5552 PNKB project study on PFES clean draft

Scoping Study for Payment of Forest Environmental Services PFES from tourism Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park November 2012 Prepared for The Technical Cooperation Project “Nature Conse

Scoping Study for Payment of Forest

Environmental Services (PFES) from tourism

Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park

November 2012

Prepared for The Technical Cooperation Project “Nature Conservation and Sustainable Management of

Natural Resources in the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park Region”

Prepared by

Ms Dang Thuy Nga and Ms Annika Korte

With inputs from

Ms Pham Thi Lien Hoa

Published by

Deutsche Gesellschaft für

Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH

Nature Conservation and Sustainable Management of

the Natural Resources in the Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park Region Address 09 Quang Trung Street

Dong Hoi City

Quang Binh Province

STRUCTURE

STRUCTURE I LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES II

I INTRODUCTION 1

1 Background of Project 1

2 Purpose of Study 1

3 Expected Output 2

4 Methodology 3

II INTRODUCTION INTO PFES 5

1 National Regulations on PFES and Tourism in PA 5

2 Differences between PFES and Concessions 6

III PHONG NHA KE BANG NATIONAL PARK 8

1 General Information 8

2 Management Structure of the Park 9

3 Tourism Activities and Development 10

IV ACTIVITIES ON PFES IN VIETNAM 13

1 Current PFES Projects in Vietnam 13

2 Scoping Study on PFES from Tourism in the Ba Be National Park 13

3 Recent Efforts Regarding PFES in the Quang Binh province 14

4 Stakeholder Kick-Off Meeting 14

V THE POTENTIAL FOR PFES FROM TOURISM IN THE PNKB NP 16

1 Identification of Stakeholders 16

1.1 Potential Mediators 16

a) Phong Nha Ke Bang National Park Management Board 16

1.2 Provincial Departments 16

1.3 Potential Payers 17

a) The Tourism Center and Paradise Cave 17

b) Hotels 17

c) Tour Operators 18

d) Souvenir Vendors and Boat Operators 18

1.4 Potential Providers 19

a) The Phong Nha Ke Bang National Park 19

b) Local People 19

2 Current Payment Arrangements of the National Park with the Tourism Sector 19

2.1 Long-term Contract with Truong Thinh Company 19

2.2 Payment for Tourism the Core Zone of the NP 20

3 Estimation of Payment Amounts in a PFES Scheme 20

3.1 Scenario 1: PFES based on estimated turnover 20

3.2 Scenario 2: PFES charged from visitors 22

4 Potential Payment Schemes 25

5 Potential Option for Payment Distribution and Monitoring: Participation of Local People in Forest Protection 26

VI CONCLUSION 31

VII RECOMMENDATIONS 32

1 Recommendations at national level 32

2 Recommendation at provincial level 32

3 Recommendations at park level 33

4 Recommendations at project level 33

VIII BIBLIOGRAPHY 35

ANNEX 1 SAMPLE VISITOR QUESTIONNAIRE 36

ANNEX 2 DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT VISITOR SURVEY 38

ANNEX 3 INTERVIEWS OF THE PFES SCOPING STUDY 40

ANNEX 4 CALCULATIONS OF POTENTIAL PAYER’S REVENUES 47

ANNEX 5 REFERENCE DOCUMENT FOR KFW PARK PROTECTION FUND 49

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1 – Summary of Decree 99 ……… 6

Table 1 – PFES vs Concession ……… ……… 7

Table 2 – Land area of Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park Region ……….9

Figure 2 – Map of the PNKB NP Region ……….9

Figure 3 – Number of Visitors ………10

Figure 4 – Tourist Motivation to Visit PNKB NP ……….……11

Figure 5 – Amount of Payments for FES ……… 21

Figure 6 – Visitor’s Willingness to Pay ……….23

Figure 7 – Visitor’s Payments for FES ……… 23

Table 3 – Comparison of two mechanisms ……… ……… 26

I INTRODUCTION

1 Background of Project

The Project “Nature Conservation and Sustainable Management of Natural Resources in the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park Region” (in brief: PNKB Region Project) is a Viet-namese-German Development Cooperation, initiated by the Vietnamese Government in co-operation with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) The project is a joint cooperation between the PPC of Quang Binh from the Vietnam-ese side and the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) and the KfW Development Bank from the German side In this context, the PPC is the executing agency; GIZ and KfW support the project by means of financial and technical cooperation The project duration is 8 years, starting from 2007 until 2015 for the technical cooperation component (GIZ), and from 2008

to 2016 for the financial cooperation (KfW)

The project’s overall goal is “Contribution to the conservation of the Northern Annamite Region, its biodiversity and ecological services in close relation with a sustainable socio-economic development” and the specific goal is “reduction of the pressure on the Phong Nha-

Ke Bang National Park and amelioration of the legal income of the target groups living the park region” This shall be achieved by rearranging the sources of income and by familiariz-ing local households in the Buffer Zone with alternative livelihood activities as well as the improvement of law enforcement

The main intervention areas of the project are giving assistance to:

 the management of the national park (KfW has the lead during planning and mentation)

imple- the development of the buffer zone (GIZ has the lead during the planning and KfW supports the implementation)

 the tourism development in the PNKB NP region (GIZ has the lead during the ning and KfW supports the implementation);

plan-This list shows that tourism is one of the main focuses of the project; being an encompassing topic for the project and the park Developing tourism in a sustainable manner

all-is imperative for the protection of the park’s resources but also for development of the Buffer Zone

With the project support via the GIZ component, a Sustainable Tourism Development Plan (STDP) for the PNKB region for the period 2010 - 2020 has been developed and ap-proved by the PPC of Quang Binh (Decision No 2822/QD-UBND dated 01/11/2010) The STDP lays out the strategy for sustainable tourism development for PNKB region for 10 years

in the context of consideration of the importance to the nature conservation, notably sity conservation The STDP provides guidelines and activities for involving communities in poverty reduction and livelihood improvement as well as environmental protection Further-more, it requests the development of innovative financial mechanisms

biodiver-2 Purpose of Study

The continuous growth in tourism, the lasting threats of illegal logging and poaching to the National Park combined with low level of livelihood in the Buffer Zone suggest a high necessity for the consideration of a sustainable finance mechanism A sustainable finance mechanism, such as a PFES mechanism, would allow re-investments in biodiversity conser-

vation of the park as well as benefit sharing with local people This could enable more tainable tourism development as well as to preserve the park’s World Heritage Status in the long run In the context of tourism, a PFES scheme aims at identifying and connecting those that profit from an environmental service (i.e tourism businesses) and those that provide the environmental service (i.e those who protect the park)

sus-In November 2011, a feasibility study on PFES from Tourism was conducted in the Ba

