Integrating Environmental Requirements into Vietnamese Sectoral Laws: Some Legal Issues

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Dung, Mai Thanh | Khoa, Nguyen Minh^{; *} | Thi Thu Huong, Phan

Affiliations: Institute of Strategy and Policy on Natural Resources and Environment, Hanoi, Vietnam

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. E-mail: ngmikh@gmail.com.

Abstract: The need for sustainable development underscores the role and importance of integrating environmental concerns in non-environmental policies because it is evident that environmental regulations only are insufficient to manage all environmental issues. Law enforcement on environmental protection in Vietnam clearly demonstrates this situation. Vietnam’s legal system of environmental protection is incompatible or overlapped with other sectoral laws and in fact many environmental matters have been implemented in accordance with sectoral laws while disregarding environmental considerations due to the lack of specific and explicit environmental provisions or requirements in sectoral laws and regulations. From that situation, the paper emphasizes the need to integrate environmental protection requirements into the sectoral laws of Vietnam and proposes some fundamental criteria and procedures to integrate environmental requirements into sectoral laws.

Keywords: Integrating environmental protection requirements, sectoral legal systems, environmental policy integration, sustainable development

DOI: 10.3233/EPL-201010

Journal: Environmental Policy and Law, vol. 51, no. 5, pp. 343-350, 2021