The fatal diseases of Vietnamese urban areas

Big urban areas, especially the two biggest cities of Hanoi and HCM City have been struggling to look for the financial sources for treating urban rubbish--which makes up 46 percent of the total solid waste, according to the 2011 national environment report.

In HCM City, together with some waste recycling projects, the local authorities have been running the two Thanh Da and Phuoc Hiep dumping grounds. It is estimated that 6500 tons of garbage is treated here everyday with traditional methods, which costs 2.2 billion dong per day.

In Hanoi, where 5700 tons of garbage arises every day, the city authorities have been shocked with the service price of 400,000-600,000 dong per ton that private companies offer for waste treatment.

Under the latest capital city development plan, the 13 solid waste treatment complexes and 27 dumping grounds would only become operational after 20 years more. Meanwhile, the reports from the 18 districts in Hanoi showed that 65,000 tons of waste had not been treated by May 2012.

Hanoi spends 10-16 million dong to treat one cubic meter of domestic waste water and 10-21 million dong for industrial waste water.

HCM City also has to spend 30-40 billion dong a month on waste water treatment, but this is not enough to deal with the whole waste water in the city. As a result, the untreated waste water is running to the environment, creating the so called “black water canals.” Meanwhile, the city has to spend big money to dredge the canals and improve the water quality.

Some years ago, HCM City carried out a big project on dredging the Nhieu Loc – Thi nghe canal to revive the canal. However, the price of the revival of the canal was very high, 8.6 trillion dong.

Meanwhile, other “black water areas” such as Tau Hu – Ben Nghe, Tan Hoa – Lo Gom, Tham Luong – Ben Cat still have been existing. The local authorities still have not found out any solutions to the problems. If carrying out an environment improvement project, the site clearance alone would cost trillions of dong.

In Hanoi, the project on dredging the Dam Va canal in Me Linh district alones cost 82.2 billion dong.

The General Directorate of Environment has informed that Vietnam urgently needs 160 trillion dong, or 7.6 billion dollars for environment protection projects.

The Eco2city remedy

Eco2city, or Ecological City as Economic City, a component of Ecocity (Ecological City) is an initiative of the World Bank which aims to generate the harmonization in economic development and environment protection in big cities, especially the ones in developing countries.

Seven countries including Canada, Brazil, Sweden, Singapore, Japan, Australia and New Zealand have been cited as the typical examples as the success stories about Eco2city.

With the assistance of the specialists from the World Bank, two Eco2city projects have kicked off in HCM City in the south and Da Nang in the central region. The project on developing Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in HCM City has been implemented since July 2011, while the project on designing green bus corridor has been started in Da Nang since April 2012. Da Nang has officially made public the plan “Da Nang – Eco2city” earlier this year.

DNSGCT