Pu Luong Ecotourism Project

Rice paddy terracing is common in Pu Luong

Pu Luong Nature Reserve is a gorgeous limestone karst landscape just three hours by car from Hanoi, home to Thai and Muong ethnic minorities, as well as a well preserved, but exploited forest system, home to the critically endangered Delacor's Langur.

It's a lush landscape

As with many similar landscapes and communities, there are considerable threats from land encroachment, population growth and development that forces the local community to exert increasing pressure on the natural resources that they rely on for their livelihoods.  Forests are becoming degraded thus threatening local livelihood security as well as biodiversity.  Additionally, large scale tourism development has been mooted by the Provincial People's Committee and associated departments, development that would significantly alter the character of the landscape, damage natural resources, place increasing pressure on biodiversity, whilst at the same time further marginalizing the local population.

Community members in consultation workshop

Up to 4,000 international tourists visit the site annually, mostly on pre-booked trekking packages with adventure travel companies, who subcontract to in-bound operators, who in-turn subcontract to a local operator.  Some local homestays have been created by a previous NGO project, but problems exist with theequitable distribution of profits from the tourism product, to an extent where tourism provides only negligible financial gains to the community.  Thankfully, a forward thinking project funded by Irish Aid allows for a comprehensive and well planned ecotourism (or perhaps "cultural tourism") project to be developed in the Nature Reserve.

My role was to lead and capacity build a national team from Fauna and Flora International through the ecotourism process to develop an equitable and pro-poor ecotourism plan to guide the two year project.  This was completed in five main stages:

1. Meeting with provincial, district and commune decision makers

Water wheels for irrigation and power generation

We held formal meetings with key provincial departments in Thanh Hoa City, to introduce our project objectives and needs.  This was followed up with meetings at District and Commune level, to ensure all were clear about the project and it's purpose.

2. Conducting an extensive tourism resource survey in the nature reserve

The team travelled extensively throughout the nature reserve, meeting local communities, observing key social, cultural and natural features, and other tourism related resources and issues.

3. Holding in-depth community consultations

Rice paddy on the valley floor

The project was centred around the needs and wishes of the 3,000 people that live in the reserve, and these communities are the key draw factor for tourists.  We held workshops in each village to allow communities to make informed decisions about the type of tourism development they would like to see in their landscape.  This valuable information showed communities did not wish to see large scale investment or landscape change affect them -this would be the key information used to develop the plan, and provide a strong argument against heavy development from provincial agencies.

4. Developing an equitable ecotourism plan for Pu Luong

The plan identified 18 key action points to achieve comprehensive sustainable and equitable ecotourism in the nature reserve.  Of these, the following were identified as priorities:

Ladies carrying fuel wood

• Develop and implement tourism zoning and management (using Recreation Opportunity Spectrum methodology)
• Implement guidelines, codes of practice and regulations to ensure low-impact and equitable tourism
• Establish and support a community tourism association
• Develop local Value Chain to add-value to tourism
• Work with in-bound and local tourism operators to ensure they allow more financial benefits to reach local communities
• Implement entry fee system to fund conservation activities
• Develop small scale handicraft programme, utilizing existing skills and products
• Implement tourism awareness training to key stakeholders

5. Developing, discussing and agreeing next steps in a multi-stakeholder workshop

The team ran a final consultative workshop with key stakeholders including nature reserve managers, tour operators, provincial decision makers and local communities.  Here, wishes of the local communities were presented along with the above action points.  Discussions were held, and pledges made for support, and importantly, approval was publicly agreed to support the plan.

Village consultation workshop

A year later and the project is going strong, with key milestones having been met, with a local community tourism association set up, various trainings completed and improvements in the value chain from support of tour operators.

Key challenges as always remain the large number of provincial agencies that are responsible for management of different aspects of the nature reserve, big business pressurizing inappropriate development for the site, and local capacity to ensure project momentum is maintained.

Click here for pictures.

Critical Ecosystems Partnership Fund, Northern Vietnam

Black-Shanked Doucs at Jungle Beach

Fauna and Flora International Vietnam, along with other partner agencies, requested my assistance in drafting an application to the CEPF fund, to provide conservation support to critically endangered primates at 12 sites in northern Vietnam.

