07/07/2016
Sea plays a very special role in socio-economic development and security-defence. The Việt Nam Sea Strategy to 2020 requests the integrated and unified management of marine resources. On 25/6/2015, the National Assembly endorsed the Law no. 82/2015/QH13 on Sea and Island Natural Resources and Environment, regulating the integrated management of sea and island natural resources and environmental protection; rights, tasks and responsibilities of entities, organisations and individuals in integrated management of sea and island natural resources and environmental protection as orientations for the integrated management of sea and island natural resources of Việt Nam.
Integrated and unified management of sea and island
Integrated and unified sea and island management is a broad spectrum, including many subjects and fields covering research, basic investigation, assessment of potentials of marine zones, and exploitation of marine resource advantages for socio-economic development linked with sustainable sea environmental protection.
Integrated management is a basis for the integrated management of natural elements and exploitation and usage activities of human to ensure sustainable development in marine, coastal and island areas. Integrated management approach is the unification in terms of geography, policy institution, development planning and management in exploitation and use of sea and island natural resources. At the same time, it is the unification of sustainable financial mechanisms for territory management in all facets of exploitation, use, protection and development of marine natural resources and environment. In other words, the integrated management will ensure the comprehensive and sustainable exploitation, use and development of resources (natural and human) as well as marine environmental protection. Integrated management approach is the systematic and ecosystem-based approach.
The integrated and unified sea and island state management is the administrative management of authorised state management agencies through legal institutions to better collaborate and coordinate among state management agencies at central and local levels in development and implementation of strategies, planning and plans on the use, exploitation, and protection of marine resources and environment to be appropriate with the orientations and requirements of sustainable development, simultaneously to protect the sovereignty and territory of Việt Nam.
The nature of the integrated sea and island management is the increase in the quality of marine resource management and environmental protection to be appropriate with the sustainable development requirements through the democracy in management processes (from planning to implementing policies), based on the identification of a management mechanism with active and fair participation of communities associated with the marine spatial environment to share and develop marine economic benefits among sectors and localities in a harmonious manner, at the same time to ensure the integrity of national benefits.
In the integrated sea and island management, the community is not only a management subject but also a management partner of authorities; the community has an equal relationship in terms of rights and benefits; therefore, the coastal local authorities have to respect and ensure local people to have democracy and direct participation in coastal natural resources management and environmental protection. In other words, integrated sea and island management is the management method based on continuous planning and consensus in order to reach agreement on economic, social and environmental benefit sharing in coastal and marine areas, to be managed appropriately with sustainable development objectives.
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| Integrated and unified sea and island management is the ecosystem-based and systematic approach |
Requirements of integrated sea and island management
Multisectoral coordination: The integrated management requests multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary management mechanism approach and continuous processing (from planning to implementing, operating and monitoring), it’s impossible to consider the system as a simple collection of individual sectoral management functions.
Cooperation among coastal areas requests the linkage that ensures all policy processes not to be totally bonded to territory administrative borders but to management processes that have regional linkage at different levels (interprovincial, inter-district, inter-commune).
Highly open marine management policy planning and implementation process, requiring the participation, critics and social monitoring of the community in the planning, implementation and assessment of strategies, plans and development policies linked with coastal areas rather than being a close procedure among state administrative agencies.
Spatial marine management to be appropriate with nature of the marine natural resource system (marine spatial system or marine and coastal ecosystem). Applying marine functional zoning to support marine spatial planning and consequently to conduct marine exploration and use planning in 5-10 years plans or longer term. Based on the marine exploitation and use plans approved by the authorised authority, licence and fee collection can be applied to marine resource uses...
Commitment and interdependence on rights and tasks in implementing sustainable development goals between authorities, social organisations and enterprises.
Coordination mechanism towards integrated management method
The integrated management is very complicated as many parties involve in the management process. Therefore, the coordination mechanism is very important to ensure the active participation in resource exploitation by state management sectors such as finance, agriculture, planning – investment, industry, trade, tourism and transport. Due to its complexity, the coastal and marine sector requires authorities’ great efforts into coordination. The integrated marine resource management requests the participation of all levels, of which local authorities play key roles.
The Law on Sea and Island Natural Resources and Environment 2015 regulates unified management of the Government on sea and island natural resources and environment. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) is responsible to the Government to implement the integrated management of sea and island natural resources and environmental protection. In other words, the coordination role is assigned to MONRE. However, the coordination mechanism between MONRE and other ministries and sectors as well as the relationships with coastal provinces are not clearly regulated in this document. The coordination mechanism must overcome sector’s internal benefits, to create the linkage and cooperation among sectors relating to marine and coastal natural resources and environment. This is an important issue that should be paid special attention during the development of guiding documents of the Law on Sea and Island Natural Resources and Environment.
The integrated and unified sea and island management is the management method that has been applied successfully in many coastal countries in the world. This is a new management method and approach for Việt Nam, playing the role of linkage and adjustment of development behaviours of sectors and activities on sea and island exploitation and uses within the national jurisdiction waters (provincial management) through the intersectoral coordination mechanism and other integrated tools.
Therefore, for the integrated and unified state management of sea and island, it is necessary to develop, apply and implement intersectoral, inter-departmental, inter-regional and community-linked solutions and ecosystem-based marine spatial management. The final common goal of the integrated and unified marine and island management is to ensure multisectoral development, multi-purpose use (maximization) and multi-benefit assurance (mutual interest) among state, private sector, relevant stakeholders and local communities, as well as to reduce the conflict of interests among sectors in exploitation and uses of marine, coastal and island natural resources - environment systems. To implement this, a coordination mechanism among relevant stakeholders needs to be studied and considered to ensure the objectives of protection and sustainable exploitation of marine and island resources of Việt Nam.
MSc. Đoàn Thị Thanh Mỹ
Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment
