Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Nguyen Minh Quang has directed the Vietnam Environment Administration to accelerate the preparation of amended Environmental Protection Law to submit to the National Assembly. Report by the Vietnam Economic News Online.

Amended Environmental Protection Law is expected to be submitted to the National Assembly in October 2013. This document will has additional contents in the fields of environmental planning and environmental impact assessment.

According to Vietnam Environment Administration Deputy General Director Le Ke Son, putting environmental planning in the draft was necessary, contributing to ensuring cohesiveness and effectiveness between socioeconomic development and environmental protection.

Many construction and hydroelectric plant projects defied environmental impact assessment. Instead of completing environmental impact assessment before the construction, numerous contractors submitted this assessment to investors and evaluation board when the project was completed. To do away with this, the amended Environmental Protection Law will specify for investors to take full responsibility, and will clearly stipulate original and detailed environmental impact assessments.

In addition to new contents, the amended Environmental Protection Law will stress in terms of the number, origins and characteristics of wasted materials showing in declarations and contracts between waste treatment facilities and organisations. Moreover, regulations in terms of automatic wastewater monitoring for large-scale facilities would be needed.

The National Assembly’s Committee on Science, Technology and Environment agreed with the amendments to the Environmental Protection Law 2005, contributing to institutionalising the Party and state’s policies in terms of environmental protection in the new situation.

Many delegates also said that the draft still had many terms that needed to wait for detailed guidelines. Therefore, the drafting committee should review and supplement contents that was provided in the documents and tested in practice. In addition, supplementing a number of new regulations related to climate change, green growth and environmental security was needed.

Minister Quang asked the Vietnam Environment Administration to collect suggestions from the National Assembly’s Committee on Science, Technology and Environment. In addition, reviewing and clarifying a number of rules, criteria and contents related to environmental protection planning and strategic environmental assessment were mentioned.

Amended Environmental Protection Law consists of 19 chapters and 160 clauses ( four chapters and 24 clauses more than the currently law). It adds a number of new regulations and modifies inappropriate and unfeasible regulations in the Environmental Protection Law 2005 to strengthen the State management in terms of environmental protection, contributing to controlling environmental pollution throughout the country.-VNA