A partnership that aims to plant 120,000 mangrove trees in Vietnam during its first year with OECM potential has been announced by Korean carmaker Hyundai and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The project could be designated as ‘other effective area-based conservation measure’ (OECM)’, a category for areas outside formally protected sites that support nature often with a primary function tied to something other than conservation.
“In the long-term, [the] integrated mangrove shrimp landscape could be considered as an OECM, thereby helping Vietnam reach its 30×30 target,” IUCN’s head of lower Mekong in Vietnam, Jake Brunner, said in a statement, referring to national commitments established under the Global Biodiversity Framework at UN talks last year.
The OECM concept was included in the 2010 Aichi UN biodiversity targets, though was only properly defined in 2018.
Only eight nations worldwide have registered OECMs, even though the number is rising, with Australia starting the process of including them in national regulations this year.
However, the concept could be of great help to many governments facing various restrictions domestically in meeting the 30×30 target, according to IUCN, who coined the OECM definition five years ago.
In April, IUCN highlighted how Vietnam, where the 2030 nature protection target is almost impossible to meet due to a scarcity of land, could make use of OECMs to meet its goals.
The Hyundai project is expected to increase mangrove cover in shrimp farms in the Ca Mau region in southern Vietnam.
The three-year initiative, in partnership with NGO Good Neighbors International, aims to promote sustainable aquaculture practices while preserving the ecosystem and enhancing community resilience to climate change.
“We aim to become a pioneer in this market. The IONIQ Forest project represents our authenticity and desire for sustainable future in Vietnam,” said Hyundai Motor’s head of Vietnam business unit, Inwon Oh.
The IONIQ Forest project from Hyundai aims to plant one million trees worldwide by 2024 in countries including South Korea, North America, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, Serbia, Turkey, and Czechia.
However, last week environmental group Greenpeace said Hyundai was not reducing its emissions as “quickly as many people believe”.
“Industry leaders like Toyota and Hyundai continue to flood the roads with combustion engine vehicles and a growing number of sports utility vehicles (SUVs). Leading automakers need to accelerate the shift away from fossil fossils, rather than boasting about their minimal electric vehicle sales share,” it said.
Hyundai came joint ninth-place out of 15 in Greenpeace’s 2023 analysis of the largest automobile manufacturers’ decarbonisation efforts.
By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com
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