According to the studies by international scientific organizations, the Earth – home to human race – is heavily damaged by environmental pollution and climate change. Especially, marine environment pollution is in the alarming state. Therefore, tackling and reducing marine environment pollution has been attracting attention from countries and international organizations.

Vietnamese PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc addresses the GEF6 (Photo: VNA)

As far as Vietnam is concerned, together with activities in response to the World Oceans Day, and Vietnam’s Sea and Island Week, on June 26^th, 2018, in Da Nang city, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment in cooperation with Da Nang Municipal People’s Committee held the launching of the Program “Join hands to protect oceans”. This is an event in response to the 6^th Global Environment Fund Assembly (GEF6) – the most important environment-related global-scale meeting of 2018 first organized in Vietnam.

With the participation of over 1,500 representatives, including ministers in charge of environmental affairs and senior officials from 183 member states as well as representatives from the UN agencies, regional development banks, socio-political organizations, and leaders of enterprises, the GEF6 not only conveyed the message of the necessity to adopt measures for global environment protection, but reaffirmed Vietnam’s efforts and strong commitments on protection of the environment and sustainable development. This is also a chance for us to foster cooperation, seek for financial support and modern technologies, promote and spread Vietnam’s tourism, culture and people. Thus, the launching of the Program “join hands to protect oceans” on the occasion when Vietnam hosted the GEF6 was of far more significance.

At the launching ceremony, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and international organizations called for the other ministries, localities, organizations, individuals and enterprises in Vietnam to cooperate with and join the Natural Resources and Environment Branch in regularly, effectively conducting campaigns for sea clean-up to preserve the sea for present-day and future generations. They also called for the continued coordination between organizations and sectors in completing mechanisms and policies and mobilizing resources for controlling and managing wastes in the sea in general and plastic wastes in particular. The program expected the people to regularly collect and dispose of wastes in the proper place as well as use environment-friendly local products and reduce the consumption of single-use plastic products. In long term, the program is aimed at building the mechanisms for coordination between sectors, organizations, enterprises and localities on collection and disposal of plastic wastes, particularly those in the sea, and adopting measures to prevent untreated industrial, agricultural and household wastes from being dumped into the sea.

During the program, meetings and tree planting and waste collection activities were organized on the beach of Nguyen Tat Thanh (Da Nang) and in many other places nationwide. Those have helped confirm that Vietnam is a responsible member of the international community and pledges to join other countries and international organizations in dealing with environmental challenges on global scale.

Pham Cao Cuong