Fisheries to cut greenhouse emissions

The domestic fisheries sector has set itself the target of reducing gas emissions, particularly in aquaculture activities, by 20 percent over the next 10 years.

Officials with the Vietnam Research Institute for Aquaculture (RIA) said the fisheries sector in general and aquaculture in particular have made important contributions to the national economy, but they were also guilty of polluting the environment with greenhouse emissions.
In 2010, the aquaculture sector recorded an output of 2.8 million tonnes but they also produced about 4.33 million tonnes of Carbon dioxide (C02), experts estimated.

They also estimated that the sector's gas emissions would reach 6.66 million tonnes by 2015 and 8.33 million tonnes by 2020 if farming conditions are unchanged.

In Vietnam, the use of fossil fuel energy in aquaculture is common. Petroleum products including petrol, diesel oil and kerosene are used for several purposes including feeding, pumping water, aeration of ponds and harvesting.

These activities accounted for 80 to 90 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions by the sector, RIA experts said.

Apart from aquaculture, the fishing industry also emits a significant volume of greenhouse gases.

In recent years, the fishing industry has developed rapidly, but small, low-capacity fishing still accounts for up to 84 percent of its fleet. Eighty eight per cent of these vehicles operate near the shore and 88.58 percent use old engines.

The country now has 700 shipbuilding establishments with a combined capacity of making 4,000 boats and repairing 8,000 boats per year. But they cannot build fishing vessels with new technology that reduces gas emissions.

To reduce gas emissions by the sector reduction target, RIA has prepared a seven-pronged plan that will be applied to aquaculture farms.

Suggested measures

The proposed measures include reducing the use of fossil energy fuels and increasing that of renewable energy sources; improving production efficiency and farm management; and effectively transforming available sources including residues to create biomass that will be used for fishing and aquaculture activities.

They suggest close co-operation between fishing enterprises, logistics firms and seafood processors operating in an area to increase operational efficiency and use less energy.

RIA deputy director Phan Thi Van said greenhouse gas emissions was a problem not only in Vietnam but also other countries in the world.

The Government should facilitate co-operation with other countries, particularly experts at universities and research institutes, to share experiences and exchange information in order to introduce more effective measures to minimise greenhouse gas emissions, she said.

Floodwaters receding in upper reaches of Mekong River

Floodwaters are beginning to recede in the upper reaches of Long Xuyen Quadrangular and Dong Thap Muoi in the Mekong Delta, reported the National Hydro Meteorological Forecasting Center Tuesday.

 Water levels have receded from the danger mark of level 3 to 4.3m at the Tan Chau Station on Tien River and 3.9m at the Chau Doc Station on Hau River.

Floodwaters will continue to recede for the next five days. By Friday they are expected to go down to 4.05m at Tan Chau, 3.65m at Chau Doc and 2.6m at Moc Hoa Stations.

However, high tide in the lower reaches of the Mekong Delta has raised flood levels, affecting parts of the southern region.

Several dyke sections have burst, unleashing floodwaters and inundating thousands of hectares of vegetable crops and seafood farm areas in Cu Lao Dung, Ke Sach, Vinh Chau and Tran De Districts of Soc Trang Province. Damage to agro and aqua production is estimated to reach VND52 billion (US$2.5 million).

Tien Giang Province has so far reported two person dead, one a five year old child. 34 schools have shut due to flooding. The province will face a total loss of VND20 billion ($952,000) in agriculture and seafood farming.

High tide has caused landslides on 60 dyke routes in Tra Vinh Province. About 600 hectares of sugar cane and hundreds of hectares of vegetable crops have been flooded in Tra Cu District. A 1,900m dyke stretch has collapsed in Duyen Hai District.

Interpol helps Vietnam protect tiger

A press conference on a project entitled Predator to support countries fighting crimes against wild animals including the tiger, which are in danger of extinction in Vietnam was held in Hanoi by Interpol on November 2.

David Higgin, Director of the Interpol Environmental Crime Division, said the project will provide a good opportunity for an exchange of information and experience in preventing the illegal hunting and trafficking of wild animals.

Higgin confirmed that major international organisations such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank (WB) and the Smithsonian Institution will join hands to improve law enforcement and create education programmes to raise public awareness in those countries.

Interpol encourages Vietnam to become more involved in the project and pledges to provide the nation with a number of support programmes.

The sharing of information among the member countries will enable Interpol to establish effective solutions to the issue, he added.

The Interpol official praised the role of the law enforcement agencies in Vietnam in the fight against environmental crimes.