Be National Park This study was supported by the GIZ Project ‘Preservation of biodiversity

in forest ecosystems in Vietnam’ in Hanoi The study found that the potential payments for ecosystem services generated in Ba Be National Park are not sufficient for a sustainable PFES scheme solely based on tourism Major challenges were the identification of potential payers and providers, due to a large diversity of small scale stakeholders It was found that consider-able PFES payments could be generated through direct visitor payments in a form of an addi-tional entrance fee ticket Facing the continuous growth of tourism in the PNKB NP region and encouraged by the feasibility study in Ba Be National Park, the potential for PFES from Tourism was to be assessed in the PNKB NP region The PNKB NP has considerably more income from Tourism than the Ba Be National Park, due to much higher visitor numbers; consequently, higher amounts of PFES are likely to be generated However, since the PNKB

NP does also comprise many small scale stakeholders, which could make the identification of potential payers difficult, the possibility of a visitor payment was assessed as well To explore opportunities for innovative financing mechanisms in the PNKB Region, the project conduct-

ed this study to scope out the potential for PFES from Tourism This relates to ways in which payments made by the tourism sector can be used to support biodiversity conservation in the PNKB NP region This includes the identification of potential payers and providers of envi-ronmental services

An additional reason for the study was to give feedback from the local level of tation to the national level of policy formulation The study in the Ba Be National Park showed that Decree No 99/2010/ND-CP (in the further course of the study called Decree 99)

implemen-is a young regulation with many limitations in regards to tourimplemen-ism and still open to revimplemen-ision A further study in the Phong Nha - Ke Bang National Park is perceived as being helpful for further recommendation on the formulation of Decree 99 regarding PFES from Tourism

In conclusion, three main reasons gave motivation to the feasibility study on PFES from Tourism in the PNKB NP region:

 To assess PFES as an instrument for sustainable planning and financing of tourism, livelihood improvement, and conservation in the PNKB NP region

 To underpin and further develop the findings of the Study in Ba Be NP

 To give recommendation for policy formulation on national level

3 Expected Output

The overall objective of the study is to find out how tourism development can contribute

to the improvement of the park’s conservation via PFES According to the Terms of ence, the objectives of the study are:

Refer- To assess how PFES is perceived and appreciated by different stakeholders in PNKB

 To estimate potential PFES payment

 To identify appropriate ways of payment delivery & coordination mechanisms

 To recommend possible options for a PFES Scheme

 To identify suitable PFES mechanism from tourism for PNKB NP

The assessment of stakeholder’s perception of PFES includes the analysis of the Quang Binh PPC’s plans and abilities to introduce PFES from Tourism and to enable revenue-sharing among the PNKB Management Board and local communities As well, the ability of the PNKB NP Management Board to reinvest the revenues generated from tourism PFES in biodiversity conservation and associated activities should be assessed, including the benefit-sharing with local people Moreover, the willingness of potential PFES payers (tour operators, hotels, souvenir vendors, etc.) to make payments is evaluated The estimation of potential payments includes the identification of roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders and the suggestion of possible levels of payments Following that, the identification of payment delivery & coordination mechanisms includes the suggestion of different ways in which PFES can be charged and collected This includes proposals on the management and use of reve-nues from tourism PFES, together with their administration and distribution between different forest owners and Quang Binh PPC, as well as their retention and management by PNKB NP Management Board

On the basis of these findings, possible options for a PFES Scheme and suitable PFES mechanism from tourism for PNKB NP shall be identified The models should include rough cost-benefit analyses which indicate the likely payments generated, their distribution (pay-ment receivers), and the costs of PFES administration and co-ordination Finally, specific recommendations for relevant issues, notably concrete options for further support by the pro-ject and a roadmap for implementing the most recommended option shall be given

4 Methodology

The scoping study was conducted between 6th and 18th of June 2012, concluding with a debrief session on the final day of the study From 6th to 11th of June, desk study and meet-ings in Dong Hoi have been organized After that further interviews and meetings took place

in Phong Nha Village from the 12th until the 15th of June The days of 16th and 17th of June were used for assembling the gathered data and preparing the debrief session on 18th of June The applied methods to gather information for the study included the analysis of second-ary data, meetings with representatives of political agencies at provincial level and semi-structured interviews with relevant stakeholders In regards to the analysis of secondary data, this report took information from different sources into consideration, such as information from the Sustainable Tourism Development Plan (STDP), the report on a stakeholder analysis

in the PNKB NP region, the baseline survey on tourism development in Phong Nha and data from the tax offices in Dong Hoi and Bo Trach District

The meetings with political representatives included consultations with the Director of the Department of Forestry (DoF), with the Deputy Director of the Department of Tourism, Cul-ture and Sports (DoTSC), with the Vice Director of the National Park’s Tourism Center and with the Vice Director of the National Park Furthermore, a meeting with experts from the Cologne & Frankfurt Zoo Society based in Phong Nha Village has been organized In these meetings, issues such as possible ways to apply PFES from tourism in the region and the po-tential of a ‘PFES ticket’ for visitors, already existing payment agreements with the National Park and the state of forest protection were discussed

The stakeholder interviews have been conducted with six hotels in Phong Nha Village, with Chay Lap Homestay (the only Homestay in the PNKB region), and Phong Nha Farm-

stay, a hotel owned by an Australian Vietnamese couple and a popular destination for tional visitors of the region Moreover, three boat operators were interviewed, including the head of the local boat group, and six souvenir vendors located at the boat landing to Phong Nha Cave In addition to that, two local tour operators, Oxalis and Phong Nha Discovery, were interviewed Unfortunately, the survey of more stakeholders was not possible due to time restraints

interna-In preparation of the scoping study, a visitor’s survey was conducted from 23rd to 26th of May 2012 During the visitor survey, 167 visitors of the national park have been asked about their willingness to pay for conservation, their motivation to visit the region and their travel practices, including the number of overnight stays and means of transportation This infor-mation was helpful to observe how PFES payments can be gathered and who the potential payers are during the scoping study on PFES (see Annex 1 for the Questionnaire)

II INTRODUCTION INTO PFES

1 National Regulations on PFES and Tourism in PA

In 2010, the government prepared Decree 99 as the national policy for PFES The PFES term is used in Vietnam only and is defined in Decree 99 (2010, Art 3(3)) as follows: “Pay-ment for forest environmental services (PFES) is a supply and payment relationship in which the users of forest environmental services pay to the suppliers of forest environmental ser-vices” The decree contains specific information about the providers and users of ecosystem services, the management of these very services, the rights and obligation of providers and suppliers in order to enable fair payments schemes, as well as the responsibilities of state agencies In this study, the important regulations regarding PFES from Tourism shall be re-viewed only

