Top legislator warns against trading environment for growth in law revision
The overall principles of the revisions to the Law on Environmental Protection are to cut procedures without cutting responsibilities, ease pre-inspection while tightening post-inspection, decentralise authority without fragmenting responsibility and never trade the environment for mere economic growth.
National Assembly (NA) President Tran Thanh Man told group discussions during the 16th NA’s second session in Hanoi on October 24.
On a proposal to drop concentrated residential areas and water sources used for daily life from the list of environmentally sensitive factors, he said issues directly tied to public health can’t simply be streamlined. Environmental legislation is meant to improve quality of life, noting persistent concerns over household and hospital waste, water pollution and air quality.
On exemptions from environmental impact assessments for secondary projects in industrial parks and clusters, he said they should apply only once environmental treatment infrastructure is fully built. Projects that generate large volumes of emissions or hazardous waste, or import scrap materials, should be excluded.
The top legislator put particular emphasis on data-driven environmental governance, saying that data must be “clean,” accurate, complete and reliable. He asked the drafting agency to clarify several issues, including the proposed 90% cut in administrative procedures, responsibility for projects with cross-provincial environmental impacts, what to do with VND887 billion (US$34.11 million) that firms paid into the Vietnam Environment Protection Fund to support recycling but that hasn’t been disbursed, and international carbon credit trading.
On the accountability of heads of agencies, he agreed that responsibility should be tied to measurable environmental quality indicators that are published and reviewed periodically. Responsibility can’t be assigned in vague terms, but nor should there be room to evade it.
Overhauling environmental management
Deputy Nguyen Vu Trung from Ho Chi Minh City said chairpersons of the provincial People’s Committees should be made responsible for pollution in their localities. He proposed writing the polluter-pays principle into the draft, so that polluters bear the costs of prevention, treatment, remediation and compensation, and requiring annual disclosure of environmental budget spending, environmental performance and progress on pollution hotspots.
Deputy Nguyen Dinh Xuan from Tay Ninh province, meanwhile, called for overhauling enforcement through stronger, more regular inspections and monitoring and greater community involvement in oversight, rather than relying mainly on penalties after violations occur.
Xuan also suggested reviewing and narrowing the list of conditional investment and business sectors and reducing overlaps among sector-specific laws, particularly in agriculture, livestock farming and aquaculture.
Harnessing marine resources more effectively
In group discussions on the draft revised Law on Marine and Island Resources and Environment, most deputies agreed the legislation is needed to complete the institutional framework for integrated management of marine resources and space, protect the marine and island environment, and provide a legal foundation for modern marine governance.
The law should also help maximise the potential of marine resources and promote green, sustainable marine economic development, while safeguarding national defence - security, sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction, and meeting the requirements of global integration in the country’s new development phase.
NA Vice President Nguyen Hong Dien urged reviewing and revising the draft to define its scope clearly as governing the integrated management, allocation and coordination of the use of marine space.
Sector-specific activities should be governed by their own legislation while complying with the integrated management principles set out in this law, he said.
NA passes law amending 10 laws concerning agriculture, environment
Lawmakers at the first extraordinary session of the 16th National Assembly on August 24 passed a law amending and supplementing several provisions of 10 laws concerning administrative procedures and business conditions in the agriculture and environment sector, with 93.4% of participating deputies voting in favour.
