This report shares the results of holistic assessments of opportunities and constraints for solving some of Viet Nam’s most pressing industrial environmental problems, paying due attention to their socioeconomic context. These served to inform and guide the development of a policy framework for widescale deployment of Green Industry approaches to ultimately achieve Green Growth in Viet Nam. A total of three replicable pilots were undertaken, from which lessons learnt and best practices were brought together to form the basis for overall policy recommendations and quantified targets. Firstly, benchmarking against good international practices in the Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) steel sector was combined with a sectoral voluntary agreement and technology roadmap, to offer a highly innovative yet equally feasible approach for Green Industry development in resource- and energy-intensive sectors. Secondly, the determination of the local government to develop an Eco-City in Hoi An by 2030 represents a golden opportunity to realise multi-faceted development benefits in a tourismdriven regional economy, for which a Green Industry Action Plan was devised to help improve environmental amenity and foster economic growth. Thirdly, in the Binh Yen Village it was found that recycling of aluminium scrap into cookware had seemingly offered overnight prosperity, but created severe pollution which poses significant health risks and is therefore untenable from the perspective of long-term sustainable development. Villagers are caught up in a dilemma between short-term creation of jobs and incomes, and medium-term health and environmental impacts and costs, which ultimately they cannot resolve on their own.
The results of these pilots show emphatically that command and control measures alone cannot be a panacea for all of today’s industrial, environmental and economic woes. It is here that Green Industry approaches to Green Growth deliver a clean break with the outmoded break-neck speed industrial development models of yesteryear and reconcile environmental and socio-economic concerns by placing them on an equal footing as opposed to dismissing one in favour of the other as antithetic objectives. The overarching policy framework suggested for adoption by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, therefore combines the setting of guiding quantitative goals for the improvement of resource productivity and environmental performance, with specific initiatives to improve policy coherence at the national and sub-national levels, improve availability and access to appropriate technologies, provide customized business advisory services, and mainstream Green Industry into sectoral strategies.
