This has been the highlight of VACNE's past few weeks, ever since the Association received the Official Letter from the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations and the National Assembly's Committee for Science, Technology and Environment regarding feedback on the document "Adjustments and Amendments to Certain Provisions of the Environmental Protection Law." Right after that, the leaders and Standing Committee members of the Association held a discussion and shared many heartfelt written contributions to address the "bottlenecks" and help perfect this important Law. 

The experts attending the meeting all expressed sincere attitudes and basically agreed with the draft document sent for feedback, but quite a few delegates expressed 'concerns' and wanted more clarification on related issues, especially the 'post-inspection' issue and 'decentralisation' without clearly stating the accompanying solutions, particularly regarding digital transformation. At the same time, there is a very specific request to clarify, adjust, and revise the terms recorded in a series of law articles; specific provisions about the subjects and objects in environmental impact assessment activities to avoid confusion in scope, authority, and to clarify the responsibilities of management agencies. Especially, there were quite a few comments on the issue of the circular economy and digital transformation mentioned in the law, particularly the construction of a national waste database, improving tools, financial incentive mechanisms, and building and operating a carbon market suitable for Vietnam’s conditions.

With a frank attitude and high responsibility, at this important meeting, the experts from the Vietnam Environmental Protection Association also suggested: it is necessary to supplement and complete Chapter XIII of the current Environmental Protection Law, titled 'Rights and responsibilities of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, social organisations, and local communities in environmental protection'. This chapter should have 5 articles: Rights and responsibilities of the Vietnam Fatherland Front; Rights and responsibilities of political and social organisations; Rights and responsibilities of religious organisations; Rights and responsibilities of local communities (according to the terminology defined in Clause 2, Article 2 of Decree 185/2026/ND-CP dated 26/5/2026).

In addition, the delegates all agreed to ask the drafting committee to add to the Environmental Protection Law the principle of creating a plan to prevent and respond to environmental incidents in a unified way for facilities or localities with multiple sources of risk. This includes presenting sector-specific response contents as parts, chapters, scenarios, or annexes of the same plan; clearly stating the legal value of sector-specific contents integrated into the environmental incident prevention and response plan; synchronously reviewing and amending sectoral documents on oil spills, chemicals, fire prevention, civil defence, and waste management to ensure consistency with the integrated approach; and establishing mechanisms for assessment, approval, issuance, updating, and inspection of environmental incident prevention and response plans through a single-entry, inter-sector, multi-specialist participation approach, etc. 

There is an opinion that electronic waste should be included in the new Law because this type of waste is appearing in very large quantities and is difficult to handle, while we do not yet have corresponding legal regulations like for some other hazardous wastes. Therefore, it is necessary to add provisions for classifying electronic waste (hazardous and non-hazardous), add provisions to enhance the accountability of electronic device manufacturers, regulations related to the collection and treatment of electronic waste, and other related provisions. In particular, all delegates agreed: to continue considering adding a "retroactive" element in the Law, because Article 53 in the first Environmental Protection Law (1993) already had this provision for handling environmental violations. This law was highly appreciated, applied in practice, and had clear and effective deterrent significance.