In the first 6 months of 2026, the Lao Cai Provincial Forest Protection and Environment Fund quickly stabilized its organization after being consolidated on the basis of consolidation, ensuring smooth operation and synchronously implementing tasks on payment for forest environmental services, replacement afforestation and management of the environmental protection fund, according to the Lao Cai Provincial e-Portal.
The Fund maintains stable collection of money from facilities using forest environmental services, promptly signs entrustment contracts with new units, and prepares complete dossiers and data to organize payments immediately after the forest area meets the conditions for approval.
Through review, there are 511,994.04ha of forests that meet the conditions to provide forest environmental services, accounting for 62.8% of the total forest area of the whole province. Of which, natural forests reach 377,905.07ha, planted forests reach 134,088.97ha.
The scope of forest environmental service provision is determined in 92 communes and wards, with the participation of 26 forest owners who are organizations, 30,171 households and individuals and 39 communities that have been granted land use right certificates; 38,271 households and individuals who are using land stably but have not been allocated or leased forest or forestry land; and 88 commune-level People's Committees implementing management and protection of unallocated or unleased forest areas.
The application of map data, updating information according to each forest user and strengthening coordination between specialized agencies and localities helps improve the accuracy in determining areas eligible for payment, ensuring publicity, transparency and the right subjects.
In the first 6 months of the year, the Fund inspected 32 units using forest environmental services and 28 commune-level People's Committees, focusing on the implementation of financial obligations, management of funds and forest area providing forest environmental services.
Propaganda work is also promoted through conferences at the grassroots level, websites, media and panel and poster systems, contributing to raising people's awareness of forest protection and development.
In the last 6 months of 2026, the Fund will continue to improve the database on forests and forest owners, organize payments on schedule, strengthen inspection of the implementation of financial obligations of units using forest environmental services and environmental protection depositors, contributing to improving the efficiency of forest resource management and environmental protection in the province.
