Search

Climate change is a pressing global issue and it negatively affects many developing countries, including Vietnam. To help Vietnam effectively respond to this pressing challenge, the country has recently introduced a major program for reducing carbon emissions arising from deforestation and forest degradation, fostering conservation, managing forests sustainably, and enhancing forest carbon stocks (REDD+). Current policies in Vietnam provide a sound platform for the development of REDD+, and REDD+ can potentially greatly contribute to the reduction of deforestation and forest degradation. However, these policies and the REDD+ program are hindered by limited understanding of the extent of deforestation and forest degradation and their underlying causes. This study employed geographic information system (GIS) tools, a structural regression model (structural model), and a regression tree method to quantify the extent as well as the approximate causes of deforestation and forest degradation in Vietnam. Results show that around 1.77 and 0.65 million ha of forests were lost and degraded, respectively, between 2000 and 2010. Deforestation and forest degradation were most notable in the north central, northeast, central highland, and northwest areas of the nation. There were several underlying indicators of deforestation and forest degradation including initial forest cover, per capita income, agricultural production, governance, population growth, food, and poverty. Our results illustrate several important policy implications for forest restoration and the REDD+ program in Vietnam: Vietnam should focus most strongly on reducing poverty, preserving existing forests, improving provincial-level governance, and controlling population growth.

Currently, gaming is the world's favorite form of entertainment. Various studies have shown how games impact players' perceptions and behaviors, prompting opportunities for purposes beyond entertainment. This study uses Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH)—a real-time life-simulation game—as a unique case study of how video games can affect humans' environmental perceptions. A dataset of 584 observations from a survey of ACNH players and the Hamiltonian MCMC technique have enabled us to explore the relationship between in-game behaviors and perceptions. Here we show a probabilistic trend towards exploiting the in-game environment despite players' perceptions, suggesting that the simplification of commercial game design may overlook opportunities to engage and educate players in pro-environmental activities.

This study aims to fill a gap in the literature by examining the impacts of an emissions trading scheme (ETS) in Vietnam, as the policy has been discussed for a decade in the country but the likely impacts on the economy and different sectors are still unidentified. The simulations are carried out in a global energy computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, an extension of the GTAP-E model, which treats Vietnam as a country region. Results show that restricting the number of industrial sectors in the emissions trading market substantially affects the country's economy with a decline in real GDP by 4.57%. However, the country experiences much smaller adverse impacts (e.g., real GDP declines by 1.78%) when all industries participate in the emissions trading market. In either case of the ETS design, the coal mining, manufacturing, transportation, and electricity sectors are highly adversely affected; however, the crude oil and natural gas extraction sectors would experience expansion in their production levels due to substitutions for coal. In general, under the policy the emission levels from burning fossil fuels decline at significant rates, particularly from the electricity generation sector.