A special project is upgrading and developing new university courses in the Mekong Region to support the next generation of forest-landscape restorers.

A consortium of universities in the Czech Republic, Finland, Lao PDR and Thailand are banding together to support young foresters in the Mekong Region to be action-ready as the world enters the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

The need for well-educated foresters has never been greater owing to the huge challenges and related opportunities brought about by the climate crisis. With tree-planting schemes underway across the planet and biodiversity being lost at a never-before-seen rate, well-designed and managed restoration is essential to the future of the world. New restoration projects will only succeed where so many have failed if they are based on sound ecological science.

The Forests, Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation: Higher Education Cooperation in the Mekong Region (FRAME) project is setting out to ensure that there will be a new generation of foresters trained in the latest scientific knowledge and methods who are capable of implementing genuine forest-ecosystem restoration.

‘We are very excited that this unique consortium has formed to foster South–North and South–South collaboration for this most critically important goal of restoring forest landscapes during and beyond the Decade of Ecosystem Restoration,’ said Prasit Wangpakapattanawong, project coordinator, head of Doi Suthep Nature Center, associate professor at Chiang Mai University and CIFOR-ICRAF liaison scientist in Thailand. ‘Upgrading knowledge in a new generation is of utmost importance to ensure that there is a strong cohort of restorers available throughout the Mekong Sub-region. We anticipate that the courses will also prove a stimulus to other universities in ASEAN and beyond, contributing in particular to the Southeast Asian Network for Agroforestry Education because of agroforestry’s important role in many restoration projects.’

Co-Funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme, the project links the University of Helsinki, Finland and the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Czech Republic with Kasetsart and Chiang Mai universities in Thailand and Savannakhet and Souphanouvong universities in Lao PDR.

Together, the consortium will develop new or upgrade existing courses and ensure formal accreditation in a) forest harvesting and raw timber production; and b) wood use and management; create or upgrade five development courses in furniture production; enhance teacher training and International cooperation; and procure equipment for the wood-technology curricular.

Specifically, Chiang Mai University will develop courses at three levels: a BSc introduction to ecological restoration; an MSc in restoration research; and a massive, open, online course with material based on the original outputs of the university’s Forest Restoration Research Unit. Kasetsart University will establish graduate courses on social aspects of forest restoration and the application of new technologies, towards which, novel teaching tools, including virtual-reality, are already being tested. Souphanouvong University will establish graduate courses on forests and climate, ecotourism and forest restoration while also establishing its own version of the Forest Restoration Research Unit with technical support from Chiang Mai University. Savannakhet University will concentrate on commercial aspects, with graduate courses in wood analysis, processing, economic valuation and dendrology.

The forests of the Mekong Subregion are some of the most biologically diverse places on Earth. However, the region’s forest cover decreased to 1,904,593 km2 in 2015 from 2,089,742 in 2000 km2 at an annual rate of 1.3% from 2000 to 2010 and 1.1% from 2010 to 2015.

Watch the courses evolve on FRAME’s Facebook page