As proposed by Decree 99 (2010, Art 4), the types of ecosystem services relating to ism are “protection of natural landscape” and “conservation of biodiversity” of forest ecosys-tems Therefore, “Organizations and individuals doing tourism services that benefit from forest environmental services have to pay for services for protection of natural landscape and conser-vation of biodiversity of forest ecosystems serving tourism purposes” (Decree 99/2010, Art 7(4)) The naming of payers and providers is the task of each Provincial Peoples Committee (PPC)1; the level of payment is calculated on the basis of the payer’s revenue and may range between 1-2% (Decree 99 2010, Art 11 (4)) Actors entitled to receive payments for ecosystem services are forest owners or actors contracted by the forest owners, which can be organizations, households or village communities (Decree 99 2010, Art 8)

tour-Decree 99 issues regulations on how funds collected through a PFES scheme should be ministered; either through direct or indirect payment The method of direct payment proposes the direct exchange of payments between buyers and providers of environmental services The method of direct payment can be based on voluntary negotiations between payers and providers, and the amount of payment must not be lower than 1%-2% of the revenues (Decree 99 2010, Art 6(1)) Contrarily, the method of indirect payment asks for the inclusion of an intermediary fund and is obligatory for every beneficiary named by the responsible authority This fund should be established either at national, provincial, or district level – depending on the needs of the regarding payment scheme If a fund is being established, up to 10% of the PFES revenues can be used for administrative purposes Upon the decision of the PPC, other agencies or organ-izations may act in place of an intermediary fund (Decree 99 2010, Art 11-18) The main state agency responsible for implementing Decree 99 at provincial level is the PPC The PPC in turn directs the Department for Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) as the lead agency (Decree 99 2010, Art 22) Figure 1 gives an overview of the main points included in Decree 99

1

Vietnam’s administrative structure is separated in 58 provinces Each of the provinces is administered by a Provincial Peoples Committee (PPC) The PPC is the main governmental committee heading several sub-divisions, called Departments These departments are, for example, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) or the Department of Planning and Investment (DPI)

In addition to Decree 99, the government has issued different legal documents guiding for

setting up payment schemes Those documents include (Source: Dang 2012):

 Decree 99/2010 (24/9/2010) about payment for forest environmental services

- Decision 119/QD-TCLN-BNNPTNT (21/3/2012): temporary guidance of

proce-dures for registry, list, and signing entrusted contracts of PFES

- Circular 20/TT-BNNPTNT (7/5/2012): guiding on procedures of checking and

approving forest protection and disbursement of PFES

- Circular 80/TT-BNNPTNT (23/11/2011): guiding on methodology applied to

identify payment for forest environmental services

 Decree 117/2010 (24/12/2010) about management, organization special used forest

system

- Circular 78/2011/BNNPTN (11/11/2011) about detail regulations for

implemen-tation Decree 117/2020 about management, organization special used forest

sys-tem

- Decree 05/2008 (14/1/2008) about forest protection and development fund

- Circular 85/2012/BTC (25/5/2012): guidance of financial management for forest

protection and development fund

 Decision 24/2012/TTg (1/6/2012) about investment and development policy for

spe-cial use forests in period of 2011-2020

 Decision 07/2012/QD-TTg (8/2/2012) promulgation of some policies to enhance

for-est protection

2 Differences between PFES and Concessions

A tourism concession would be an official authorisation to operate a commercial tourism

activity in PNKB NP It should be seen as a co-operative agreement between two

beneficiar-ies – the management and regulatory authority and the tourism operator and investor The

tourism concession may be in the form of a lease, licence, permit or easement Tourism

con-cessions would be required for all commercial tourism activities and developments in PNKB

NP – from accommodation development to tourism activities to tourism infrastructure The

following table illustrates the differences between PFES and Concessions:

Payers:

Organizations and individuals doing tourism services

(as identified by PPC); 1-2% of revenues (in case of

indirect payment: more than 1-2% possible)

Providers:

Forest owners or actors contracted by forest owners

that can be:

organizations, households, or village communities

Table 1 - PFES vs Concessions

PFES from tourism are paid for conserving

and maintaining the landscape beauty and

biodiversity of the Protected Area

Tourism concessions are paid to access the National Park – like a license or permit to operate a business within the National Park boundaries

PFES is a payment scheme and mechanism

to reward those who protect forest –

provid-ing the service for forest protection The

focus should be on providers like

communi-ties that provide the service protecting the

forest of the National Park

Tourism concessions are an active ment tool – ideally the concession holder like

manage-a tourism business opermanage-ator hmanage-ave clemanage-ar opermanage-at-ing and conservation responsibilities Re-sponsible tourism will contribute to conserv-ing and protecting the National Park

operat-PFES is contract between beneficiaries and

providers of ecosystem services The service

provider includes the National Park and the

communities The PFES can be payed direct

or indirectly via a provincial fund

Tourism concessions are a business contract between the National Park and tourism busi-nesses – the concession fee from tourism business is directly paid to the National Park PFES is relevant to all tourism business who

benefit from the landscape beauty and

biodi-versity of the National Park This includes

also tourism businesses that not directly

ac-tive in the National Park

Tourism concessions are only relevant for tourism businesses that directly operate and gain business within the National Park

III PHONG NHA KE BANG NATIONAL PARK

1 General Information

The Phong Nha - Ke Bang National Park, situated in the North West of Quang Binh ince, with the area of 85,754 ha, was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2003 under Nat-ural criterion for its outstanding geological and geomorphic features due to its karst and cave systems The World Heritage Nomination has made the Park a fast growing destination for tourists, attracting up to 350,000 visitors per year In addition, PNKB is of global significance for the conservation of biodiversity because its forest ecosystems The PNKB NP region, both karst and non-karst, support a comparably high diversity of plants and animals including a number of karst specialist species, many endemic species, and a number of species that are globally threatened Almost 94% of the park is forested and 84% of this is primary forest The park is also part of a Global 200 priority ecoregion and an Endemic Bird Area as well as a global biodiversity hotspot

prov-As illustrated in the map (figure 1), the park has an extension area This planned sion of 31,070 ha of the park aims to ensure the integrated preservation of the karst plateau of the PNKB NP and the neigboring protected area in Laos PDR, the Hin Nam No NP Geographically, the area of the Vietnamese PNKB NP and the Lao Hin Nam No NP make up one forest and karst area, owing to this the cooperation efforts between the two parks have been intensified recently to maintain adequate ecological connectivity The Phong Nha Ke Bang National Park is surrounded by a Buffer Zone of around 225,000 ha, covering 13 com-munes in the three districts of Bo Trach (Son Trach, Phuc Trach, Hung Trach, Xuan Trach, Phu Dinh, Tan Trach, Thuong Trach), Minh Hoa (Hoa Son, Thuong Hoa, Trung Hoa, Dan Hoa, Trong Hoa) and Quang Ninh (Truong Son) The population of the Buffer Zone counts more than 60,000 people whose livelihoods have been substantially dependent on the park’s natural resources Only a limited number of local people have access to tourism for their live-lihoods

exten-Despite the importance of the park, its valuable natural resources are under high threats of

illegal logging and poaching by local population in the Buffer Zone as well as the fast growth

of tourism The PNKB Region Project is designed to address complex and integrated

inter-ventions toward linking the nature conservation objectives and development needs of the

region The overall extend of the National Park region is depicted in the table below

Table 2 - Land area of Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park Region

PNKB NP Core zone

(ha)

