Special edition  » Green development

Sustainable development, which implies economic growth together with the protection of environmental quality, each reinforcing the other, has increasingly been highlighted in the working agendas of global forums, especially in the context of climate change.

Minister of Planning and Investment Vo Hong Phuc, who is also the standing deputy president of Vietnam National Sustainable Development Council, explains why sustainable development is the ultimate goal of Vietnam’s socio-economic growth strategies.

Mr Vo Hong Phuc

Vietnam’s socio-economic development strategies have adopted the sustainable development goal among important solutions for Vietnam to become an industrialised country by 2020. What are Communist Party of Vietnam’s guidelines and the Vietnamese government’s action plans to achieve this important goal?

Vietnam’s 10-Year Socio-economic Development Strategy, during 2001-2010 adopted by the 8^th National Communist Party Congress set the overall objectives to bring the nation out of underdevelopment status, improve noticeably the people’s material, cultural and spiritual life and lay the foundations for making Vietnam basically a modernised industrialised country by 2020. The strategy’s development approaches are to ensure that rapid, efficient and sustainable development, economic growth is to go along with social progress and equity, and environmental protection.

Vietnam’s socio-economic development must also be closely associated with environmental protection and improvement to ensure harmony between man-made and natural environment and to conserve biodiversity. Development is sustainable where is meets the needs of the present without compomising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

To achieve sustainable development, there should be an integration of three important pillars – economic growth, social development and environmental protection, each reinforcing the other.

In detail, sustainable economic growth aims to reach stable economic growth with appropriate economic structure, improve people’s living conditions, prevent economic slow-down and crisis, and prevent from forwarding debts to the next generations.

Sustainable social development means to reach social progress and equity, to improve the quality of people’s life in terms of food, clothing, housing, travel, health treatment, education and employment, to eradicate hunger and poverty, to narrow down the gap in economic, cultural and social development levels among various regions and communities, to reduce social evils, and to ensure improved equality in terms of responsibilities and duties of people and generations in the society.

Sustainable environmental development is to effectively and efficiently use the natural resources, prevent and mitigate environmental pollution, protect the environment, prevent environmental degradation and improve the quality of the environment.

How can Vietnam create the balance of environmental protection priority with fast and stable economic growth?

It is common sense that Vietnam does not set the target of achieving fast economic growth by all means. Environmental sustainability must be integrated in economic growth which is gentle to the environment.

In the past few years, Vietnam’s fast and stable economic growth, on one hand, has resulted in significantly improved living conditions, but on the other hand it has challenged sustainable development. In practice, Vietnam remains largely reliant on exploiting natural resources while rampant and inefficient use of raw minerals and non-renewable energy still exists.

The country’s ncreasing domestic energy consumption and energy consumption in transport sector has led to increased use of fossil fuels, meanwhile the use of clean and renewable energy in Vietnam is limited. Frankly speaking, arbitrary mining and wasteful use of natural resources in Vietnam has not yet to be properly addressed.

However, economic growth and environmental protection must be integrated and interrelated. The challenge is how we are able to drive the economy in an intensive and sustainable manner through application of advanced technology that help improve productivity, resource efficiency, environmental quality and development of renewable energy.

We shall be required to renovate production and distribution mechanisms and technology which are greener and more gentle to the environment, promote resource efficiency and conservation, protect forests, reduce environmental pollution, enhance solid waste treatment and pollutant management and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Cleaner production that contributes to protect the environment and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, needs huge investments in technology solutions. It is therefore a growing challenge for Vietnamese enterprises, most of which are small- and- medium sized. What can the government do to address this?

The business community is playing an important role in sustainable development through application of clean and green technology, promotion of resource savings and manufacturing of new products which are friendly to the environment. However, we are facing the challenge of greatly available funding sources to enable domestic small-and – medium sized enterprises to renovate technology and protect the environment.

In steps to assist small- and- medium sized enterprises, the Vietnamese government has issued legal documents and policies that facilitate transparent, level-playing fields for all businesses, provide them with incentives to apply cleaner production and give priority to environmental-friendly sectors and services. At the same time, the government is also finalizing regulations and standards of cleaner production updated with the country’s economic growth and coordinating the collaboration of entrepreneurs and cleaner production consultants.

In which ways will Vietnam call for international cooperation and supports to implement the country’s sustainable development strategies?

Vietnam has been actively participating in international cooperation initiatives for sustainable development and we have been seriously implementing international conventions in the related fields. The Vietnamese government is committed to ‘doi moi’ policy and calling upon international organizations to support the implementation of Strategic Orientations for Sustainable Development of Vietnam, called Vietnam Agenda 21.

Vietnam is also ready to strengthen international cooperation in education and training, technology transfer, especially clean and environmental-friendly technology.

Through regional and international dialogues, Vietnam is playing an active role to develop effective cooperation mechanisms that enable Vietnam to maintain the current supports and take advantage of new supports. Based on this, we will be able to contribute to global environmental protection initiatives and trade off for economic loss that the country may suffer from performing environmental protection duties.

Vietnam is also actively involved in global environmental protection programs and strengthening international cooperation in the fields such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, minimizing environmental pollution caused by hazardous chemical and waste, controlling trans-border transport of these pollutants, protecting marine environment and conserving biodiversity.

The country is very supportive to strengthening the cooperation of Asia-Pacific, Southeast Asia and Greater Mekong Sub-region in the fields of sustainable development and environmental protection.

We are closely working with international donors to take effective use of their support funds to achieve the goal of sustainable development. The Communist Party of Vietnam and the Vietnamese government are encouraging Vietnamese living aboard, both businessmen and scholars, to make contributions to Vietnam’s sustainable development strategies.