Environmental management and legislation

Environmental protection legislation

The Law on Environmental Protection of Vietnam was passed by the Vietnam National Assembly on 27/12/1993 and came into force from 10/ 01/ 1994.

Together with this, the Government has also promulgated many laws and regulations concerning environment protection, as follows:

Forest Protection and Development Law (1991); the People Health Protection Law (1989); Land Use Law (1993); Law of Oil and Petrol; Mineral Resources Law (1996), Water Resources Law (1998); Criminal Affair Law (reform, 1999); Dykes Protection Ordinance (1989); Ordinance of Resources Taxes (1989); Ordinance of Aquatic Resource Protection (1989), Ordinance of Radiation Safety and Control (1996), Ordinance of Vegetation Protection and Quarantine (1993).

Hundreds of legal documents to elaborately instruct the implementation of the above laws and ordinances have been issued by the Government, the MOSTE and other line ministries.

Formulating and implementing environmental protection policies

The environmental policies for sustainable development of Vietnam were first systematically presented in the “National plan on Environment and Sustainable Development, 1991-2000” that was approved by the government in 1991. Since then, government has promulgated a series of policies for environmental protection and sustainable development, such as the policy on prohibition of fire-crackers production, transport and use; policy ono land and forest entrustment for people; policy on afforestation in denuded land and bare hills; policy on promoting use of cleaner technologies; policy on biodiversity protection, policy on closing natural forests; policy on potable water supply and environmental sanitation in rural areas, and the programs for decreasing population growth rate etc.

Recently, the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment have formulated the "National Strategy for Environmental Protection to 2010” and submitted it for approval of the government. The provinces and cities are also formulating their local environment protection strategies to 2005 and 2010.

Environmental pollution control

- Since 1994, after the promulgation of the Law on Environmental Protection, a number of significant efforts have been made by responsible institutions to control the air, inland water, sea water and soil pollution; to manage and to treat solid waste, especially hazardous wastes; to deal with the enterprises considered as serious polluters; and to timely respond to environmental disasters/occurrences such as oil spillage into the sea.

- Environmental impact assessment has been carefully carried out for all the socio-economic development projects as well as for all the existing industrial establishments operating before the promulgation of the Law on Environment Protection.

- Environmental inspection has been undertaken both at provincial and national levels.

Environmental monitoring

A National Network of Environmental Monitoring managed by the MOSTE was established since the end of 1994. By 1999, the national network comprised 19 stations responsible for  environmental monitoring at 63 locations with a frequency of once every 3 months (4 times/year, since 1995). Basic parameters of air environment, water environment (inland and sea water), land environment, solid wastes, noise caused by transportation and radioactivity (in 4 locations only) have been monitored and measured by these stations. In addition some other institutions like Water resource, Hydrometeorology, and Hydrogeology also carry out water and air monitoring for their research and management purposes.

Development of institutional system for  environmental management

In 1993, the National Environmental Agency was established under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (MOSTE) in order to exercise the state management of environmental protection activities throughout the country. By 1999, the National Environmental Agency had 9 divisions  with 79 staff. The Environment Management Division with an average of around 2-5 employees was also established in every province/city under the Provincial Departments of Science, Technology and Environment (DOSTE). Several districts and provincial towns also have a cadre for environmental management.  The functional units for environment management normally attached to the Department of Science and Technology have been established in some line ministries and economic sectors.

Generally, the capacity of environmental management institutions in Vietnam remains weak and disproportionate to the tasks. The environmental managers and regulators employed in the system have been deficient in both their number and qualification.

Environmental education

Programmes of environmental education, training and awareness enhancement have been carried out as follows:

- Education to improve awareness on environmental protection for communities through the media such as broadcasting, television, journals and other publications.

- Launching educational campaigns on environmental protection for communities through the celebration of special events such as the World Environmental Day, Clean up the World Day, Week for Clean water and Environmental sanitation, the Green and Clean Month, Exhibition on Environmental Protection, competition of composing music/poems on environmental themes, picture painting with topics relevant to environmental protection, etc.

- Incorporating environmental education into training curricula of national education system from kindergarten grade to primary, high school, college and  university levels.

- Training and education for the human resource for environmental management.