Buffer zone (ha)

2 Management Structure of the Park

The head institution of the PNKB NP is the Park Management Board The Park

Manage-ment Board in turn is under the direct manageManage-ment of the Quang Binh PPC The ManageManage-ment

Board includes one Director and three Deputy Directors

Main Attractions of PNKB:

 Phong Nha Cave/ Tien Son Cave (Part of the NP since 2001)

 Tourism Center (Phong Nha Village)

 Paradise Cave (opened 2010)

 Dark Cave

 Hang En Cave (opened 2011)

 Nooc Mooc Eco Trail

Figure 2 - Map of the PNKB NP Region

According to the PPC’s decision No 65.2003/QD-UB dated November 28th, 2003 on the regulation of the functions and responsibilities of the Management Board of Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park, the Management Board has the following tasks and responsibilities:

 To manage and to protect strictly the natural resource of the National Park

 To strengthen conservation awareness of the people in the Buffer Zone of the Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park

 To cooperate with international and national institutions for implementing the tific project and development project in the Phong Nha – Ke Bang area

scien- To arrange and carry out cultural and ecological tours in Phong Nha – Ke Bang area For the fulfillment of its tasks, the Management Board has two assistant divisions; the Administration and Organization Division as well as the Planning and Finance Division Ad-ditionally, the Management Board has three Sub-Institutions: The Center for Scientific Re-search and Rescue, the Cultural and Ecological Tourist Center (in brief Tourism Center), and the Phong Nha Protection Forest The Management Board, including the three Sub-Institutions, comprises 318 cadre and staff

3 Tourism Activities and Development

The World Heritage Nomination has made the Park a fast growing destination for tourists, attracting more than 360,000 visitors per year Most of the visitors are Vietnamese tourists; a small number of visitors are of international origin (for example, in 2011, 3% of the tourists have been international visitors) As illustrated in Figure 3, the number of visitors increased since the World Heritage Nomination in 2003 from 197,118 visitors to 366,753 visitors in

2011 The number of visitors in 2011 reached its historic maximum Nevertheless, the crease of visitors is likely to continue in future as the Sustainable Tourism Development Plan (STDP) of the province predicts more than 600,000 visitors by the year 2020 The increase in tourism to PNKB NP reflects the general development in Vietnam The volume of Vietnam-ese taking holiday in their own country intensified Key factors for this are “an increasing

disposable income, the development of a broad middle class and changing patterns of social behavior” (Lanh et al 2010, 27) The numbers of international tourists to Vietnam intensified significantly as well; from 1,5 Mio in 2002 to 3,7 Mio in 2011 These developments indicate

a trend towards an even larger growth in future

Most of the visitors come to enjoy the landscape beauty of the PNKB National Park and

to visit the famous stalactite caves The caves form the main attraction to the PNKB National Park, only few visitors actually access the Park itself for hiking or recreational purposes Nevertheless, the landscape beauty of the national park plays an important role in the attrac-tion of visitors In the visitor survey, the majority of interviewed tourists replied that they came to enjoy the landscape beauty; while only a comparatively small number of visitors said that they come to see the caves (compare Figure 4)

As a consequence, the overall PNKB National Park can be regarded as an attraction for visitors from all over the country The tourism activities of the PNKB region are strongly concentrated in the Administrative Area of the National Park and Phong Nha, a village locat-

ed in proximity to the Administrative Area (see map in Fehler! Verweisquelle konnte nicht

gefunden werden.) The National Park has six caves and one small hiking trail that are open

for tourism:

 Phong Nha Cave is the most famous cave in the PNKB region and attracts the highest

visitor numbers It is a wet-cave only accessible by boat and located in the administration area of the Park The cave is under public management of the National Park and has been part of the park since its establishment in 2001

 Tien Son Cave is a small dry-cave located in proximity to Phong Nha cave, but less

popular as its larger brother The cave is also located in the administration area and under public management of the National Park

 8 Heroic Volunteer Cave is an important historical and spiritual tourism site currently

attracting a high volume of visitors The cave is located in the ecological recovery zone of the Park It is not only a tourism site, but does also serve as pagoda that is often used for worshipping

 Nuoc Mooc Eco-Trail was supported by the PNKB region project and is located at Mooc

Spring It is an attractive eco-tourism location because of its natural beauty, ecological terest and ease of access The trail came to operation in March 2009

in- Dark Cave is a combination of dry- and wet-cave, and was opened to the public in 2011

Similar to the other two caves, Dark Cave is also located in the administration area and under public management of the National Park

Figure 4 - Tourist Motivation to Visit PNKB NP (Source: Visitor Survey)

 Hang En Cave is a wet-cave and the only cave located in the strictly protected zone of

the National Park that is open for tourism It was opened to the public in 2011 and can

on-ly be accessed in combination with a guided trekking tour It is under public management

of the National Park

 Paradise Cave is the only privately managed cave in the PNKB region and was opened to

the public in 2011; it is under management of the Truong Thinh Company In order to erate the cave located in the ecological recovery zone of the National Park, the Truong Thinh Company leased forest land in the National Park and pays a fee of 1% of their rev-enues to the National Park

op-As already revealed by the list above, the growth of tourism has been accompanied with an increase in public and private investment From 2010 to 2012, there have been four new tour-ism products developed, namely Paradise Cave, Dark Cave, the Trekking Route to Hang En Cave, and a Night Tour to Phong Nha Cave Remarkably, the private investment in Paradise Cave has called much more visitors to PNKB NP, contributing to substantially increased rev-enues from tourism for the cave operators Due to the increasing popularity of the region, the long term planning of tourism activities became necessary in order to ensure that the negative impacts of tourism are minimized as much as possible With support of the project, a Sustain-able Tourism Development Plan (STDP) for the PNKB region has been developed The STDP lays out the strategy for sustainable tourism development for PNKB region for 10 years (+ 5 years vision), in the context of nature conservation, notably biodiversity protection So far, the growth in tourism did not have a mainstream positive effect on the income of local people; only a limited number of locals have access to tourism for their livelihoods Owing to this fact, the STDP also includes guidelines for involving communities in poverty reduction and livelihood improvement Additionally, the STDP envisions the development of innova-tive financial mechanisms involving tourism One of this would be the introduction of a PFES scheme The launch of a PFES scheme would allow re-investments of tourism revenues in nature conservation of the park as well as sharing benefits with local people

IV ACTIVITIES ON PFES IN VIETNAM

1 Current PFES Projects in Vietnam

Before issuing Decree 99, the government started two pilot projects in 2008 under sion 380/2008 The objective was to see if the PES mechanism is feasible for Vietnam After the pilots have been considered as successful by the government, Decree 99 was circulated Both projects still operate a PFES scheme Of the two pilots, only the project in Lam Dong included PFES from tourism as a component The PFES project in Lam Dong has been im-plemented by Winrock International, in cooperation with the International Union for the Con-servation of Nature (IUCN) and FFF Associates Inc.; financial support has been provided by USAID

