02/04/2016
Over the years, inspection and supervision have always been considered as the important tasks of Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE), in parallel with developing regulations on natural resources and environment. For environmental protection, thanks to due attention and directives from MONRE and Viet Nam Environment Administration (VEA) leaders, annual inspection and supervision have been widely and comprehensively implemented and providing positive results. Consequently, awareness of enterprises and community on environmental protection has been increased.
In 2014, environmental inspection and supervision have been comprehensively implemented. While in previous years, inspection and supervision focused only on production, trade and services, in 2014, for the first time, VEA/MONRE conducted inspection and supervision in biodiversity sector. This helped review all management aspects by local governments and propose necessary actions to address shortcomings and increase efficiency and effectiveness of state management of environmental protection. The inspection and supervision not only targeted production, trade and service facilities but also involved reviewing task implementation of People’s Committees of Provinces and Cities.
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Supervision team visited Dong Nai Urban Environment Compan |
Due to a large number of production, trade and service facilities in the country, it was necessary to establish a clear set of criteria for selecting inspected facilities to ensure that the inspection and supervision covered major polluters in the sectors of chemicals, textiles, mechanics, brewery and beverage, mineral mining, hospitals and those belonging to a list of seriously polluting entities.
Although the organizational structure and operation of environmental inspection are in a transition period to follow Inspection Law 2010, thanks to timely and effective directives from MONRE and VEA leaders and efforts of the whole sector, environmental inspection and supervision have been conducted nationwide in 814 production, trade and service facilities and a dozen of NPs and natural protected areas. So far, 351 violators have been detected and fined with the penalty of about 86 billion VND. Common violations include violating hazardous waste regulations (85%), exceeding discharge permits (55%); failing to comply or complying with the requirements of environmental impact assessment in incorrect way(52%); and failing to get certification of completing environmental protection works (90%). Among those violations, 14 cases were caught red handed when discharging into the environment and 38 facilities were ceased their operations.
Regarding environmental management performance, the inspection and supervision revealed that there existed shortcomings in regulation enforcement in localities. For example, in many localities, environmental expenditure failed to follow closely with the instructions in Circular 45/2010/TTLT-BTC-BTNMT. Appraisal quality of environmental impact assessment remained low with vague contents and failing to comply with guidance on appraising environmental impact assessment reports and environmental protection commitments. In addition, in some localities, waste generating registration certificates were improperly done with wrong coding and charged of failure to follow the guidance of MONRE’s Circular 12/2011/TT-BTNMT.
In addition, the inspection also showed common violations by public service entities such as hospitals, urban environment companies and industrial zone infrastructure investing companies under industrial zone management boards. Many of these inspected entities failed to comply with environmental regulations despite several warning notices. Moreover, environmental regulations were not strictly enforced in many localities. For example, some local governments even asked for not penalizing the violators. This has led to low deterring effects and inaction for investment of environmental protection.
In close cooperation with Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DONRE) and People’s Committees, inspection teams had opportunities to exchange experience and built capacity for local inspectors. During the inspection, guidance also was provided to the enterprises to help them correct their errors and comply with the regulations.
In addition, the inspection facilitated propaganda of environmental regulations by explaining in detail to facilities and local governments. In the meantime, inspection teams received feedback from the inspected facilities and local governments to report to competent authorities for revising and completing the regulations. Through inspection, many shortcomings in regulations were identified. For example, the required period for extension of finishing environmental protection plans and environmental works reported to be infeasible. Also, it was found that operation permits of projects were issued even before certifications for environmental work completions were granted in many cases.
Apart from these mentioned above achievements, environmental supervision in 2014 revealed the following shortcomings.
First, inspection and supervision remain overlaped among environmental police and state management agencies at different levels, creating difficulties for enterprises. In some cases, an enterprise was subject to 12 inspection and supervision teams on environmental protection. In addition, inspection and supervision tasks appear passive. Law on Inspection maintained administrative requirements such as in advance notices and decisions for establishing inspection teams. This has prevented timely detection of violations, in particular waste discharging violations. Facilities often have sufficient time for covering their violations in responding to inspection teams.
Second, some environmental regulations lacked consistency and feasibility which result in implementation difficulties. For example, the LEP stipulated that hazardous waste generating facilities should need to register with provincial environmental authorities. However, the number of registrations differed a great deal from reality, leading to inaccurate statistics. Another example was that according to Circular 12/2011/TT-BTNMT, hazardous waste generating facilities should have a minimum number of waste transporting vehicles. This required the facilities to invest in buying the vehicles while the demand for transport was not high. In other cases, the facilities could hire or borrow vehicles which were registered for hazardous waste transport to respond to inspection on an ad hoc basis.
Third, inspection and supervision of state management mandated on biodiversity have faced difficulties due to vague division of responsibilities between MONRE and Environment and Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD). Article 33 of Biodiversity Law stipulates that “Protected Area Management Board, a competent authority for managing a protected area shall be responsible for reporting state of biodiversity of the protected area to relevant managing bodies. Therefore, the boards report regularly state of biodiversity of the protected area to MARD instead of to MONRE as stipulated at Point 2, Article 6, Law on Biodiversity.
Fourth, environmental violations by public service facilities mainly came from a lack of due attention from their owners and leaders, insufficient state budget for treating waste as well as marginalizing environmental protection with investment decisions. Therefore, in some cases, hundreds of millions VND was spent for investing in modern hospitals while no investment in waste treatment facilities has done.
To increase efficiency and effectiveness of inspection and supervision in coming periods, it is necessary to take the following measures:
Strengthening review, revision and completion of environmental legal documents and policies towards consistency, taking advantages of successful policies; removing inappropriate regulations based on thorough scientific studies to reduce burdens for enterprises while maintaining enforcement requirements;
Boosting socialization in environmental protection and waste treatment to maximize resources for environmental protection; encouraging community to supervise environmental compliance by production, trade and service facilities to detect and handle violations in a timely manner;
Reviewing and revising Decree 179/2013/ND-CP on handling environmental violations in accordance with the LEP 2014, enhancing public disclosure of environmental violations in mass media to create pressure on enterprises to comply with environmental regulations;
Providing regular training on implementing the LEP 2014 and its guiding documents for management authorities and enterprises; enhancing environmental propaganda with various forms and contents to gradually increase public awareness on environmental protection;
Boosting inspection and supervision with focuses on radically addressing critical and urgent environmental issues; updating environmental regulations; guiding localities and enterprises to complete records and requirements; strictly handling environmental violations. In addition, it is necessary to strengthen and complete organizational structure on environmental protection at both national and local levels; in particular, assigning sector inspection mandates to subdepartment of Environmental Protection, increasing staff numbers to meet future requirements;
To increase effectiveness and facilitate contribution of inspection to management work, in addition to completing legal frameworks and increasing proactiveness and flexibility of inspection, it is necessary to recruit capable and dedicated inspectors. With leadership of MONRE, VEA and internal/external support agencies and cooperators, inspection and supervision will further develop and achieve better results, contributing to environmental protection in modernization and industrialization and sustainable development.
Luong Duy Hanh, Hoang Van Vy
Department of Environmental Protection Supervision
Vietnam Environment Administration
