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- Title
THE DEVELOPMENT OF VIETNAMESE FOREST AND WOOD SECTOR.
- Authors
Nguyen, B. N.; Bui, D. N.; Heräjärvi, Henrik; Möttönen, Veikko; Venäläinen, Martti
- Abstract
Vietnam, with a forest area of almost 15 million hectares, has a favourable climate and fertile soils for forest growth. Only plantation forests (4.4 mill. Ha, mostly acacia and rubber wood) are used for timber production and logging as it is prohibited in natural forests. There are two million forest owners, and the mean area of privately owned forest stands is less than two hectares. Almost half of the plantation forests, too, are owned by private people or communities. Therefore, conflicts over forest land tenure are common in many regions. Plantation forests are managed by regimes aiming at pulpwood production but logging and timber transportation have a low level of mechanization. Sawmills suffer from sawlog quality variations and inappropriate log dimensions, which results in poor sawn timber yield and challenges in productivity and profitability, as well as drying and further processing of lumber. This setup restricts the willingness to invest in modern saw milling capacity, while the forest resources and lumber demand of the furniture producers suggest doing so. Consequently, most of the harvested roundwood (>30 mill. m3/a) is chipped and exported to Chinese pulp mills, while the extensive furniture sector relies on imported wood. Sawn timber made of Vietnamese roundwood ends up in relatively low value applications such as pallets. The country aims at developing local use of domestic timber. This article maps the pathways to develop Vietnamese forest and woodworking sectors towards a higher degree of self-sufficiency. The approach is based on SWOT analysis, i.e., systematic mapping of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the respective sectors, followed by analytical conclusions. The results show that the opportunities in the forest-based livelihoods and industrial value chains should be more clearly highlighted and communicated to citizens and decision makers. The plantation forest resources, yet located far from current industrial production sites, allow much greater sawlog production than now. There are also risks, such as a higher probability of windfalls, associated with prolonging the rotation times of plantation forests to increase the saw log yield. Vietnamese woodworking industries, as well as public sector, are highly committed to develop the forest management and industrial value adding processing of domestic wood towards an agile, modern, and low-risk market player and investment environment. The production philosophy should be shifted from production push to market pull, which requires better management and networking of the numerous micro scale producers, as well as integration of the large industrial producers more tightly in the forestry-wood product value chain development.
- Subjects
VIETNAM; FORESTS &; forestry; WOODEN beams; TREE farms; INDUSTRIAL sites; SAWLOGS; FOREST productivity; FOREST management
- Publication
ACTA Scientiarum Polonorum Silvarum Colendarum Ratio et Industria Lignaria, 2022, Vol 21, Issue 4, p358
- ISSN
1644-0722
- Publication type
Article