Environment law to offer public oversight

According to Article 118 of the draft amendments to the Law on Environmental Protection, state agencies must publicise environmental impact reports, strategic environmental impact assessments and investment projects’ environmental protection plans.

Most notably, all results of the inspection test on environmental protection must be available to the public.

Additionally, social organisations and those operating in the field of environmental protection shall have the rights to discuss environmental protection issues along with state management agencies and owners of businesses.

They shall also be allowed to participate in the inspection of environmental protection standards at firms, and be able to recommend that violations and compensation for environmental damage should be implemented.

The existing Law on Environmental Protection issued in 2005 fails to clearly spell out what types of environmental information the public can access, and also does not specify the rights of organisations to act on such information. It also fails to empower any agency to guide the publication of such information. As a result, information on environmental issues is rarely made available to the public.

Publicised environmental information and data is vital

“People must have the rights to access accurate information. For example, one of the major concerns of both international and non-governmental organisations (NGO) is how to facilitate the public and organisations to appraise and supervise environmental impact assessments,” said Pham Kim Ngoc, director of Research Centre for Gender, Family and Environment in Development, an NGO.

“Environmental impact assessments of investment projects are currently only appraised by local authorities, and don’t involve the residents at places where the projects are located,” Ngoc told VIR.

Lawyer Tran Huong Trang, who engages in a UNDP project to analyse the new law, elaborated that under the current law’s Article 17.5, “Organisations and individuals may send petitions and recommendations concerning environmental protection to the agency establishing the appraisal council and the project-approval agency; the council and agency shall have to consider the petitions and recommendations before making conclusions or decisions”.

“However, the law does not have a mechanism to facilitate the public to provide effective feedback and comments. If there is no independent institution or agency in charge of ensuring the public’s views are heard, there is no guarantee the feedback and comments are considered,” Trang said.

“With the current mechanism, the council and agency can’t consider the public’s recommendations objectively because they are the ones that have approved the projects,” she explained.

However this obvious proposal is currently absent in the draft amendments to the Law on Environmental Protection.

The Government Inspectorate also said it was vital to publicise environmental information and data. However, the draft amendments to the Law on Environmental Protection currently fail to specify how such information would be publicised.