Consultancy announcement - CLICK HERE FOR VIETNAMESE

Position: Independent Consultant – Forest inventory for formulating sustainable forest management plans for community forest management (CFM) in CFM communes in Thanh Hoa province for the USAID Sustainable Forest Management Project, RECOFTC Viet Nam.

Sub-Activity Code: 1.2.5.1 & 1.2.6.1 Developing / implementing sustainable forest management plans for communities contracted land and forests in pilot CFM communes in Thanh Hoa province.

Estimated number of consulting days: about 43 person days, from July to September 15, 2022

Application deadline: 5.00pm. Hanoi local time, June 24, 2022

At RECOFTC, we believe in a future where people live equitably and sustainably in and beside healthy, resilient forests. We take a long-term, landscape-based and inclusive approach to supporting local communities to secure their land and resource rights, stop deforestation, find alternative livelihoods and foster gender equity. We are the only non-profit organization of our kind in Asia and the Pacific. We have more than 30 years of experience working with people and forests, and have built trusting relationships with partners at all levels. Our influence and partnerships extend from multilateral institutions to governments, private sector and local communities. Our innovations, knowledge and initiatives enable countries to foster good forest governance, mitigate and adapt to climate change, and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda.

The USAID Sustainable Forest Management Project (TheProject) will work with the Government of Vietnam (GVN) to reduce carbon emissions associated with deforestation, the degradation of natural forests, and poor plantation management. TheProject will implement a “Green Prosperity” approach that strengthens local communities’ ability to protect their natural resource base and reduce emissions while building a strong foundation for sustainable livelihoods and equitable economic growth.

TheProject will work in seven provinces (Lao Cai, Son La, Hoa Binh, Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, Quang Tri, Quang Nam) and focus on five objectives:

• Improve and expand community forest management
• Increase conservation-friendly enterprises in forest-dependent communities
• Increase functionality of law enforcement system for forest crimes
• Improve production forest management practices
• Mobilize domestic resources for forest management and protection

TheProject is being implemented during the period 2020-2025 by DAI in collaboration with RECOFTC and Preferred by Nature as partners, with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) as the counterpart and the Management Board of Forestry Projects (MBFP) as project owner.

RECOFTC Viet Nam is now inviting applicants for independent consultant on community forest management for formulating sustainable forest management plans for communities in CFM communes in Thanh Hoa province

The activity will be expected to contribute directly to the main indicator: ID2: Number of institutions with improved capacity to address sustainable landscape issues as supported by USG assistance; ID3: Number of laws, policies, regulations, or standards addressing sustainable landscapes formally proposed, adopted, or implemented as supported by USG assistance, ID5-Number of livelihood beneficiaries; and ID8: Number of hectares under improved natural resource management, safeguards or sustainable business practices (in 11 monitoring and evaluation indicators of the Project)

Background

Background

Forest dependent communities’ participation is increasingly recognized as an important factor in effectively maintaining forests. Communities have been engaged into forest management and protection in various forms. Four main types of these engagements include: traditional community forests; introduced community forests; groups of households managing forestlands; and individual households, who all individually own forestland, collaborating in forest management.

Under the Project, the concept of community covers two forms of local people's participation in forest management. The first modality is community forest management (CFM) in which residential communities/villages manage their allocated forests. This also covers the modality where communities manage household’s allocated forests as a community group (community forest household groups). The second modality is community-based forest management (CBFM) in which village communities manage contracted forests with protection forest management boards.

With CFM modality, local communities can access different financial sources, including but not limited to forest protection expenditures, PFES program, NTFP income, joint cooperation/investment and other credit programs to support communities to more effectively fulfill the roles and responsibilities of forest owners under CFM.

In order to strengthen the capacity of communities to manage, protect, sustainable use and develop the allocated forest resources, communities will actively develop SFM Plans with support from the Project. Through this process, communities will effectively perform the role of forest owner to protect the forests, promote multi-purpose of forest, and protect the environment of the forest, increase the supply capacity of forest and ensure the long-term use of forest products, especially NTFPs. Communities can also effectively explore the potential of eco-tourism, cultural tourism, and environmental education. This process strengthens capacity of the community, towards self-sufficiency in part of financial resources through revenue from forest protection, from PFES, from sustainable exploitation of non-timber forest products, from organizing ecotourism activities to contribute to economic development, poverty reduction, and sustainable livelihood improvement.

Composition of the consultant team:

In order to carry out the task of formulating sustainable community forest management plans for communities contracted land and forests in Thanh Hoa province, the Project recruits a community forest consultant team, including:

• Consultant 01:  is a team leader, responsible for coordinating, assigning, supervising team-members during the implementation; directly conduct survey, develop intervention activities, coordinate the implementation of forest inventory and synthesis, formulate sustainable forest management plans for community and household group.
• Consultant 02 – forest inventory: is a team member, responsible for the task of forest inventory in coordination with the team leader and community forest consultant.

The CFM Consultant team will also cooperate with Expert on Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) to ensure proper integration of GESI considerations into planning processes at target communities.

Objective of the consultancy

Review and assess the current status of forest resources allocated to the community for the formulation of a sustainable forest management plan for the community who are contracted land and forest.

