation, the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) headquarters together with its Sustainable Management of Resources in the Lower Mekong Basin Project (SMRP) organized a regional workshop in October 1999 to provide an opportunity to exchange information and experiences, take stock of the lessons learned, and to review the potentials and constraints of modern resource information technologies in forest land and resources management in the region.

FOREWORD

The "Application of Resource Information Technologies (GIS/GPS/RS) in Forest Land and Resources Management" Workshop took place in the Thang Loi Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam from October 18 – 20, 1999. The Workshop Staff included Mr. Herbert Christ (co-coordinator and workshop moderator), Mr. Michael Glück (co-coordinator) with backup from Pham Thi Thuy Co, Le Thanh Huong, Pham Phuong Hoa and Aylette Villemain.

Workshop Organization. The first day and a half of the workshop were devoted to the presentation of papers. The afternoon of the second day and the morning of the third were consumed by workgroup sessions, with the afternoon of the 20^th dedicated to summarizing workshop recommendations. To facilitate and focus discussions, the conference was organized around the following major themes:

Workshop Participants. The workshop‘s thirty-seven participants were all professionals involved in forest resource and land management in the region who are either considering the use of or already applying modern geographic information management technologies. Regional participants (Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam) were joined by international scientists and students working on these regional issues. In the interest of institutional diversity, any single institution was limited to two participants. A complete participant list is attached at the end of the Proceedings.

Organization of the Proceedings. The structure of the proceedings mirrors that of the workshop: The SMRP‘s Vietnamese National Project Director‘s opening statement is followed by the papers after which the reader will find documentation of the workgroups‘ sessions (including discussions). The proceedings conclude with documentation of the final session during which the workshops‘ objectives were revisited, key recommendations were summarized, and participants made a first stab at articulating what they as individuals and/or their institutions could do to advance the recommendations made.

In Closing …. It is anticipated that this is the first in an series of initiatives to improve communication among GIS users in the Mekong River Basin Region. Any reader of these Proceedings who would like to become part of this process is invited to check out the <www.mekonginfo.org> website and register their interest!

OPENING SPEECH

Dr. Nguyen Hong Quan

SMRP National Project Director/Vietnam,
Deputy Director, Department For Forestry Development

Ladies and Gentlemen, colleagues and friends:

Let me welcome you to Hanoi, Vietnam. I would like to express my gratitude to be able to greet you today on this event. I am especially pleased to address colleagues from the neighboring countries of the Lower Mekong Basin. Let me start by saying that this workshop will, besides exchanging experience related to our work, further improve our personal relationships amongst professionals working throughout the region.

This workshop will deal with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) as presently applied by numerous organizations and projects in many sectors throughout the region. During this event we hope to exchange our experiences and lessons learned. Over the past years, which made GIS an almost standard tool for projects and programs including spatial issues in their work, it also has become a point of criticism if applied in a pure technological centered way.

I, being a GIS novice in technical terms, see the potential of this powerful instrument. In Vietnam we are presently planning and implementing large government programs in the fields of Land use planning and forest land allocation, which depend on an effective, efficient technology to accommodate the process and results. GIS and related technologies, e.g. remote sensing, GPS, to mention a few, play a prominent role to support these new policies of Vietnam.

But let me also remind you – again viewing GIS as a non-technical person but more from an institutional point of view - that we should understand GIS/RS as a very important instrument and not as a means in itself. We all have experienced failures in the application of GIS if left to the technical purists. Enormous resources have been allocated to establish state-of-the-art technical systems but ignoring, at least partly, the human and institutional factors. Please understand me, GIS, as any IT system should be considered as a socio-technical system, in which the further development of humans running and using such systems must be undertaken. Education and Training aspects go hand in hand with the set up of GIS. Specialists working with GIS must not forget to transfer their analytical and visualized products to decision makers and the policy level, who need often results in a different language and do not only depend on technical perfection.

This brings me to my last point. I hope this workshop will help us to identify and clarify some of the institutional aspects of GIS. Often the technical issues, hardware, software, technical products are the focus of our activities. Often we realize, too late, that technically oriented persons ignored basic institutional aspects – intentionally or unintentionally. The question of ownership of the GIS unit, its resources and – more important - the products are often not addressed. Inter-institutional aspects to identify existing efforts and products are often ignored, justifying it by elaborating on different technical standards and packaging of the same basic data.

Dear participants, please let me summarize my points. I am sure that this event will contribute towards an exchange of experiences and lessons learned amongst your professional regional group. I am confident that this will lead to the improvement of existing and future GIS applications. Institutional and organizational issues like coordinated efforts to produce national data, jointly develop shared standards, legends and so on, could lead to a common language finally allowing to coordinate efforts on a regional level.

Let me express my gratitude to GTZ and the Sustainable Management of Resources in the Lower Mekong Basin Project for supporting our regional efforts in the field of GIS and remote sensing.

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