Vietnam is striving to adapt to climate change impacts, mitigate greenhouse gas emission, and conserve its globally unique forests and fauna while maintaining its drive for sustainable economic growth. To achieve its ambitious goal, Vietnam needs to strengthen its institutional capacities to better manage forest resources, particularly at subnational levels. USAID’s Green Annamites activity recently worked with provincial governmental and non-governmental organizations in Quang Nam and Thua Thien-Hue provinces to assess their readiness to use new information and technologies, such as geographical information system (GIS), remote sensing, and use of tablets for data collection, that will empower more informed forest management decisions. This institutional needs assessment provided the project team with an important program baseline that will allow them to design and deliver customized trainings to each of the key governmental, NGO, and private sector partners.

So what? With better data and capacity, these institutions will be able to improve the management of the two provinces’ forests and better conserve the globally unique species of plants and animals that call these forests home.