Nguyen Tuong Van, director of the Urban Development Agency under the Ministry of Construction, said that the development of urban green growth aimed to enhance living quality, save energy and reduce emissions which would help boost economic growth and at the same time ease impacts on the environment towards sustainable development.
Can Tho issued its own strategies for green growth and climate change adaptation
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Some had already issued their own strategies for green growth and climate change adaptation such as Hai Phong and Can Tho and some were underway such as Danang, Bac Ninh and Tam Ky, Thai pointed out.
He said that urban green growth was still a new thing in Vietnam, thus, many localities faced difficulties.
There was no common urban green growth model applicable for all cities and towns, he said, adding that each locality must have a comprehensive evaluation of their urban development to map out their own strategies and roadmaps appropriate to their socio-economic conditions.
According to experts, Vietnam has gained a number of achievements after five years implementing the national green growth strategy, however, policies should be streamlined to help the strategy take more effect.
Expert Le Duc Chung said the implementation of green growth in some ministries, agencies and localities has been still restricted. Their awareness of the importance of incorporating green growth into development plans of localities also remained limited.
Chung attributed the shortcoming to the limitation of policies and regulations in implementing green growth. Besides, the cooperation between ministries and agencies in the green growth hasn’t been strong enough to encourage the participation of firms and people.
In addition, Le Hoang Anh from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development admitted that it is hard to incorporate local socio-economic development plans to green growth. She took the program on fighting against climate change as an example, saying that the incorporation of the program with green growth is very difficult as they have different targets.
For green growth strategies to achieve more positive results, experts said there should be more closely coordination among ministries, agencies and localities as there was overlapping between them.
Besides, they proposed some measures for localities, like restructuring agricultural production towards green growth, increasing connection between production, processing and preservation industries, developing production models in harmony with the environment that match actual conditions in the locality.
Development interventions should be of high feasibility in line with available resources and development strategies of each locality, while leaders of relevant ministries and agencies need to allocate resources effectively and reasonably to localities.
Le Viet Thai of the German International Co-operation Organization (GIZ), suggested that technological solutions be applied to improve labor productivity and use natural resources effectively and economically.
Economist Nguyen Thi Kim Dung said community participation and capacity as well as financial feasibility should be paid due attention when implementing the national green growth strategy.
Other experts recommended that localities study and assess their environment situation, level of pollution and build roadmaps to deal with issues relating to waste treatment and production in line with green growth targets.
They should also invest tangibly in knowledge-building, communication and advocacy, accelerate regulatory action and promote environmentally-friendly consumer behavior, they said.
