Decision No. 1216/QD-TTg approving the National Strategy on Environment Protection to 2020 with Visions to 2030.

This National Strategy on Environment Protection (NSEP) to 2020, with Visions to 2030 is a nationwide multi-sectoral policy document. The NSEP's general objectives to 2020 are: to generally control and minimize the increase of environment pollution, resource deterioration and biodiversity degradation; to further improve quality of the habitate; to raise the capability of responding climate change, striving for sustainbale national development. Visions to 2030 are: to prevent and push back environment pollution, resource deterioration and biodiversity degradation; to improve quality of the habitat; to actively respond to climate change; to create fundamental conditions for a green economy, with low waste and low carbon, for the sake of the country’s prosperity and sustainable development.
To achieve the objectives and visions, specific targets are identified, including: To reduce sources of environment pollution; To improve the environment in polluted and deteriorated areas; to better living conditions of people; To mitigate deterioration and exhaustion of natural resources; to restrain the degradation of biodiversity; To improve the capability of actively responding climate change and reduce the increase of greenhouse gas emissions. The NSEP promotes to make agriculture, forestry and fisheries more sustainable contains. It develops 60 indicators, of which many are on the environment and rural development, including: Communes meeting environment and hygiene standards; Rural solid wastes collected; Area of deteriorated ecosystems recovered or regenerated; Rural population supplied with clean water; Rural households having standard sanitation; Area of agricultural lands lost due to use purpose conversion, degradation, impoverishment, and desertization; Area of cultivating lands; Forest covery; Area of primitive forests; Total area of natural reservices; Number of endangered rare and precious species; etc. Proposed solutions include: To establish self-governing organizations in charge of environment protection within handicraft villages and issue regulations on responsibility and obligation of environment protection as well as on paying tax and fee for dealing with pollution and improving environment; To promptly plan and mitigate waste-related issues in rural areas; to encourage the campaign of keeping households, villages and hamlet clean; to mitigate environment pollution resulted from husbandry activities in rural areas; To build environment protection works in rural areas, such as waste collection and treatment facilities, sewage drainages, cemetaries, ponds and lakes; to boost the planting of trees; to build public entertainment areas; to include environment criteria into the national goal program on new rural development. The NSEP further identifies solutions to use land resources effectively and sustainably and reduce the losses of agricultural lands due to use purpose conversion, degradation, impoverishment, and desertization. It also calls for speeding up the application of economic mechanisms and tools in conformity with market economic regimes in order to realize macro manipulations of development activities toward environmental friendliness, especially through tax, fee, security, payment for environment services, and natural capital accounts.
The NSEP promotes to reduce rural poverty through continuing the implementation of the National Goal Program on Clean Water and Rural Environment Hygiene, focusing on regions with low percentage of residents accessing to clean water or regions lacking water resources which can replace clean water; investing capital for upgrading, renewing and building clean water supply works in rural areas, especially remote regions; gradually narrowing the water quality gap between urban and rural areas, to apply uniform technical standards of domestic water quality both in urban and rural areas; etc.
In terms of increasing capability of responding to climate change and mitigating the increase of greenhouse gas emission, main solutions include:To survey and add up good models and experience of preventing, coping with and responding to natural disasters, supplementing and finalizing them in line with climate change context, then popularizing them; To regularly launch film and photo contests and competitions on climate change, to introduce the topic of climate change to performance programs of organizations and communities; To organize periodical rehearsals for responding to natural disasters in the climate change context by regions and by groups of calamities; To research new tendencies, changes and models of development, especially in regional and global economic structures, in order to make full use of opportunities and minimize negative impacts of climate change on environment.