The Sourcebook is aimed at a broad target audience, including protected area planners and practitioners; provincial and central government agencies; research institutions; NGOs; and donor agencies.

The first edition of the Sourcebook was published in 2001 by the BirdLife International Vietnam Programme and the Forest Inventory and Planning Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), with financial support from the European Union. In the three years since the publication of the first edition, there have been many changes to Vietnam's protected areas systems, including the establishment of new protected areas, and significant increases in availability of information about many sites.

This second edition of the Sourcebook, which has been compiled by BirdLife International in Indochina and MARD, with financial support from the World Bank and the Royal Netherlands Government, builds on the first, providing a comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the information currently available on existing and proposed protected areas in Vietnam. In particular, the second edition is intended to provide:

• reliable, up-to-date information on the location, status and values of Vietnam's protected areas, as a resource for planners and decision-makers at international, national and provincial levels;
• baseline data for monitoring the impacts of national and provincial policies and plans on protected areas;
• a resource for training, awareness and educational activities, of particular potential value at the provincial, district, site and project levels; and
• a tool to support the implementation of the Vietnam Conservation Fund.

The Sourcebook contains site cards for 208 existing and proposed protected areas in Vietnam. Each site card summarises the existing information available about the site, and directs the reader to more detailed sources of information. The Sourcebook has been produced in loose-leaf format, to facilitate copying and updating. Users are encouraged to copy and use the information contained herein for conservation and environmental awareness purposes. The Sourcebook is available in both Vietnamese and English, and is also available in CD Rom and on-line versions.