Vietnam works to manage, eliminate POPs

Hanoi, July 10 (VNA) - The Environment Administration under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment on July 8 held a conference to launch a project to update Vietnam’s national implementation plan for the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants (POPs). The two-year project, funded by the United Nations Development Programme’s Global Environment Facility (GEF), has been conducted since 2013 with the aim of realising Vietnam ’s obligations under the convention. According to Dr. Nguyen Anh Tuan from the Pollution Control Department, the project includes five components, including stocktaking POPs, assessing the national capacity in implementing the convention, and defining priorities of the plan. The plan, to be updated with a system of actions and synchronic measures to better meet requirements of the convention, will be submitted to the Prime Minister for approval, and then sent to the Conference of the Parties to the Stockholm Convention. Tran The Loan, deputy head of the Pollution Control Department under the Environment General Department, noted that Vietnam has actively engaged in controlling pollutants with specific actions, including the ratification of the convention and a number of laws such as the Law on Environmental Protection and the Law on Chemical. The country will also renew the plan with more effective policies, laws, management institutions, technologies and financial sources, while designing a roadmap to implement it, thus contributing to protecting people’s health and the environment from POPs, he said. Signed in Stockholm in 2001 and become effective in 2004, the convention targets the management and elimination of 23 dangerous groups of chemicals. Vietnam ratified the convention in July 2002, becoming the 14th signatory party.-VNA