Nordeco is together with Danish Forestry Extension providing technical assistance to the Department of Forestry in Vietnam with the aim of collecting information and analyzing trends of forest resources and forest carbon stock in order to establish interim baseline reference scenarios. The baseline reference scenario is a key precondition for the future implementation of a REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) mechanism.

The assignment will take about 8 months and start with the collection and organization of a comprehensive dataset plus development/adjustment of the existing digital forest inventory database. This will be followed by an analysis of forest change trends in Vietnam from 1991 up to the present, and lead to initial estimates of Vietnam's forest carbon stock and its changes and calculations of interim historical trend of forest related GHGs. The process will culminate with the establishment of the first Interim Baseline Reference Scenarios.

The technical assistance is carried out under supervision and in close collaboration with relevant Vietnamese institutions. The assignment is financed by the long-term framework contract on climate change and forests that Nordeco signed with the Finnish Embassy in Hanoi in 2008.