Foreign direct investment (FDI) attraction has marked a new phase in Vietnam and it is time for the country to reconsider all environmental regulations. Economic benefits should not be bartered at all costs, said experts at a seminar on industrial discharge in Hanoi yesterday by PanNature.
Addressing the Industrial Waste: Weaknesses in Management and Policy Recommendations workshop organised by PanNature, former Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, Prof. ??ng Hùng Võ, cited the case related to the Formosa Hà T?nh Steel Corporation (FHS) in the V?ng Áng Economic Zone in the central Hà T?nh Provinc
Policy is central to successful forest management, and many of our projects are using GFW to inform policymakers and other stakeholders. In Ecuador, Regional Water Fund FORAGUA will improve the local management, monitoring, and enforcement of 11 municipal watershed reserves by providing training on the Global Forest Watch platform to environmental technicians, high school science teachers, and journalists. Asociación Ambiente y Sociedad (Colombia) is developing an online tool to inform local communities of infrastructure mega-projects and their potential impact on priority conservation areas, to enhance decision making and contribute to resolving conflicts. In Vietnam, People and Nature Reconciliation (PanNature), will use GFW data to monitor and evaluate established payment for environmental services programs within three provinces, and make recommendations to policy makers on how to improve their efficacy. Pronatura will use GFW in order to inform Mexican decision makers on meeting their commitments to global initiatives such as REDD+ and the Bonn Challenge.
Road building projects that would pass through natural reserves have been proposed, while many resorts have been built in national parks.
MPE had a chance to interview the RTWG members on their opinions about Public Participation in EIA, national experiences and their visions towards the work of the RTWG on EIA.
China has started to discharge water into the lower reaches of the Mekong River to alleviate drought in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, as a major gesture before the first Lancang-Mekong cooperation (LMC) leaders' meeting to be held in late March.
Trinh Le Nguyen, executive director of People and Nature Reconciliation, a Vietnamese not-for-profit organization, made the remark in an exclusive interview with Xinhua in the capital Hanoi on Tuesday.
The story is produced by PanNature with support from the McArthur Foundation and the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF).
Special-use forests (SUFs) are natural protected areas established to conserve the nature and biodiversity of Vietnam. Although the number of SUFs in Vietnam has increased over the years, biodiversity and forest density continues to decline. The Special-Use Forest system of protected area management has been implemented in accordance with ideas of wilderness areas and no-use regimes , and strongly relies on the capacity of state agencies, forest rangers, the military, and police. The state-based preservation of natural resources and biodiversity in SUF areas has been variously evaluated as deficient in a number of areas, including managing conflict between multiple user groups. To overcome these deficiencies, Vietnam has piloted co-management approaches in many SUFs since 2001, and as of 2003 included co-management in its official national strategy for SUF management.
Mekong countries’s chronic shortage of electricity which threatens to stymie economic growth, could be eased by pushing for acceleration of plans by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for a regional power grid. Cross-border electricity swaps are growing as the 10-country bloc moves towards the goal of a single market by the end of 2015. And hydropower is among those plans. However, Damming the Mekong River can causes widespread controversy in South East Asia. Lower Sesan 2 dam on Mekong river in Cambodia is a typical example.