Community Consultation on Environmental Impact Assessment

ECONOMY-SCIENTIFIC-TECHNOLOGY

26 November 2011 | 07:42:00 PM

Community consultation on environmental impact assessment (EIA) is being taken lightly in our country. This was a statement of the Vietnam Environment and Sustainable Development Institute (VESDI, under VACNE) at a workshop conducted recently in Hanoi. It was drawn from study results of 6 case projects sponsored by Oxfam and implemented in Vietnam recently.

According to the study results, state legal documents, namely Circulation No. 05/2008 of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE), has not been implemented effectively. The community consultation in the process of elaborating EIA reports for nearly all social economic development projects (including those at the national level) is only formalistic and pretentious. It is due to lack of full and proper awareness of the role of community consultation. Most of the responsible institutions (namely project managers) regard the community consultation as a hindrance without knowing that it's an opportunity for them to receive local knowledge for improving a quality EIA report and for creating social consensus with the project. However, there's a core issue which shouldn't be left out: many regulations in this field are outdated, unclear, and not obligatory.

Especially, transferring responsibility for community consultation from project managers to local authorities and social organizations is a mistake because these institutions do not understand EIA reports well and are not able to respond to relevant institutions as well as to local people in the process of consultation. From the results of the study researchers also pointed out many gaps in regulations, in elaborating EIA reports, and in providing time and technique for community consultation, etc. that should be amended.

The Oxfam's representative highly appreciated the research results and expressed his wish to continue cooperating with VESDI and VACNE as well.