Vietnam

Mr. Chairman, distinguished delegates,
Sustainable consumption and production is essential to achieve sustainable development.
Although sustainable consumption and production is still new concept in Vietnam, our
government has taken some actions towards sustainable consumption and production
during the last decade.
One of those actions is cleaner production application in enterprises. Cleaner production
approach has been started in Vietnam since late 1990s. Our government has promulgated
the Strategy for Cleaner Production in Industry to the year 2015 and vision to the year
2020. Cleaner production has been regulated in Environmental Protection Law and in
National Strategy for Sustainable Development (Vietnam Agenda 21). The Cleaner
production model applied in enterprises for the past 10 years prove to be an effective
environmental management instrument that can help enterprises enable to achieve
sustainable business. The model can be flexibly applied at different extents and degrees
and serves a strategy or an approach to industrial production and business development.
Naturally, the model helps industries enable to solve environmental and natural resources
issues by improving the efficiency of resources utilization leading to reduced production
costs, increased profits, improved compliance of environmental and social requirements
and improved competitiveness towards achieving sustainable consumption and
production.
Another practice of sustainable consumption and production is 3R (reuse, recycle,
recovery) action, which is being implemented in the country under the support of
Japanese Government.
Our government has also developed economic incentives to encourage environmental
friendly investments such as subsidy for environmental friendly products, give
preferential credits and loans for environmental protection activities and investments.
?Green economy? or ?green growth? aproach and reasearch has been integrated into
national socio-eonomic development strategy for the next 10 years 2011-2020. This
strategy has insisted on the objectives of sustainable growth and the stability of the
economy.
Vietnam is one of the most affected countries by climate change. Our government has
promulgated National Target Program to respond to climate change. With the support
from international donors, we are now starting studies on low carbon economy model,
which will be considered to integrate in national development plan. We understand that
the implementation of sustainable consumption and production is one of measures
contributing to the mitigation of climate change impact. Therefore, sustainable
consumption and production should be paid more attention by the government.
From our experience and practice, some challenges have been identified as follows:
- Constraint on state management and resource.
- Lack of finance and financial mechanism for sustainable consumption and production.
- Lack of basic infrastructure and technical skills.
- Awareness of business of community on sustainable consumption and production is still
limited.
- Lack of information is threats and opportunities for Vietnamese enterprises to apply
tools toward sustainable production and consumption patterns.
Mr. Chairman,
Promote sustainable consumption and production patterns are essential to all countries. In
this cycle we look forwards the international cooperation in identifying the follow-up
actions to implement the 10 year framework program on sustainable consumption and
production. Strengthening cooperation among countries should be promoted to assist
countries in their shift to sustainable consumption and production. We also look forwards
the effective support from developed countries in helping the developing countries to
implement sustainable consumption and production.
Thank you for your attention.