Tasks

Consultant number 02 – forest inventory:  is a team member, responsible for performing the following tasks:

1.      Collect relevant documents:

Collect and synthesize relevant information and documents for forestinventory for community, includes:

• Map, data on forest status.
• Map, data on planning for 3 forest types
• Map, data, report on commune land-using planning
• Other information, document on current situation of forest

2.        Implement forest investigation tasks:

The implementation of forest inventory follows Article 10, Article 11, Article 14, Article 15, Article 19, Article 20 of Circular 33/2018/TT-BNNPTNT dated 16 November 2018 of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural and Development regulated the investigation, inventory and monitoring of forest developments and updated according to Article 10 of “Manual on community forest management" of VFBC project, include the following tasks:

• Investigation of forest area: on the basis of reviewing and updating the map of latest forest status of the Forest Rangers Department.
• Investigation on the forest reserve
• Investigation on the forest re-generation
• Investigation on non-timber forest products
• Investigation on the diversity of endangered and rare forest plants.
• Investigation on the diversity of endangered and rare forest animals.

3.        Technical guideline on forest inventory at field for the people

During implementation of forest inventory, conduct field orientation for the people in order to strengthen their ability to carry out forest inventory investigation for the tasks of monitoring the forest in the future.

Scale and sites for implementation

The CFM consultant team is expected to conduct forest inventory  for the 2 communities:

1. Community in Coc village, Hoi Xuan commune, Quan Hoa district, Thanh Hoa province; area 802 ha.
2. Household group in Vui village, Phu Xuan commune, Quan Hoa district, Thanh Hoa province; area 400 ha.

Anticipated duration, level of effort (LOE), timeline and deliverables

Duration

The estimated time for the consultant team to carry out this task is 43 man-days, expected to start at the beginning of July 2022, and submit the final report on September 15th, 2022. Details are in the following table:

LOE

No.	Items	Results	LOE
	Total		43
1	Field work		29
1.1	1st Village Meeting: concur contents, method, implementation plans; collect information on socioeconomic, forest management, protection, using and development of the household groups.	Forest management, protection, using and development of the community.	1
1.2	Participatory forest inspection		28
1.2.1	Investigation on forest area	Forest status Map	6
1.2.2	Investigation on the forest stock volume and regeneration	Sample plot data sheet	12
1.2.3	Investigation on NTFP	Form of inspection on  NTFP	3
1.2.4	Investigation  on forest plants	Form of forest plants	3
1.2.5	Investigation  on forest animals	Form of forest animals	4
2	Desk study		14
2.1	Work on forest inventory data	Forms and tables	4
2.2	Update, edit the forest status map, distribution map of rare and endangered forest plants and animals Analysis and synthesis of data for writing reports	Forest status map, distribution map of rare, endangered forest plants and animals	6
2.3	Write report on the result of forest inventory	Report on the result of forest inventory	4

Implementation plan and deliverables

Schedule of implementing forest inventory for 02 communities and 06 house hold groups in Thanh Hoa province are presented in the table below:

No.	Items	Deliverables	Time	Approval mechanism
1	Community forest inspectionin Coc village, Hoi Xuan commune, Quan Hoa district, Thanh Hoa province
1.1	Field visit: Forest inventoryat site		10/7/2022
1.2	Desk study: work on data, develop map	Tables of data on forest inventory, distribution map of endangered and rare forest plants and animals	15/7/2022
1.3	Write report on the result of forest inventory	Report on the result of forest inventory	20/7/2022	Technically approved by RECOFTC/SFM
2	Forest inventory in Vui village, Phu Xuan commune, Quan Hoa district, Thanh Hoa province
2.1	Field visit: forest investigation at sites		15/8/2022
2.2	Desk study: work on data, develop map	Tables of data on forest inventory, distribution map of endangered and rare forest plants and animals	25/8/2022
2.3	Write report on the result of forest inventory	Report on the result of forest inventory	15/9/2022	Technically approved by RECOFTC/SFM

Requirements of deliverables

Deliverables of the forest inventoryconsultant for 02 communities, include:

1. Report:  in Vietnamese language, include:

02 reports on the result of forest inventoryfor 02 communities

2. Map: in Vietnamese language, formulated by Map/info software following Vietnam standard 11565:2016 (TCVN 11565:2016), include:

• 02 maps on forest status for 02 communities.
• 02 distribution maps of endangered and rare forest plants and animals

3. Data: Forms and tables on the result of forest inventoryin Vietnamese language for 02 communities following regulations in “Manual on community forest management”

Required qualifications

• Vietnamese nationality only
• A bachelor’s degree or higher, majoring in forest inventory, planning, management and protection or related fields
• Having at least 10 years of experience in the forestry sector.
• Having in-depth knowledge and expertise in applying GPS and GIS technology in  forest inventoryand planning; update and develop maps on forest status.
• Experience and expertise in biodiversity, NTFP inventory
• Teamwork skills
• Experience and skills in writing reports in Vietnamese, having ability to use English at work.

RECOFTC’s core values

At RECOFTC, our core values are the foundation of our culture and guide all our work. In addition to job specific skills and experience, the applicant should possess the following characteristics, attitudes and skills:

• Embrace innovation
• Adapt to, and learn from, challenges
• Collaborate with partners and stakeholders
• Nurture commitment, responsibility and ownership
• Prioritize sustainability
• Cultivate participation, social inclusion and gender equity

How to apply

Interested individuals are requested to submit their CV and a cover letter indicating why they are suitable for this consultancy along with the expected fee or daily rate and current contact details of three references, to [email protected]. Please quote the consultancy title in the subject line of the email. Only shortlisted individuals will be notified.

For any further information you may need about the consultancy, please contact [email protected].

To learn more about RECOFTC, please visit our website www.recoftc.org

Organization: RECOFTC
Location:
Application deadline: 2022-06-24
Send application to: [email protected]