The Voluntary Partnership Agreement on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and
Trade (VPA-FLEGT) between the Government of Vietnam and the European Union (EU)
came into effect in June 2019, marking a significant milestone in achieving the negotiation
process between the two parties as from 2010. As one of 15 countries worldwide and one
of 05 countries in Asian participating in negotiation and implementation of the VPA,
Vietnam and the EU committed to the goal of sustainable management of all forest types
by developing and implementing a legal framework to ensure all timber products exported
by Vietnam to the EU market are legally produced from and by legal timber sources.
In order to implement the Agreement, the two parties established a Joint
Implementation Committee (JIC) co-chaired by the leaders of the Ministry of Agriculture
and Rural Development (MARD) and the EU Delegation to Vietnam, whose functions are
to manage, monitor and assess the implementation of the Agreement. One of the JIC’s
important tasks is to promote dialogue and information exchange, to consider and resolve
any issue raised by either party, including from the Multi-Stakeholder Core Group on the
VPA (MSCG), which represents the stakeholders in Vietnam, includes the representatives
of Vietnam Administration of Forestry, timber business associations, forestry social
organizations, non-governmental organizations, research institutions, and development
partners. A number of MSCG member organizations from the Vietnamese NonGovernmental
Organization Network on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance, and Trade
(VNGO-FLEGT) with significant concerns about the monitoring and impact evaluation
mechanism of the VPA implementation on the groups are believed to be severely affected
by the Agreement in the early days, such as plantation households, micro, small and
medium-sized timber enterprises.
The Agreement itself provides no specific guidance on impact monitoring, but the
Joint Implementation Framework (JIF) indicates that the JIC is responsible for complying
with Article 15 so that “Vietnam will have a mechanism for monitoring the implementation
of the Agreement” and ensures that “the monitoring will be conducted transparently with
the participation of stakeholders, including non-governmental organizations, forestry
associations, trade unions, local communities.” According to Annex IX, the economic,
social and environmental impacts of the implementation of the Agreement will have to be
monitored and evaluated (M&E), and base on that to give appropriate measures
accordingly to minimize any negative impacts possibly arising on ethnic minorities and
related local communities, households and timber industry as committed in Article 16 of
the Agreement.
The context has encouraged the Centre for Sustainable Rural Development (SRD),
which coordinates the VNGO-FLEGT Network, to decide on developing and pilotinging the
VPA impact-monitoring framework for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the
Vietnamese timber industry. Being undertaken within the Forest Governance, Market, and
Climate (FGMC) project funded by the DFID (2018-2021), this initiative aims to build
participatory capacity and regulations for civil society organizations and timber
associations on VPA-FLEGT impact monitoring and assessment in Vietnam.