Training on ecotourism in Vietnamese protected areas

Vietnam has more than 170 protected areas that representing for variety of unique ecosystems, landscapes and seascapes of the country. Besides their biodiversity’s value, the protected areas have a huge eco-tourism potential that could be used to fund conservation efforts and to raise public awareness on nature conservation.

Ecotourism has been prioritized as the key focus for Thanh Hoa province’s protected areas. Initial ecotourism in Be En National Park and Pu Luong Nature Reserve showed promising success. Advancing the success, the People’s Committee of Thanh Hoa province approved a proposal for ecotourism development in Xuan Lien to 2025 and vision to 2030. In order to implement this important plan, Xuan Lien Nature Reserve requested Center for Nature Conservation and Development (CCD) and the Center for Planning, Marketing and Strategy for Agriculture Development of Thanh Hoa province (CPMSA) to provide technical support of the plan. Based on the request, on July 25, 2019 in Thanh Hoa city, Center for Nature Conservation and Development (CCD) held a training on “Ecotourism in Vietnamese protected areas” for staffs of Xuan Lien and CPMSA. The training focused on providing approaches, methods and assessment skills on evaluating ecotourism potential for a protected area and ecotourism planning in a protected area. In the training, lesson learnt and best practices on ecotourism in other protected areas were provided so that Xuan Lien could refer and use as an example for the plan.

The technical support and training are part of CCD effort on improving protected area governance and sustainable financing in Vietnam by facilitating better engagement of local community, benefit-sharing via community-based conservation and ecotourism/community tourism in the protected area system.