Pursuant to Decision No. 66/QD-TTg of the Prime Minister dated July 29^th 1998, the Five-million-hectare Reforestation Program (Program 661) was carried out from 1998 to 2000 with the main goal of increasing national forest cover. The areas were reforested by either plantation or assisted regeneration. After Vietnam submitted the first Forest Reference Emission Level/ Forest Reference Level (FREL/FRL) to the UNFCCC in January 2016, it was necessary to report the success rate of Program 661 so as to propose an adjustment of the carbon removed from the atmosphere due to this program. The Silviculture Research Institute (SRI), supported by FAO, conducted the project “Assessment of Success Rate of five-million-hectare Reforestation Program”.

In this project, visual interpretation was applied to detect forest presence. To estimate the program’s overall success rate, SRI first chose 15 provinces that represented the forest ecological zones in Viet Nam, and then five of these provinces were selected for further investigation based on their data availability and market access.

11,013 plots were sampled with the total area of 71,569 ha of plantation and assisted regeneration, making up 11.2% of the total area of plantation and assisted regeneration of Program 661 in the 5 provinces. Information of the plots including central points, plot area, forest types (classification specified in Article 4, Law on Forest protection and development), interventions, planted species in the reforestation, and design dossiers were gathered and located precisely on topography maps using MapInfo. The visual interpretation was then conducted online using Google Earth Images by experienced staff in June 2016 and cross-checked with the most updated Land-sat 8 and national forest inventory maps. Regarding the intervention of plantations, a plot was categorized as successfully-reforested only if its status was classified as plantation, newly planted trees, or newly harvested, otherwise it would be marked unsuccessful. Similarly, as for assisted regeneration, a plot with natural forest present was deemed a successfully-regenerated plot. Finally, the success rate of the program by province, type of forest intervention, functional type and owner group was calculated as the percentage of successfully reforested or regenerated plots.

The overall success rate of the plantation and assisted regeneration under Program 661 was of 88% (SD=7%), but varied between provinces. Kon Tum, which has low market access, had the lowest success rate, 60%, and the highest success rate was of 93% for Binh Dinh. The success rates of the three provinces of Binh Dinh, Lang Son and Yen Bai were all over 90%. Yen Bai province has the second lowest rate (86%) mainly due to a lower success rate for assisted regeneration and mixed species plantations of pine and native species in protection and special use forests, implemented by the forest management boards, distributed in the western part of the province.

With regard to types of forest intervention, the number of plots collected for the assisted regeneration was 2,739, accounting for 25% of the total sampling plots while the others received plantation intervention. The success rates of plantation and assisted regeneration were almost no different (at 87% and 88%, respectively).

As for the forest types, Yen Bai was the only province that had special use forest plots. With 8,202 plots, protection forest made up the biggest proportion of assessed areas. The sampling size of the production forest was 2,706 plots and that of special use forest 105. The success rates by forest functional type varied between the 3 forest functional types. The highest success rate (94%) was for the production forest and the lowest rate (65%) is for the special use forest. While the success rate calculated for the production forest between the provinces was almost identical (around 93%), those of the protection forests varied substantially between provinces, with the highest rate of 93% for Binh Dinh and the lowest 60% for Kon Tum.

The success rate was also calculated for each group of forest owners. Companies, households and management boards, whose forest makes 97% of the total number of plots, are the main owners. Forests of management boards had the lowest successful reforestation rate, at 83%. Companies and households achieved a very high success rate (about 90%), with the exception of Kon Tum (53% and 66% respectively). The management boards in Yen Bai, which are usually located in the high mountainous areas with poor market access, and where native species were planted, only achieved a success rate of 69%. This would suggest that market access affects success rates of plantations.