Nam Dinh has been selected as the first province in the country to pilot
a project to develop a national biodiversity database system.
The decision was made by the project’s Joint Coordination Committee at its meeting in Hanoi on May 30.
Accordingly, the project will be piloted at the Xuan Thuy
National Park in Nam Dinh and then be implemented in all nature
reserves in the remaining 63 provinces and cities across the country.
Vietnam Environmental Administration (VEA) Deputy
Director Nguyen The Dong, who is also Vice President of the Joint
Coordination Committee, said the committee will continue coordinating
with relevant agencies to develop the second generation of the national
biodiversity database system through evaluating the project’s outcomes
based on such criteria as suitability, efficiency, impacts and
sustainability.
According to participants, Vietnam
is a country rich in biodiversity, which makes up about 10 percent of
global organisms. However, biodiversity databases are scattered in
agencies, research institutes and universities and no systematic
investigations have been conducted to evaluate national biodiversity.
Therefore, the development of an international-level
national biodiversity database system will significantly contribute to
making plans to manage and conserve the biodiversity for the country’s
national nature reserves in a scientific and feasible way, they said.
The meeting, the second of its kind, was co-organised by the VEA and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).-VNA