Over the past years, the government promulgated policies and action plans aiming to protect and upgrade the land environment. However, the policies have not helped much due to the problems in the management and financial resources allocation mechanism.

Land gets polluted and degraded

According to the Statistical Yearbook 2009, the total natural land area of the country was 33 million hectares, including 26.1 million hectares of land for agriculture, forestry and aquaculture, 3.7 million hectares for non-agricultural purposes, and 3.3 million hectares have not been put into use.

The noteworthy thing is that most of the unused area have been degraded, or have been experiencing the desertification, or it has lost the value due to the irrational exploitation. A large area of agricultural and non-agricultural land fund has become seriously polluted amid the increasing population and the strong development of new urban areas and industrial zones.

Experts have expressed their worry that more and more agricultural land area has been taken back by the State to allocate new urban area, industrial zone and infrastructure investors. The Earth Science Association’s report shows that in 2000-2007, about 70,000 hectares of land were taken back to give place to industrial development, while the figure tends to increase in the time to come.

Surveys have found out that both agricultural and non-agricultural land have been polluted at certain levels. In agricultural production, the unreasonable use of chemical fertilizer or pesticide abuse all can lead to the land, water and air pollution. Meanwhile, industrial production, construction and the activities people’s daily life not only can lead to the existence of persistent heavy metals such as lead, zinc, copper, nickel, cadmium, but also cause many types of air emissions, hazardous radioactive.

Besides, the big volume of chemical residues left after the war, is also a source of pollution which devastates the land quality. The 2010 national environment report shows that at least 77 million liters of herbicides were used by U.S. troops during the war in Vietnam, half of which was the Agent Orange contained high levels of dioxin.

The dioxin affected land areas are mostly in the south of Vietnam, especially at military airports. The dioxin concentration has reduced significantly after 40 years since the war ended. However, the dioxin concentration remains very high, at over 300,000 ppt TEQ, in some localities.

Worries have been raised not only about the factors that cause pollution to the land, but also about the factors that cause the land degradation, such as the climate change, runoff, soil erosion and desertification.

Mountainous areas, with steep terrain, face the risk of land erosion. Meanwhile, the areas from Quang Binh to Binh Thuan provinces are threatened by the sand desert tendency. Meanwhile, the climate change is the big threat to all localities. Especially, the Mekong Delta is believed to be the biggest sufferer which is facing the sea water rise.

What to do?

In 2003, the Prime Minister released the decision on approving the plan to settle the places that cause serious environment pollution, under which 439 serious polluters would be cleared up by 2007 and 3856 by 2012.

Later, Vietnam enacted the 2003 Land Law, the 2004 Forest Protection and Development and the 2005 Environment Protection Law, which all have the stipulations relating to the land environment protection.

In 2008, the Prime Minister issued the decision on the establishment and operation of the fund for environment improvement and recovery applied to mineral exploitation activities.

A lot of policies and regulations have been issued aiming to protect the environment. However, the policies have not brought the desired effects due to the problems in the financial resource management and allocation.

To date, the main financial source for environment protection and improvement comes from the state budget and the local environment funds. However, in reality, local funds cannot cover the huge expenses on environment protection, while localities have to rely on the support from ministries and branches.