DEVELOPING AND TESTING THE CRITERIA AND INDICATORS FOR ASSESSING VIETNAM'S CAPACITY TO MANAGE AND PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL HERITAGE

Abstract

The set of criteria and indicators for assessing the capacity of management and environmental protection of natural heritage sites for natural heritage sites which are conservation areas was built based on the results of data collection at two natural heritage sites, Bach Ma National Park and Than Sa - Phuong Hoang Nature Reserve. The main methods used in this study include the method of inheriting domestic and foreign research documents combined with the Delphi method through 3 rounds of interviews using the quantitative assessment method through statistical values ​​and experiences of a group of 20 experts including scientists from different fields and managers of conservation areas. The results proposed a set of criteria and indicators consisting of 2 parts (1) Basic information table; (2) Criteria and assessment index table including 40 criteria based on 5 management factors. Each criterion has 4 corresponding answers from 0 to 3 (answers a to d, answer a corresponds to no capacity to implement, answer d corresponds to ideal management status). The results of the pilot assessment application at Bach Ma National Park based on the results of group work of 15 officials representing units of Bach Ma National Park, combined with a general assessment workshop showed that the total score was 97/117 points corresponding to a rate of 82.9%, of which 1 criterion was not applied. Although there were still comments, the assessors basically showed that the set of criteria could be used for assessment and gave relatively good and suitable results for the system of natural heritage sites that are protected areas of Vietnam.