Deci-Up to now, only one other province, Quang Nam Province, fully implemented a PFES scheme and put it into practice The PFES scheme in Quang Nam Province started operating

in early 2012 and manages payments from hydropower plants to contracted households in watershed areas Several other provinces took initial steps for investigating the feasibility of a scheme, including Dak Lak, Kon Tum, Yen Bai and Ninh Thuan have held start up work-shops However, at present there are no further steps to set up PFES because the provinces are waiting for additional guidance circulars from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Devel-opment (MARD) In Kien Giang province, there have been some activities in early stages of setting up PFES scheme The province held a meeting to officially implement PFES in the province The province established a steering committee and prepares the development of a PFES plan The province approved a budget of VND 710million to do PFES sample sites in Phu Quoc and Kien Luong communes and after a year, there will be duplication in whole the province In Dak Nong province, the PFES policy has been deployed in the whole the prov-ince The province has established PFPDF, and the fund has signed the contract with hydro-power plants, clean water utilities The province is still in the process to identify forest area providing environmental services and identify environmental service providers i.e forest owners and forest managers On May 15, 2012 in Binh Phuoc province, the PPC has ap-proved technical outline and budget to develop a PFES implementation plan In this province, there is no other PFES activity has been implemented yet

So far, most of the approaches to implement PFES in the provinces did not focus on PFES from Tourism as a source of payments By today, only the pilot project on PFES in Lam Dong province included Tourism as source of payments for environmental services; and

in this case, PFES from tourism is only a very small share of the overall payments The ing study conducted in Ba Be National Park and this study conducted in the PNKB National Park, are the first two examples in which the potential of PFES from Tourism has been as-sessed

scop-2 Scoping Study on PFES from Tourism in the Ba Be National Park

During the Scoping Study it was found that the payment levels generated by a PFES scheme from tourism are limited due to the size of the tourism business Based on this, the study indicated that in the most optimistic scenario the maximum yearly total PFES that can be generated from tourism in the Ba Be NP is VND260,446,480 The vast majority

of tourism businesses are small scale with comparatively limited revenue, such as homestays

or small restaurants Decree 99 regulates the payment level for PFES at one to two percent of the FES payers’ revenue In the study, it was found that this was difficult to apply, especially

with small-scale businesses who only have limited book keeping skills and total yearly nues are difficult to identify For smaller businesses it was suggested to apply a monthly lump sum payment that is based on tax records Further, it was found that the collection of PFES from all involved tourism businesses would cause high administrative costs because they are difficult to be identified; for instance, the Ba Be NP is only one destination among many oth-ers for large tour operators

reve-According to the report, considerable more PFES could be generated directly from tors It can be assumed that visitors would be indirectly charged in a PFES scheme anyways since many tourism businesses would increase their prices if they had to pay for FES This means that PFES is included in the pricing of the business and some businesses will increase prices to avoid paying the PFES from their current revenue A possible example of generating PFES directly from visitors would be a lump sum payment in addition to the entry fee An extra PFES ticket could be sold and act as the lump sum payment contract The PFES ticket could be sold voluntary or mandatory The PFES generation with the ticket would be consid-erable: For example if the PFES ticket price is VND20,000 and approximately half of the registered visitors to BBNP would buy it, it would generate more as the estimated total PFES revenue This suggestion would need approval by provincial and national policy makers

visi-3 Recent Efforts Regarding PFES in the Quang Binh province

The province has had some initial PFES activities In October 2011, the PPC issued the official document number 621 to assign DARD to preside over PFES and collaborate with related Departments to prepare a plan to implement PFES This PFES plan will be submitted

to PPC for approval Besides, DARD is also preparing a plan for PFPDF development It is said in a meeting with DOF during this study that by June 2012, DARD will submit the PFPDF plan to PPC There is no information when the PPC will approve it

In February 2012, DARD carried out a study to review the PFES potential in Quang Binh province The study listed all the potential forest environmental services in the province that can be traded, potential ES buyers and ES providers The study pointed out that in the case of Quang Binh province, it is not feasible to set up a PFPDF until 2015 due to the circumstance that only low payment can be collected from PFES and the payment amount kept by PFPDF cannot cover all the cost to operate the fund

4 Stakeholder Kick-Off Meeting

On May 11, 2012 PNKB region Project held a Stakeholder Kick-Off Meeting in Dong Hoi The meeting gathered different stakeholders from potential service providers to potential FES users and potential mediators The meeting also pointed out a roadmap to implement PFES policy in the province under support of the project The main topics of the meeting were:

 Information about PFES and Decree 99 concerning Tourism

 Presentation of Lessons Learned from the Scoping Study on PFES from Tourism in

ganizations and individuals doing tourism services have to pay for services for protection of natural landscape and conservation of biodiversity Who these organizations and individuals exactly are, needed to be determined on a case-to-case basis One suggestion to circumvent this problem was to charge tourists an extra entrance fees

The calculation of an adequate payment level was another discussed issue Decree 99 sumes that 1-2% of the revenues shall be made available for payment However, the partici-pants raised the issue that information about revenues of potential PFES payers was not al-ways available If the province wants to implement PFES, they will probably need to find alternative ways to calculate an appropriate payment level Furthermore, it needed to be eval-uated if the payments from the beneficiaries would be sufficient to make a PFES scheme work in the PNKB NP region

as-A major disagreement among the stakeholders came up during discussions about the ferences between PFES and Concessions Furthermore, it was discussed if payers of conces-sions have to pay for forest ecosystem services as well Fundamentally, the payment for both

dif-is possible since both are different schemes for different purposes However, more mation on this needed to be gathered during further efforts on PFES

infor-V THE POTENTIAL FOR PFES FROM TOURISM IN THE PNKB NP

1 Identification of Stakeholders

This section analyzes the potential stakeholders of a PFES scheme The involved actors can be separated roughly into three groups: The group of potential mediators that connects the two other groups of a PFES scheme; the group of potential ecosystem service payers, that benefits from ecosystem services and is requested to pay for these benefits as well as the group of potential ecosystem service providers, that supply the ecosystem services and are to

be paid for their work

1.1 Potential Mediators

a) Phong Nha Ke Bang National Park Management Board

The Phong Nha Ke Bang National Park is one of the major stakeholders in that it is a tential mediator, FES provider and buyer at the same time The possible action that the PNKB

po-NP Management Board can take is to act as a mediator between payers and providers for system services, connect the stakeholders with each other and manage PFES payments and disbursements A problem that arises in this situation is that the sub-institutions of the NPMB are potential payers and providers The Tourism Center manages the public caves in the PNKB region and receives the payments made for all entrance tickets to these caves2 Due to the Tourism Center, one of the National Park’s main sources of income is tourism in the PNKB region This makes the NPMB, in the form of the Tourism Center, a potential payer for ecosystem services At the same time, the Division for Forest Protection of the NP is re-sponsible for the protection of the park With this responsibility, the National Park is the main provider of ecosystem services in the PNKB region This setting causes the problem that the NPMB as a potential manager of PFES payments and disbursements is difficult to monitor Therefore, if the NPMB would be chosen as a mediator between PFES payers and FES pro-viders, high attention needed to be paid to the transparency of the scheme

