Rural areas grapple to meet environmental criteria

Criteria related to environmental conservation has become the most difficult to achieve among the 19 criteria of the national target programme on building new-style rural areas, with only 26 percent of the communes under the programme currently meeting this requirement
Criteria related to environmental conservation has become the mostdifficult to achieve among the 19 criteria of the national targetprogramme on building new-style rural areas, with only 26 percent of thecommunes under the programme currently meeting this requirement.

The programme, initiated by the Government in 2010, sets 19 criteriaon socio-economic development, politics, and defence, aiming to boostrural areas of Vietnam.

The environmental criterionstipulates a commune must ensure 75 percent of its households use waterthat meets national quality standards and all production and businessfacilities satisfy environmental requirements. It must also ensure agreen and clean local environment, build graveyards in line with urbanplanning, and collect and treat waste and wastewater properly.

According to the programme’s steering committee, more than 1,000centralised clean water facilities, 500 dumping grounds and 1,200drainage ditches have been upgraded in rural areas nationwide.

The low rate of communes meeting the environmental criterion isattributable to the growing population, uncontrolled use of fertilisersand pesticides and the neglect of daily, agricultural, and productionwaste treatment.

The limited available land area andfunding shortage have also hindered efforts in planting trees andconstructing standard dumping grounds and waste treatment facilities.

The prevalence of outdated production equipment andauthorities’ slack supervision over production activities has furthercomplicated environmental protection activities.

Thenational programme’s steering committee said 785 communes had satisfiedall 19 criteria by the end of 2014, accounting for 8.8 percent of thecommunes across Vietnam, as reported on the Government Portal.

The country aims to have 20 percent of all communes nationwide meetall the requirements by the end of 2015, bringing it up to 50 percent by2020.

To enhance the new-style rural area building,the committee plans to step up communication activities to raise publicawareness and encourage community involvement in the programme.

It will also ask local authorities to harness resources to improvebasic infrastructure, especially those serving economic activities;restructure agriculture towards higher added value and sustainabledevelopment; and facilitate technological transfer to apply advancedequipment in agricultural production.-VNA

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