The project was to provide training, capacity building and assistance to community based patrol teams living adjacent to the identified primate habitat.  Species included the Tonkin Snub-Nosed Monkey, Greater Crested Gibbon, Cao-Vit Gibbon, Red Shanked Douc Langurs, Francois Langur and Delacors Langur.

My role was to meet with project partners to discuss, compile relevant information and draft all submission documents for the project.  Subsequently the project has been approved and is currently in the process of implementation.

Click here for pictures of some of the primates involved; pictures include those from the primate rescue Centre in Cuc Phuong, they are shown for reference.  CEPF is about in-situ conservation.

Project Recruitment

Not a huge part of my work, but I have often been involved with drafting of terms of reference of national and international positions, as well as the writing and placing of adverts, through to collating CVs and conducting interviews.

Most recently this was to recruit an international adviser for the EcoBoat Project in Ha Long Bay.  A key piece of expertise I have is understanding the issues and costs of living in provinces in Vietnam, as well as suitable personal characteristics an individual needs to work well within the Vietnamese context.

The EcoBoat Project, Ha Long Bay

The EcoBoat

EcoBoat is an environmental education project that aims to take local groups of students out into Ha Long Bay and put them through a basic awareness raising programme that instills a sense of pride and thus help conserve the future of the bay.  The project was funded by the UK Darwin Initiative due to the sustainable financing mechanism, which involved taking paying trips from regional international schools on multi-day trips into the bay on environmental education and outward bounds style excursions.  This was specifically targeted at schools' "activity week".

Hanoi International School

My role was to coordinate project activities, develop the international education curriculum, and capacity build project staff in outdoor education, group leadership and safety skills, as well as to lead international trips, travel to countries in the region on marketing trips and to work with the Ha Long Bay Management Department to institutionally develop the project.  I worked for the best part of two years on the project, being based in Ha Long City.

Successes were made in developing educational methodology and style within Ha Ling Bay Management Department and the local education department.  Education is very "top down" in Vietnam, where the teacher has the knowledge and gives it to the student without question (for example, during an initial workshop with local teachers, I began with asking the question "what is conservation?", to which a comment was "he doesn't even know what conservation is! he's asking us!".  Staff became proficient in facilitating student lead discussions and practical learning.

Not all work: Tug of War on Soi Sim

Partnerships were made with international schools in Hanoi and Singapore, with various projects being run in cooperation with local schools (such as the mangrove rehabilitation project).

Thousands of local students experienced a different type of environmental education in a beautiful environment, as well of hundreds of international students learning about the effects of human impacts on the environment.

As well as these successes, I was aware from the outset that the project had considerable challenges that would take considerable effort to overcome, and ultimately caused me to leave the project early to pursue my consultancy:

• The sustainable financing mechanism was based upon assumption not research - there is a high competition for "activity week" providers in the region ho offer a highly professional service.  The bottom line for international school parents is cost, for the most they pay high fees and did not see why they should pay a premium to support free trips for others.
  
• The total reliance on Ha Long Bay Management Department's boat, staff and crew was too inflexible to provide a slick product as demanded by the client group.  Issues such as alcohol consumption and safety were always a concern in a potentially dangerous environment.  Project staff and crew were often unable to attend basic safety training and drills due to other commitments.
  
• Staff retention would always be an issue at the end of the project without sustainable financing.  When initial funds ran out, and the project was transferred to local government operation and salaries, the highly trained project staff simply moved on, thus removing the key asset of the project.
  
• Perhaps overall, the project would not actually tackle the issues affecting the bay, which were, and will continue to be damage to environmental systems through rapid and ill-managed development (specifically the water composition in the bay has been altered by the removal of hundreds of square kilometres of mangrove forest, that has thus killed all of the bay's coral).  School children would have little ability to influence the bays development in the immediate future.

Mangrove lesson

At the end of the project, after a gap of six months, funding and thus activities were resumed with the support of the Australian Santos Corporation.  Sadly, the Ha Long Bay Management Department had decided to drop the EcoBoat from its portfolio citing lack of funds - international development money is hard to obtain for Vietnam's most visited and richest protected area.

Click here for EcoBoat pictures and here for Ha Long Bay pictures.