eco-1.2 Provincial Departments

DARD has two sub-departments of relevance for a PFES scheme: the Department of Forestry (DoF) and the Forest Protection Department (FPD). In accordance with Decree 99, the PPC of Quang Binh assigned DARD to implement PFES in the province DARD in turn delegated the task to its Sub-Department of Forestry; thus the DoF is the lead agency for the implementation of PFES in Quang Binh As explained in a meeting with the DoF, the de-partment already conducted a study on the feasibility of PFES in Quang Bing Province This study mainly focused on ecosystem services of watershed services In terms of PFES from tourism, DoF took only the largest tourism company of the province into consideration as a potential payer The main outcome of the study was that PFES had little potential in the prov-ince due to a lack of potential payers The potential for PFES from watershed areas is indeed rather low due to a lack of water power plants as potential payers Nevertheless, the potential

of PFES from tourism should be higher than expected and may be underestimated by the DoF As the implementing agency of Decree 99 in the province, a possible action of the DoF

2

The National Park receives all revenues from sold tickets after deducting the taxes of 47% that have to be ferred back to the government The share of taxes is very high because the National Park is a public institution subsidized by the government

trans-would be to elaborate a plan for PFES from tourism in the PNKB region to be submitted to the PPC The FPD is responsible for forest protection in the province and can support the implementation of a co-management mechanism under a PFES scheme The DoSTC is re-sponsible for the planning of tourism development in the province; thus the department is a knowledge base for tourism in Quang Binh and can give important advice about the potential

of PFES in the region However, regarding the implementation of Decree 99, the DoSTC has only advisory powers, but cannot propose actual implementation plans to the PPC since De-cree 99 is under authority of the DoF

1.3 Potential Payers

a) The Tourism Center and Paradise Cave

The only local large scale potential payers for ecosystem services are the Tourism Center

of the PNKB National Park and the private operator of Paradise Cave In 2011, the Tourism Center sold 342,318 tickets3 In 2011, the price for one ticket was 40.000 VND for adults and 20.000 VND for children; adding up to a revenue of more than 13bn VND (650,000 USD)4 According to the tax office of the Quang Binh Province, Paradise Cave generated revenue of more than 12bn VND (600,000 USD) in 2011 The ticket price for Paradise Cave is with 120.000 VND significantly higher than the price for the public caves Based on the data from the tax office, Paradise Cave sold approximately 102,100 tickets in 2011

b) Hotels

In the PNKB region are various actors who are potential payers for ecosystem services Some of these potential payers are hotels in Quang Binh province The hotels profiting from tourism in the region are located in Phong Nha Village, a small township located adjacent to the National Park in Bo Trach District, and in Dong Hoi City, the provincial capital located at the coast and 40 km away from the park The visitor survey conducted in May 2012 showed that 61% (n=93) of the visitors to the PNKB NP stay overnight and 39% (n=58) are day visi-tors Of those who stayed overnight in the province, only 12% (n=11) spent the night directly

in Phong Nha Village The large majority, 74% (n=69) of the overnight visitors, spent the night in Dong Hoi The remaining 17% (n=13) stayed at other places in Quang Binh (for ex-act calculation see Annex 2) This shows that the hotel sector in Dong Hoi City profits most from tourism in the PNKB region Though, the hotels in Dong Hoi do not only profit from visitors of the National Park, but also from beach tourists and business visitors It is demand-ing to measure how many of their customers come to Dong Hoi to visit the park, thus it is also difficult to charge them for the ecosystem services provided by the park This circumstance leaves only the hotels in Phong Nha as potential payers for ecosystem services; a circum-stance that leads to unfair competition between Hotels in Phong Nha and Hotels in Dong Hoi

It can be assumed that pretty much every hotel customer in Phong Nha Village comes to see the National Park; thus the hotels benefit directly However, only a small share of the tourists actually spends the night in the village At the same time, around 19 hotels are locat-

ed in Phong Nha, contributing to a strong competition among the hotels Tourism in the

PNKB region is only seasonal, with a high season lasting about three to four month All these factors make the hotel sector in Phong Nha Village rather unprofitable During the interviews conducted with hotel owners in the village it became obvious that many hotels have a lack of customers and generate only a limited amount of income Additionally, almost all of the ho-tels are small family enterprises As a consequence, charging payments for ecosystem ser-vices from these hotels would add an extra burden to small scale family businesses and is rather a threat to their livelihoods than an improvement to the region The same circumstance applies to the 30 restaurants in Phong Nha Village that profit from tourism Most of the restaurants are small scale family businesses with a limited profit that is strongly dependent to the season

c) Tour Operators

A similar challenge arises when looking at the tour operators profiting from tourism in the PNKB region There is only a small number of local tour operators that profit from tour-ism to the PNKB NP These tour operators are rather small scale and young businesses Many

of the tour operators that benefit from the ecosystem services on the PNKB NP are not

locat-ed in Quang Binh; they are mostly larger tour operators locatlocat-ed in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City

or Hue Similar to the hotels in Dong Hoi, these large tour operators do not benefit from the PNKB NP exclusively They offer many different tours all over Vietnam and the PNKB NP is often only one stop of a larger tour5 Consequently, it is difficult to say how much each tour operator benefits from the National Park and estimate a fair payment for ecosystem services Again, the larger share of payments would remain with the small scale tour operators in the region Another fact that needs to be considered is that many visitors do not come with a tour operator but mainly organize their trips independently by private booked buses or by private car The visitor survey indicated that only 31% (n=47) of the interviewed visitors came with a tour operator, the other 69% (n=107) organized their trip privately (for detailed calculation see Annex 2)

d) Souvenir Vendors and Boat Operators

Other rather small scale potential payers for ecosystem services are the Souvenir Vendors

located at the boat landing and the boat operators themselves who provide the rides to the Phong Nha Cave These businesses, almost exclusively family enterprises, profit directly from the visitors of the National Park However, their income is low and the competition be-tween the different businesses is tough; especially the boat operators make hardly any profit6 This discussion of mostly small-scale local tourism businesses gives raise to the assump-tion that the national regulation on PFES did not take into account the local conditions of the tourism sector and the diversity of tourism service supplier Another challenge not taken into account by Decree 99 is the limited book-keeping of many local tourism businesses Accord-ing to Decree 99, the payments for ecosystem services are calculated in the basis of the busi-nesses’ revenues However, if these revenues are not registered adequately, PFES payments cannot be calculated sufficiently either

1.4 Potential Providers

a) The Phong Nha Ke Bang National Park

This discussion of the National Park as a potential mediator in a PFES scheme already indicated that the Park is also the main provider of ecosystem services in the PNKB region Currently, the task of park protection is solely delegated to the park’s forest rangers; there are

