Toward Sustainable Development

It is a six years’ time from the birth of sustainable development orientation, Vietnam has made laudable achievements in economic, social and environmental aspects. However, the process of implementing sustainable development in Vietnam still confronts numerous limitations and shortcomings and needs a long-term roadmap to ensure stability.

 

At the third National Conference on Sustainable Development held in Hanoi, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan, Chairman of the National Council for Sustainable Development, said that Vietnam has achieved certain results in sustainable development: Maintaining economic growth of over 7 percent in the past 10 years, attaining a good achievement in poverty reduction, having satisfactory result in education universalisation, having good improvement in healthcare, etc. 19 prioritised operating fields in the sustainable development orientation appeared in all models.

 

According to the report released by the Office for Sustainable Development under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, 19 prioritised operating fields belonging to three pillars of economy, society and environment have attained significant achievements.

 

Economically, Vietnam maintains a rapid and sustained economic growth. Per capita GDP exceeds US$1,150, ensuring Vietnam’s solid progress into the group of middle-income countries.

 

Environment-friendly production and consumption patterns are also applied, including energy-conservation programmes. Basing on energy conservation and efficiency projects carried across the country by central agencies, economic groups and local agencies, the Institute of Energy has calculated that energy conservation from 2006 to 2008 was 3.48 percent. The energy conservation is expected to equal 3.2 percent of the country’s total energy consumption in the 2006-2010 period.

 

Particularly, by implementing agricultural and rural development policies, the Vietnamese agriculture has a high stable growth. The value of agricultural, forestry and fishery production steadily grows, averaging 4.85 percent in the reported five-year span. Labour productivity and crop - livestock productivity rises. The stable growth of agriculture, especially food production, ensures the national food security.

 

Socially, poverty reduction programmes are carried out effectively. In the five-year period, 6.2 million poor households are accessible to soft loans, with each family borrowing VND7-8 million on average. The rate of poverty fell from 22 percent in 2005 to 14.75 percent 2007, 11.3 percent in 2009 and about 9.45 percent in 2010. Some localities like Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang report that no households are living below the national poverty line.

 

Also according to the report, Vietnam has also continued decreasing the population growth and creating more jobs. With a more investor-friendly Law on Enterprise and simplified business procedures, thousands of new enterprises are set up each month, thus creating more job opportunities from family companies and small companies and reducing pressure on employment in rural areas.

 

Improving the quality of education to uplift intellectual levels and professional qualifications to fit the country’s development requirements is also of high priorities. The scale of education is quickly expanded, especially at higher education and vocational education levels. In the 2009 - 2010 academic year, Vietnam had nearly 23 million students at all levels, an increase of 1.02 times from the 2000 - 2001 school year. The rate of trained labourers rose from 20 percent in 2000 to 40 percent in 2010, initially satisfying labour market demand. Besides, the development in both quantity and quality of health care services, the improvement of working conditions and environmental hygiene are also given more care.

 

Environmentally, so far, Vietnam has applied many policies, programmes and projects to prevent land degradation, boost the efficient and sustainable use of land resources like allocating forestland to local households, planting forests, protecting watersheds, expanding agroforestry model, developing perennial trees and native trees, conserving and using submerged land and forest sustainably, managing river basins, etc.

According to Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan, the results achieved in the past time deserve a pride but they also expose limitations needed to be addressed. Particularly, care and guidance are not enough at all levels, productivity in some fields tend to be decline, many sectors only care about capital balance and production land rather human resources development, environmental pollution is not reduced, income gap is widening, scientific and technological development fails to meet requirements.

 

According to Nhan, Vietnam needs long-term solutions and roadmaps to ensure macroeconomic stability and sustainable development. It needs to balance the capital, land, people and energy; supervise export development; boost State budget efficiency, especially investment for difficult areas; promote the role of science and technology; and support the development of small and medium enterprises.

 

Besides, he noted that Vietnam needs to introduce indicators to monitor sustainable development process, specially labour productivity, law observance, social security standard, and internet-based information accessibility. Specifically, it needs to complete its system of indicators to define the implementation of sustainable development programmes at local, national and sector scopes, and determine operating principles of participatory units in sustainable development target programmes.

 

Deputy Prime Minister said, after this conference, the Ministry of Planning and Investment shall quickly complete reports on solutions and indicator systems to submit to the Government the Vietnam Sustainable Development Orientation for the 2011 - 2020 period and the National Action Plan for Sustainable Development for the 2011 - 2015 period by February 2011. Ministries, branches and localities build action plans and programmes by June 2011.