Policy ResponsesPolicy ResponsesMany efforts have been made throughout Vietnam in recent years to carry out programmes aimed at limiting environmental destruction. Encouraging results have been obtained. However, much still has to be done to solve environmental and ecological problems.
I have read many reports of authoritative scientists, professors and experts in the field of environment, including those of our country. They have provided undeniable facts and figures and convincing scientific proofs, sounding an alarm of the dangers of environmental destruction.
Economically, these problems may lead us up a blind alley. While the environment may be destroyed with no development, it may be more destroyed with development. This is what concerns the strategic planners and policy makers in our country.
History shows that many countries have undergone a long period with a competing market economy and little government interference. The profit motive has resulted in injustice, the wanton exploitation of resources and the dumping of chemical wastes into water sources and the atmosphere. Developed countries now face the social and environmental aftermath.
The invasion and expansion of business in the colonies has prompted the increased exploitation of their labourers and natural resources to enrich the mother states. This has caused serious social and environmental consequences to those countries that fell victim to colonialism.
In this context, the more economic development there is, the more environmental pollution can be. It is estimated that the value of what has been created by humanity so far may be equal to the damage caused by environmental destruction.
If so, evolution has cost us dearly. Assessment rests with the experts it may concern. One thing is certain, humanity has abused the process of improving nature, posing danger to the ecology and creating a threat which the present as well as future generations have to endeavour to overcome.
What conclusions can be drawn from these facts? Obviously, economic development is not the main cause of environmental destruction. Furthermore, economic development is indispensable for every nation and is in accordance with the law of social and human evolution.
Damage to the environment is caused by people's ignorance of the negative side of evolution, by colonialist exploitation, by people's short-sightedness as well as their greed in the competing market mechanism. Developing countries, including Vietnam, are centuries behind in terms of economic development and, understandably, have many disadvantages. However, we do have certain advantages.
First, we have access to the experience of developed countries, predecessors on what to do and avoid, particularly lessons on the management, control and interference of government in a market economy.
In the present-day, with economic and political matters so closely linked, it is the government that is the only body with sufficient authority to deal with economic issues in relation to political matters. Therefore, the role of political interference in economic development, as well as government interference in business undertakings, has become more obvious. Yet the level of interference should be appropriate to ensure the orientation of economic development.
Second, people's awareness of the threat to the environment means that the problem can be recognized swiftly and responses included in national development policy. As a result, laws on protection of nature and environment have been enacted and implemented in our country.
Third, there has been co-ordination of actions between governments, international organizations and experts in this field.
Fourth, the application of scientific and technological advances can help promote the process of development and also minimize the damage to the environment as development occurs. Furthermore, these advances can help improve the environment and restore the ecological balance.
Those advantages enable us to carry out the motto: prevention is better than treatment. But how to overcome the contradiction that the more civilized people become, the more the environment is devastated?
It is necessary to turn to a new tendency, with a new principle that the more civilized people become, the more healthy the environment will be. People and the environment must develop together. It is necessary to combine economic development with the healthy development of the environment. Improving nature must be combined with adapting to it, as well as with humanity's renovation.
Vietnam recognizes that developing the economy with full consciousness and clear-sightedness, under the correct and timely management of the state, the government, and local administrations and with full co-operation within the country, the region and the rest of the world, would greatly help reduce the environmental threat.
"Policy Responses: Vietnam's policy on climate change"
Index