Green Growth Goals: Still in Far Distance

Dr Nguyen Dinh Cung, President of CIEM, said that Vietnam is among the most vulnerable countries to climate change, according to international scientists. Therefore, integrating green growth objectives into socioeconomic development plans of centrally run provinces and cities is essential for Vietnam to achieve growth targets and sustainable development. He said that although the Government of Vietnam has worked hard to actively engage in and support these green growth initiatives and contents at regional and global forums. Nevertheless, the integration of green growth strategy objectives into provincial/municipal socioeconomic development plans has yet to achieve desired results.

 

Mr Tran Trung Hieu, Deputy Director of Economic Institution Department (CIEM), said that Vietnam should mainstream green growth into the process of planning local economic development, phased annually, from now till 2020 and beyond. In particular, Vietnam should focus on greening lifestyle and greening production to raise the green production share to the gross domestic product (GDP). Specifically, greening lifestyle and sustainable consumption contents are approached by Vietnam’s national action plans, including 13 operations (two groups). Group one is developing green and sustainable cities and the group two is promoting green lifestyle. Thus, every city or province should actively study and deploy these contents, depending on its size, population density, living habits and economic conditions. It needs to identify some pressing issues such as limited collection and treatment of waste water and solid waste, uncontrollable and expansive pollution (especially in rural areas), and shortage of trees and water surfaces.

 

Insufficient budget, knowledge and personnel capacity are also attributed to the slowness in delivering green growth objectives. According to experts, provinces and cities should consult green growth models; take measures to mobilise and exploit general resources for green growth strategies; and create positive changes from planning to carrying-out of green growth plans, Mr Hieu said.

 

Laying emphasis on the significance of green growth objectives, Dr Nguyen Dinh Cung said that local authorities still focus on economic growth rather than green objectives. Thus, top-notch specialists advocated main-streaming and mixing green growth strategy objectives into local socioeconomic development plans to achieve more substantive green growth objectives. Hence, it is time to change towards sustainable economic development. It is impossible to have a green economy while coal-fired power production is still abundant while alternatives are available.

 

For that reason, three economic growth lines, namely economic restructuring, growth model change and green growth must be intertwined. Wherein, growth model change is mainstream and green growth is primary not supporting as earlier. If we do not adopt this thinking, our growth pace will regress, Cung warned.