ABSTRACT
The Vietnam Forestry Development Strategy 2006–2020 even states: ‘Forestry development planning should be made available to the public, and to pilot and scale up the tendering and leasing special use forests for ecotourism and recreation purposes’. Ecotourism is among the economic activities that utilize natural resources, forests in particular, and is subject to PFES. In addition to PFES, ecotourism also generates revenue from regular entrance tickets and other economic activities such as leasing land, sites, and operations of ecotourism services. Until recently, there has not been any research discussing ecotourism or PFES in relation financing protected areas (PAs), therefore, the current study focuses on analysing the extent to which ecotourism contributes to the sustainable financing of PAs. Funding for PAs comes from three main sources: state budget, non-state funds and international donors, and revenue from tourism services. In general, revenue from tourism represents approximately 4% of total funding for PAs.
