Supplementing policies and regimes for national environmental incident response forces

On October 26, 2023, Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha signed Decision No. 1251/QD-TTg approving the Program to enhance national capacity to prevent and respond to environmental incidents by 2030.

The program sets specific goals, in the period of 2023 - 2025, to strive to complete the amendment and supplementation of legal regulations on monitoring, warning and response to national environmental incidents, perfect the organizational system, supplement functions, tasks, regimes and policies for national environmental incident response forces; build a coordination mechanism in the work of preventing, detecting and responding to national environmental incidents.

supplementary policy for national environmental response forces figure 1 — Illustration

Along with that, complete the development of scenarios, response procedures, guidance documents and conduct investigations, surveys, and assessments of national-level environmental incident risks nationwide; complete the monitoring system, improve monitoring and warning capacity; complete the construction of a database on forces and means of responding to national-level environmental incidents.

Strive for 100% of national environmental incident response plans of ministries, branches and localities to be issued.

In the 2026 - 2030 period, strive to complete capacity building for forces participating in responding to national environmental incidents; 100% of officers directly performing the task of responding to national environmental incidents will be trained to improve their qualifications and capacity to practice technical solutions.

To achieve the above objectives, the Program sets out 6 tasks and solutions for implementation, including: Completing policies and laws on prevention and response to national environmental incidents; completing the system of organizing forces to respond to national environmental incidents; improving the monitoring and warning capacity of monitoring stations to respond to national environmental incidents; improving the capacity to respond to national environmental incidents; raising awareness of prevention and response to national environmental incidents; strengthening international cooperation in research and organization of response to national environmental incidents.

In particular, regarding solutions to perfect policies and laws, we will study and amend and supplement functions and tasks of responding to national environmental incidents for the forces of ministries, branches and localities in the national environmental incident response system; study and complete the regime and policies for the forces performing functions and tasks of responding to national environmental incidents and study and amend, supplement and complete regulations on mechanisms for mobilizing and using resources and managing finances in responding to national environmental incidents.

At the same time, arrange and perfect the system of organizing forces to respond to environmental incidents at the national level based on the forces of the Ministry of National Defense and ministries, branches and localities to ensure good implementation of the following tasks: Monitoring; evacuation of people and assets; initial medical support; response and overcoming consequences; ensuring security and order; in which, the National Action Center for overcoming the consequences of toxic chemicals and the environment (NACCET) is the core force to ensure timely, effective and efficient operations.

Upgrade existing environmental monitoring stations of the Ministry of National Defense, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Ministry of Science and Technology ; research and forecast national-level environmental incident situations.

Promote propaganda and dissemination of laws to raise awareness of the risks and harms of national environmental incidents; the roles and responsibilities of organizations and individuals in environmental protection activities in general, and the prevention and response to national environmental incidents in particular...

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