On October 27, 2022, in Ho Chi Minh City, a Regional Workshop of the project “Forestry and Trade for Development in ASEAN (FORTRADE project)” was organized. The project is sponsored by UNREDD and implemented by PEFC at Southeast Asian countries during the period from February 2021 to October 2022. The Vietnam Forest Certification Office (VFCO) is the project partner and is responsible for coordinating the Project’s activities in Vietnam.

Attending the workshop were more than 60 participants participating offline and online who were representatives of national forestry management agencies, project implementation experts, international and Vietnamese organizations, members of the PEFC.

The workshop aimed to share the results and assess the project’s impact on promoting the development of sustainable forest management in the countries of the Lower Mekong region (Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia and Myanmar). VFCO presented the national forest certification system, the results of the FORTRADE project implementation and its impacts in Vietnam.

At the workshop, participants also discussed strengthening cooperation between countries to promote sustainable forest management and forest certification system.