Vietnam Determined to Crack down on Most Polluting Projects

A senior official from Vietnam’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE) on Sept.22 said at a conference in Hanoi that environment watchdogs will focus on checking the group companies and projects that are most polluting. Speaking at the conference titled “Sustainable development – inevitable trend and necessity for enterprises, Mr. Nguyen Van Tai, head of the General Department of Environment under the MoNRE, noted that the inspection will focus on the 20% of projects in Vietnam that now account for 70%-80% of the total environmental pollution. These projects are huge in scale but are engaged in polluting manufacturing sectors and apply backward technologies, he added. According to data from the ministry, each year Vietnam has more than 2,000 projects that are required to file environment impacts assessment. There are total 283 industrial zones nationwide that discharge over 550,000 cubic meters of wastewater/day-night, plus 615 industrial clusters, of which only 5% are equipped with wastewater treatment. Worse still, Vietnam has 787 urban zones that discharge 3 million cubic meters of wastewater per day but there is no treatment program yet. The figure is yet to take into account another 100,000 tons of plant protection chemicals, 23 million tons of household waste, over 7 million tons of industrial solid waste, and 630,000 tons of toxic waste, the ministry noted. Mr. Tai called on participants at the conference to timely cope with the problems as pollution has become an urgent matter following the Formosa disaster along the four central coastal provinces. He proposed three solutions: (i) re-organize policies in attracting investors, especially into polluting sectors and in regions sensitive to environment issues, (ii) define responsibilities of those related to environment management, and (iii) focus on a small group, particularly the 20% of companies/projects that cause the majority of pollution. (VnEconomy Sept 22)