Major-General Vu Hung Vuong, Deputy Head of the General Department for Crime Prevention under the Ministry of Public Security said Vietnam always pays due attention to the protection of the environment and wild animals. Along with bolstering legislation to combine the preservation of forest and tiger, the country will continue to work on programs aimed at reducing poverty and raising public awareness of environmental protection.

Vietnam also needs support and cooperation from Interpol and other countries especially their neighbors, he added.

There are only 113 individual tigers in Vietnam and most of them are being raised in captivity. Thus, the development and preservation of the species faces extraordinary challenges. Increased participation by Vietnam in the project is expected to help solve the problems.

Forests fast shrinking in southeast, central highland regions

Over the last five years, forest area has shrunk by 158,000 hectares in southeast and central highland regions accounting for 32 percent of total forest land loss in the country, announced the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The ministry revealed this at a conference hosted recently in Buon Ma Thuot City of Dak Lak Province to discuss the problems of forest management and protection in the southeast and central highland regions.

Forest land has had to give way to rubber plantations from 2006-2010. Provinces in these regions have been permitted to convert 95,500 hectares of forest land into rubber plantations. This led to forest area being reduced by over 60 percent.

Besides, illegal logging has destroyed 9,700 hectares of forests, an average of 2,000 hectares are being chopped down annually.

Ha Cong Tan, Deputy Head of the Vietnam Administration of Forestry said that even if local authorities see forests being degraded they ignore action and leave responsibility to forest management officials or forest owners, most of whom are not adequately equipped to protect forests.

According to Nguyen Duy Hai,Deputy Chairman of the People’s Committee in Kon Tum Province, deforestation is not efficiently addressed in Vietnam.

For instance, cutting of over five cubic meters of Trac wood is a criminal offence, and less than that gets away with a small penalty. So lumberjacks chop down less than five cubic meters and willing pay off the penalty.

Mr. Hai proposed to inflict criminal charges if the value of the wood exceeded VND50 million. Although the People’s Supreme Court welcomed this suggestion, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has yet to approve.

Nguyen Duc Luyen, Deputy Chairman of the People’s Committee of Dak Nong Province proposed to review the forest area to assess area lost. He also said that forestry companies should be privatized as the government lacked funds to protect the forests.

Cao Duc Phat, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development asked local authorities to investigate the forest area still left, task companies to protect and handle deforestation cases and proposed to the Government to revise regulations on licensing sawmills.

Minister Phat instructed local authorities to remove all sawmills located near forests.

Rhino poached to extinction in Vietnam: WWF

A critically endangered species of rhino has been poached to extinction in Vietnam, wildlife groups said Tuesday after the country's last Javan rhino was found dead with its horn hacked off.

The Javan rhinoceros was pronounced extinct in Vietnam by WWF and the International Rhino Foundation (IRF) after all dung samples in a 2009 and 2010 survey at Cat Tien National Park -- the only known habitat -- were confirmed to have been from the animal.
"The last Javan rhino in Vietnam has gone," said Tran Thi Minh Hien, WWF Vietnam country director. "Vietnam has lost part of its natural heritage."
In a new report, WWF suggests poaching was the likely cause of death for the rhino, which was found in April 2010 with a bullet in its leg and its horn removed in the national park in southern Vietnam, around 160 kilometres (100 miles) from Ho Chi Minh City.
The group said "ineffective protection by the park was ultimately the cause of the extinction" and warned that illegal hunting to supply the wildlife trade threatened the futures of other rare animals in the country.
"The tragedy of the Vietnamese Javan rhinoceros is a sad symbol of this extinction crisis," said Nick Cox of WWF's species programme in the Greater Mekong.
He said efforts to protect natural habitat and deter poaching "were inadequate to save the Javan rhino" in the country and predicted the "continued situation will no doubt lead to the extinction of many more species in Vietnam".
The rhinoceros was believed to be extinct on mainland Asia until 1988 when one of the animals was hunted from the Cat Tien area, leading to the discovery of a small population.
Javan rhinos are critically endangered, with barely 50 individuals left in a single group in a small national park in Indonesia.
WWF said Asia's voracious demand for rhino horn for traditional medicine continues to increase every year, meaning "protection and expansion of the Indonesian population is the highest priority".
The group said other species on the verge of extinction in Vietnam include the tiger, Asian elephant and Siamese crocodile.

