Ho Chi Minh City is set to carry out five groups of measures for environmental protection during 2021 - 2030 so as to continue easing pollution, improving environmental quality, and adapting to climate change towards the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
Nguyen Toan Thang, Director of the municipal Department of Natural Resources and Environment, said the municipal People’s Committee approved an environmental pollution mitigation programme for the period with five groups of measures.
Apart from increasing communications, the city will perfect mechanisms and policies for attracting investment to environment protection, ensure favourable and equitable access for investors to develop environmentally friendly technologies, and consolidate the apparatus and human resources for implementing the set targets.
It will step up examination of natural resource use, environmental protection, and climate change response. Besides, cooperation with nearby localities and international partners will be enhanced to solve environmental issues and cope with climate change.
In particular, HCM City will boost investment in high technology, encourage the application of advanced technology and equipment to production and business activities, minimise waste release, thoroughly deal with pollution, utilise waste to produce energy, and focus on structural solutions to help ease pollution.
From now to 2025, the city will mobilise more than 41 trillion VND (1.8 billion USD) for building various wastewater treatment plants so as to raise the rate of treated wastewater to 58 percent by 2025 and 88.3 percent by 2030, Thang said.
Highlighting significant results of the pollution mitigation programme for 2016 - 2020, he noted all the industrial parks have been equipped with concentrated wastewater treatment systems, 100 percent of the landfill sites met technical standards, and 100 percent of the local households accessed clean water.
The biggest success is that public awareness of environmental protection and climate change response has been improved, while many pollution hotspots eliminated and turned into places for community activities, according to the official./
