"Earth Hour" photo contest launched by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) had received nearly 600 photos by April 6. The photos show photographers' experience about the Earth Hour campaign in Vietnam, reflecting a part of enthusiastic response of Vietnamese people to the event.
Garbage collection fees in HCM City will go up from May 1, according to a senior official. Nguyen Trung Tin, vice chairman of the city People’s Committee, announced the increase in a meeting last week with district administration officials, adding that the fees would augment the city budget for collecting, transporting and treating waste.
Many craft villages were seriously polluted, the latest national environmental report showed. The report, National Environmental Report 2008: Viet Nam Craft Village Environment, is part of Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE)’s five-year master report on the environment. It provides an overview of the villages’ development and actions to deal with pollution.
Illegal hunting has increased rapidly at border regions of the southern Cat Tien National Park recently, but forest rangers say the park’s location, spread over three provinces, makes their job of protecting rare wildlife more difficult. The park is spread over the three provinces of Lam Dong, Dong Nai and Binh Phuoc.
Japan has just signed an agreement to help Hai Phong become a model city in the country for environmental management and sustainable development. The agreement was signed last Friday between the chairman of Hai Phong’s People’s Committee and the mayor of Kitakyushu, Japan.
The Ha Noi Department of Natural Resources and Environment has sent three inspection teams out to monitor firms suspected of dumping toxic waste into the Nhue River. Head of the Environment Protection Division Nguyen Van Luong said the authority had decided to act swiftly after nearly 10 tonnes of dead fish were removed from a 2km stretch of the river running through the Ha Dong City early last month.
Policy makers, managers and scientists from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and representatives of international organisations and donors are attending a consulting seminar on water and sanitation in Mekong region which opened in Hanoi on April 20.
The Central Highlands province of Dak Nong is rapidly losing large tracts of tropical forests, with rangers struggling to cope with increasing illegal loggers. Deforestation intensified during the last year, with 440 hectares lost – an increase of 55 percent from the previous year – according to the province’s Department of Forestry.
The HCM City Department of Natural Resources and the Environment Police Department will carry our surprise inspections of all factories operating in high-pollution industries. These included chemical, textile, dye, food processing, cement and others.
France’s Nord Pas de Calais region has provided 47,000 EUR for the construction of a tissue culture lab worth 2.6 billion VND to serve afforestation in central Thua Thien – Hue Province. The 300 sq.m nursery, which has a capacity of one million plants per year, is part of the cooperation between the French region and Thua Thien – Hue Province in agricultural sector.