129 forest rangers employed by the park These 129 forest rangers are assigned to cover the complete National Park, comprising more than 125,000 ha

Payments made under a PFES scheme would be used to increase salaries of the rangers,

to improve equipment and forest ranger stations This was verified in meetings during the PFES Scoping Study with the NPMB and the Forest Protection Department, another Sub-Department of DARD The strategy of using PFES to improve the working conditions of the forest rangers would surly increase the protection of the park and would give incentives to them do their jobs properly It can be assumed that well-paid forest rangers are more likely to reject bribes and pursue forest violations

b) Local People

However, if enough money can be generated through a PFES scheme, local people should get involved in forest protection This approach is not only suggested by Decree 99 but also more and more promoted by other national regulations on park protection The Forest Protec-tion and Development Plan, issued in January 2012, asserts that NPMB should work out co-management mechanisms with local communities for forest protection One step further goes the just recently issued Decision 24 (2012, Art 2), published in June 2012, that requests Na-tional Park Management Boards to even “strive for gradually reducing full time staff of the State […] and strengthen using local communities in […] protection work” These new regu-lations could contribute to a mindset change regarding the role of local people by changing the traditional belief that local people harm natural forest into the conviction that local peo-ple’s livelihoods are inseparable from forest conservation

2 Current Payment Arrangements of the National Park with the Tourism Sector

A major point of discussion during the Kick-Off Meeting has been the existing sion between the Truong Thinh Company and the PNKB National Park This contract about a direct payment by the Troung Thinh Company to the National Park often causes confusion about Decree 99 and other regulations regarding PFES and forest lease among the stakehold-ers The concession contract will be explained below, together with another payment ar-rangement between the National Park and tourism service suppliers operating in the Park that has been introduced recently

conces-2.1 Long-term Contract with Truong Thinh Company

The Truong Thinh Company rents forest and SUF land, Paradise Cave and “Mother bracing Her Child Cave” in the Ecological Restoration Zone of the National Park This lease was approved by PPC for investment on tourism development in this area The payment mechanism is as below:

em-Area provide forest

environmen-tal services

55ha

Contract term 50 years started from July 1,2011

Payment mechanism Direct payment (payment mode: twice a year)

7/2016-end of contract: 1.5% of turnover

The main problem regarding the contract between the National Park and the Truong Thinh Company is the unclear state of the contract Even though the contract is a forest lease

in the core zone of the National Park (which is a concession), it is also considered as a PFES contract by the parties of the contract, drawing on the argument that the NP provides Forest Environment Services As described earlier in Table 1, payments for FES are made by all businesses that profit from tourism because of the landscape beauty of the National Park, thus

it targets not on those that lease forest of the national park This misunderstanding needs to be solved in future and the National Park needs to distinguish between PFES and Forest Lease

2.2 Payment for Tourism the Core Zone of the NP

The park signs contracts with tour operators allowing them to organize tours to Rao ong- Hang En Cave and tours to Phong Nha Cave at night Besides other regulations of the park, it requests that each person must pay VND 500,000 per visit to Hang En and VND 200,000 per visit to Phong Nha at night According to Oxalis, a local tour operator, the pay-ment for visiting Hang En Cave account for around 10% of the turnover from visitors for the tour activity At the moment contracts are signed for every tour although tour operators prefer

Thu-to sign a one year renewable contract and pay every time they have visiThu-tors Thu-to those sites However, there is no long-term agreement from the park yet The National Park regards these payments as ‘environmental services payments’, even though the payment arrangement is not

in accordance with Decree 99 on PFES

The payments are not based on negotiations between the park and the tour operators Tour operators mentioned that the payment is set by the park and they have no chance to negotiate During the interview, it was also mentioned that the park just sent an announcement to the tour operators of a new level of payment The current payment for tourism services inside of the park was not identified by any clear method, but directly set by the park As a conse-quence, this payment cannot be regarded as PFES but rather as a concession fee charged by the National Park for accessing the park for tourism activities (see Table 1)

These facts show that the Park applies PFES how they feel it is right There is no sion from the provincial government such as DARD or DOF in related to this PFES payment Supervision from DARD is officially assigned by PPC as required by Decree 99

supervi-3 Estimation of Payment Amounts in a PFES Scheme

3.1 Scenario 1: PFES based on estimated turnover

During the interviews with many potential payers, it became obvious that the willingness,

or capability, to pay of these stakeholders is rather low Due to this, the following calculation

of payments for ecosystem services will assume a payment of 1% of the revenues Based on information from the tax office, estimations from the interviews, and information from the ticket counter of the Tourism Center, the following payments for ecosystem services are to be paid:

Figure 5 - Amount of Payments for FES

(26.671 USD)

*Data received from the tax office

**Based on information gathered during the PFES Scoping Study; for more detailed calculations see Annex 4

The overall payments for ecosystem services of all involved local stakeholders add up to

533.437.075 VND per year The financially strongest contributors are the Tourism Center and

Paradise Cave; both profit from the entrance tickets to the caves and have a stable income

The two local Tour Operators and Farmstay Hotel as well as the groups of Boat Operators,

Hotels and Restaurants are at the medium level of revenues However, it needs to be

consid-ered that the latter groups have many members, e.g the revenues of the boat operators are to

be distributed among approximately 580 boat operators (290 boats with two operators each)

The financially weakest contributor is the group of Souvenir Vendors

Overall, the calculation shows that the sum of money generated through the PFES scheme

is very low With an amount of 533.437.075 VND, the National Park can only afford to

in-crease the salaries of their own staff; and even this would merely be possible If we assumed

that the National Park would use the complete amount of money generated through PFES to

improve the salaries of the Forest Rangers, the potential increase in forest ranger salaries is

likely to be small and it is questionable whether this increase will have a significant effect on

the motivation to reject briberies In addition, the administration costs can very likely not be

covered by the scheme Decree 99 allows the receiver of PFES to keep 10% of the payment

amount for administrative purposes; in this case 10% would amount up to about 53 million

VND per year This is a very low sum and likely not high enough to cover for costs of

gather-ing, managgather-ing, and distributing the payments

This simulation of Decree 99’s practical application in the case of the PNKB region

illus-trates that there are various challenges that make the implementation of the national policy on

