Amending Law on Environmental Protection: [4] Local authorities are responsible for pollution

According to the draft law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the 2020 Law on Environmental Protection, provincial People’s Committee chairpersons will be held responsible if environmental pollution occurs in their localities. This provision aims to align with the strong decentralization policy under the principle of “localities decide, localities implement, and localities take responsibility.”

Persistent environmental issues remain common in surface water, air, and soil - areas largely under local management. Therefore, in the draft amendments to the 2020 Law on Environmental Protection, provisions on environmental quality management have been reviewed and revised to ensure consistency with related legal frameworks, address practical challenges, strengthen decentralization, clearly define state management responsibilities, and enhance feasibility in implementation.

Strengthening decentralization in environmental quality management

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Amending Law on Environmental Protection: [1] New legislative mindset

Amending Law on Environmental Protection: [2] Strong reform procedures

In terms of surface water protection, the draft introduces more flexible application of environmental carrying capacity assessments in setting wastewater discharge standards. It distinguishes between cases where surface water has exceeded capacity for all parameters and cases where only certain parameters exceed limits.

This revision addresses shortcomings in current regulations, which lack clear criteria for determining when carrying capacity is exceeded, causing implementation difficulties. In practice, assessments are conducted by individual parameters, so the new approach enables more flexible application of discharge standards while balancing economic development and environmental protection.

As for air protection, the drafting committee adds provisions on air pollution forecasting alongside existing warning systems, and further clarifies the responsibilities of provincial authorities in implementing emergency measures and ensuring air quality within their jurisdictions.

The draft also strengthens emission control from transportation activities and provides a legal basis for localities, based on socio-economic conditions and environmental requirements, to regulate fossil fuel-powered vehicles in specific areas and time periods.

Provisions on soil quality management are revised to clearly distinguish between land quality assessments for state land management purposes and investigations into polluted sites under environmental protection law. Responsibilities of the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment and provincial authorities are also adjusted to enhance decentralization and transparency in disclosing polluted areas and remediation results.

To develop the environmental industry, the draft introduces the concept of “environmental industrial services,” establishing a dedicated legal framework. It also proposes tax and investment incentives to promote domestic production, aiming to build a comprehensive environmental industry ecosystem and ensure technological self-reliance in environmental treatment.

The draft further updates provisions on digital platforms for real-time, data-driven environmental management, ensuring connectivity between central and local systems. It also includes the development of emission registration systems, pollutant transfer tracking, and waste data updates.

Enhancing emission management and modernizing governance tools

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Amending Law on Environmental Protection: [3] New solutions to waste sorting

The Committee of the Draft Law revises climate change response policies to strengthen emission management and modernize governance tools. The Ministry of Agriculture and Environment will be responsible for issuing risk assessment criteria and identifying adaptation projects. Management will shift from a focus on “mitigation” to comprehensive “greenhouse gas emission management,” covering the full cycle from inventory to reduction and participation in carbon markets.

The greenhouse gas inventory process will be significantly reformed, moving to annual reporting (instead of every two years), and will be conducted online. Provincial authorities will be empowered to compile lists of emission sources and take responsibility for local inventories.

Regarding Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), sectoral ministries will lead in setting benchmarks, allocating quotas, and monitoring national targets. For the carbon market, the draft introduces stricter provisions to ensure transparency, including price stabilization mechanisms, integration of trading platform data with the national registry system, and regulations on international credit exchange.

At the same time, ozone layer protection will be tightened through bans on direct release of refrigerants and requirements for manufacturers to collect and recycle products after use. Incentives such as tax breaks, fees, and support for sustainable cooling technologies are proposed to encourage businesses to contribute to the national net-zero emissions goal.

Amid increasingly complex developments of environmental pollution, particularly air pollution in major cities, the draft shifts the management approach from reactive measures to proactive “forecasting for prevention.” It also establishes a stronger legal basis for applying digital transformation and modern technologies. The environmental management system will operate on real-time data through a national digital platform integrating monitoring and emission inventory data from central to local levels.