Warning of disease risk from wild animals

High-risk behaviours, such as using wild animals as food and as a medicine source will increase the danger of disease transmission from wild animals to people and domestic animals. 
The warning was given by international experts who attended a seminar on the situation of emerging diseases and wild animals in Vietnam , in Hanoi on March 15

The seminar was jointly held by the Wildlife Conservation Society in Vietnam , the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Recent reports showed that 75 percent of infectious diseases in humans originated from animals, the experts said, adding that Southeast Asia is a hot spot of emerging disease outbreak.Director of USAID Vietnam Francis Donovan said people throughout the world have a better understanding of the connection between human health, animal health and the environment, adding that Vietnam is one of the pioneers in applying the “One-Health” approach to develop policies in preparation for pandemics.Since the transmission of such pandemics as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) or bird flu caused serious impacts on public health and economic development, it is necessary to raise capacity to discover and cope with dangerous diseases, the USAID Director said.

PT_Source: vfej.vn

Technology transfer still facing big barriers

The policy on developing renewable energy has been applied for a long time. However, there has been no considerable progress in utilizing renewable energy in daily life, which has been attributed to unreasonable policies.

In September 2010, the HCM City’s authorities decided to develop a project on solar electricity for local residents in Thieng Lieng hamlet in Can Gio District. The project, initiated in early January and completed on January 26, has brought electricity to 174 households in the suburb area. With the project, electricity has also been brought to the works of public interest such as the hamlet’s management board, a forest management station, a healthcare center,  the Thieng Lieng Primary School, a customs station and a border control station.

However, experts say that the solar electricity projects that are running so far are just for “performance”. Solar energy projects still has not been developed on a large scale because the overly high investment capital is a deterrent to investors. To date, the solar water heater project remains the most successful project with the high growth rate of 200 percent per annum.

The door to the market open

Tuan An Energy Trade Company has invested two billion dong to build up a solar power system for an office building in Binh Tan District in HCM City which has the capacity of 70KW per day.

The door to the renewable energy market is now open. At the end of January, the US First Solar Group was granted a license to build a solar panel factory in Vietnam with a total investment capital of one billion dollars. Philips also plans to build a factory to build LED lamps that utilize energy saving technology in Vietnam. Experts say that this should be seen as a good sign for the renewable energy market in Vietnam because big foreign economic groups will bring modern technologies to Vietnam, and their appearance will make policy makers pay more attention to the field. Besides, big foreign groups will also help attract more foreign investors to Vietnam who will operate in supporting industries.

Red Sun, a Vietnamese company that also specializes in solar cells in Long An province, has also announced that it will expand its production scale. Chair of Red Sun Huynh Kim Tuoc said he does not feel the pressure of the competition from the US First Solar Group because the two factories will churn out two different product lines.

Tuoc said that Vietnam needs to pay more attention to technology transfer rather than research. In the production of solar cells, for example, while new technologies have been utilized widely in the world, Vietnam is still busy pursuing academic, scientific research. Meanwhile, it would be simpler to import technologies to utilize domestically.

In the production of solar water heater, the most important component of the product, the heating tube, is still being imported from China even though the technology is not too complicated. A tube production line now has the price of 700,000 dollar. However, many enterprises still cannot import the production line due to financial incapabilities.

The barriers that need to be overcome

Professor Dr Phan Hong Khoi from the Vietnam Science and Technology Institute said that there are many barriers that need to be overcome in order to improve the current situation.

The first barrier is that it is necessary to upgrade technologies. For example,, in producing LED lamps, the life expectancy of a lamp depends on the environment and technology, which explains why a lamp can only last for 10 years while another can last for much longer.

The second barrier comes from how clients discover new technologies. In many cases, though technologies bring efficiency in energy saving, environment protection and emission reductions, they still find it hard to find clients.

The production cost is also a big barrier for enterprises to conquer the market. Therefore, enterprises should understand that high initial expenses can bring long term benefits.

The story about the consumption of laptops and mobile phones is a typical example. When they first appeared on the market, they had very high sale prices. However, later, together with the development of technologies, the products have become cheaper. The same scenario may happen with solar cells, wind solar or LED lamps, and the products will become more popular and cheaper.

Meanwhile, experts have urged government agencies to apply reasonable policies to encourage foreign investors to transfer technologies. They said that currently, foreign economic groups come to Vietnam just to take full advantages of low investment costs and investment incentives, while they do not pay attention to technology transfer.

Every year, Vietnam imports 10 billion dollars worth of technologies, while the technology export turnover remains very modest.

PT_Source: Thoi bao Vi Tinh Saigon