PFES difficult in practice These challenges embrace the lacking inclusion of all relevant

stakeholders; this applies to the potential payers as well as to the providers of ecosystem

ser-vices, resulting in the underfunding of a PFES scheme from Tourism Many of the potential

payers for forest ecosystem services in the PNKB region cannot be included in the scheme

due to limitations of Decree 99 Under current regulations, only local stakeholders are

includ-ed in a PFES scheme Larger tour operators locatinclud-ed in the tourism hubs of Vietnam or Hotels

benefiting not exclusively from one source, such as hotels in Dong Hoi, cannot be included in

a PFES scheme In the PNKB region, the circumstance that only local stakeholders are cluded indicates that almost exclusively small-scale enterprises are burdened with PFES payments This does not only form a threat to the livelihood of these local people, but also results in a low sum of overall payments for ecosystem services However, this is not only a limitation of Decree 99, but also an overall limitation of the PFES from Tourism concept In practice, it is impossible to include all potential payers, no matter if it is on a voluntary or obligatory basis; the group is too diverse and payments level impossible to specify for each of the payers’ individual needs The transactions costs, i.e costs of information, negotiation and administration, of setting up a PFES scheme from Tourism in the PNKB region that includes all potential payers are prohibitively high In addition to that, the lacking book-keeping and inadequate registration of revenues at the tax offices contribute to the high information costs

in-of collecting payments for ecosystem services

3.2 Scenario 2: PFES charged from visitors

Another option would be that the visitors of the PNKB NP pay directly However, this option is not explicitly written in Decree 99 (2010, Art 7); it only targets “organizations and individuals doing tourism services that benefit from forest environmental services” Though, many political representatives interviewed during the PFES Scoping Study supported that idea Charging the visitors directly would solve many problems regarding the collection of payments and the inclusion of all potential payers Many of the aforementioned stakeholders, such as hotels, restaurants, souvenir vendors, tour operators, and Paradise Cave are likely to pass the payments for ecosystem services on to their customers Consequently, the visitors are those to pay in any case Those small scale business that cannot pass the costs of the pay-ments for ecosystem services on to their customers due to legal regulations (boat operators) or

to strong competition (souvenir vendors, hotels and restaurants), have to pay directly from their already low profit; rather threatening the livelihood of these small businesses than con-tributing to an improvement of local people’s lives

The visitor survey indicated that tourists are actually quite willing to pay for conservation efforts in the PNKB NP The questionnaire prepared for the survey asked the visitors the fol-lowing: “The park suffers from illegal logging and poaching Would you be willing to pay a fee to the park that is dedicated to the protection of the park?” This question was answered with Yes by 123 visitors; 32 visitors replied with No Those who would be willing to pay were asked to choose the amount of money they would pay Most of the visitors answered with 20,000 VND (n=57) and the average willingness to pay amounted to 31,800 VND, in-

cluding those who said “No” with an amount of 0.00 VND Fehler! Verweisquelle konnte

nicht gefunden werden illustrates the responses of the visitors (for further information on

the calculation see Annex 2):

Figure 6 - Visitor's Willingness to Pay

A PFES scheme from Tourism that is applicable in the everyday practice in the PNKB region has to fulfill several requirements Therefore, the payments for ecosystem services should be collected in a way that causes as little administrative costs as possible, while the amount of generated money should be sufficient to cover all costs and to give a significant contribution to the National Park’s protection budget Furthermore, the payments should be distributed in a way that benefits regular employees of the national park as well as local peo-ple in the Buffer Zone Finally, the payment scheme should be understandable for as well as fair and transparent to all stakeholders in order to ensure their support of the PFES scheme

Concluding from this, the payments for forest ecosystem services should be generated in

a different manner than currently formulated by Decree 99 The largest burden of the ments should be carried by the visitors themselves They are those who would have to bear a large amount of the PFES payments anyhow, since many tourism companies would hand their PFES payments on to their customers by increasing prices It would benefit local tourism businesses by not putting the burden to pay for ecosystem services on them The transaction costs would be reduced significantly; collecting payments from visitors causes much less costs than charging each tourism business individually Each visitor has to pay an entrance fee to the different sights anyhow and can be easily requested to pay for ecosystem services in addition to the ticket

pay-The following Fehler! Verweisquelle konnte nicht gefunden werden.Fehler!

Ver-weisquelle konnte nicht gefunden werden calculates the overall amount of PFES that can

be generated through a Visitor payment:

Figure 7 - Visitor's Payments for FES

Sum of Payments: 11.002.590.000 VND (550.129,50 USD)

Source: (Korte 2012)

The amount of 11.002.590 VND is twenty times higher than the amount collected through

a PFES scheme pursuant to Decree 99 This sum would be large enough to contribute a nificant amount to the National Park’s budget for forest protection

sig-If we assume the same conditions as under the simulation in the previous section, the payment for each forest ranger could be increased and a share of the PFES money can be

used for other purposes such as the contracting of local people in forest protection How high

the payment of forest rangers and local people would have to be needs to be clarified by the

National Park in cooperation with relevant political agencies such as the DoF and the FPD; an

exact estimation about the distribution of the PFES payments and of salaries would go beyond

the scope of this study

Excursus: A Checking System for the PFES Ticket for Tourists

During the Feasibility Study on PFES we asked many stakeholders about their opinions on the introduction of a visitor payment Most of the asked stakeholders agreed that the collection of payments for ecosystem services would be easier

by charging tourists instead of tourism businesses Nevertheless, all of the stakeholders also agreed that the main cle for introducing a PFES ticket four tourists is the design of a checking system Currently, there are only entrance tick- ets to the three public caves (40,000 VND/cave), to paradise cave (120,000 VND) and to the Nuoc Mooc Eco-Trail (40,000 VND); there is no entrance ticket to the national park itself Thus, the initial idea for introducing a PFES ticket for visitors was to introduce an entrance ticket However, the introduction of an entrance ticket to the National Park for tourists has several difficulties; these are:

obsta- There are two villages located inside the park; this it is difficult to control who goes for which purposes into the park (for visiting relatives or for tourism)

 The park is also home to an important spiritual and historical site that is used by local people for praying, which makes it again difficult to control who goes for which purposes into the park (for praying or for tourism)

 Most of the tourists visit the region to see the caves and do only access the administrative area of the park, where the public caves are located, which is easily accessible and difficult to control Tourists do only access the core zone of the park if they visit Paradise Cave, the Nuoc Mooc Eco-Trail, or take a trekking tour to Hang En Cave

Due to these reasons, no entrance ticket has been introduced yet and appears to be impracticable Consequently, another way to introduce a PFES Ticket for Tourists has to be found Another option is to charge a PFES fee with every ticket sold for the cave entrance This option is more feasible than introducing an overall entrance ticket to the park since the checking systems for the caves already exist Still, there is one obstacle to this option: Tourists that visit more than one cave have to pay the PFES fee twice This could put too much of a burden on the visitors and they may decide to visit only one cave instead of two

The simple, but helpful suggestion that this excursus wants to make is to introduce a wristband for visitors that pay the PFES fee Wristbands are often used as entrance tickets for large public events Their advantage is that they are not transferrable to other people, last for a long time (depending on the material from one day up to years), and can be hand-

ed out at decentralized ticket counters while being valid for one event area In addition, wristbands turned out to be ular souvenirs and are often kept a long time after the event ended Thus, the wristband does not only serve as an en- trance ticket, but also as advertising medium If each visitor that paid the PFES fee receives a wristband it can be easily identified at every sight who already paid and who did not yet Consequently, a PFES fee could be introduced without setting up a new checking system but using the existing one for the current sight of the national park

pop-Source: (Korte 2012)