Surveying the natural resources and environment of sea and islands is an important task and the scientific and practical ground for making plans, policies and laws for managing, exploring and exploiting sustainably the marine resources and environment and responding to climate changes, etc.

A glimpse of Ha Long Bay

Over the past years, our Party and State have issued a number of resolutions, directives, documents and adopted several measures to enhance the effectiveness of the work, such as: the Degree No. 47/2006/QĐ-TTg, dated 1^st March, 2006 of the Prime Minister on the approval of the “General Plan for surveying and managing marine resources and environment until 2010, with a vision to 2020”; the Degree No. 798/QĐ-TTg, dated 11^th May, 2016 of the Prime Minister on the promulgation of the Plan for implementing the Strategy for exploiting sustainably marine resources and protecting the marine environment until 2020, with a vision to 2030; the Law on natural resources and environment of seas and islands (2015), etc. As a result, after 10 years of implementing the General plan, the survey of natural resources and environment of sea and islands has gained important results, especially in the fields of: marine cartography, environmental geology, marine mineral geology, oil and gas resources, biology and fishery resources, geology and hydrology, etc. These have provided useful data and scientific proofs and evaluation of the potential of the marine resources and environment for the planning, exploitation and management of marine resources and minerals of the related ministries and sectors, and coastal provinces, contributing to sustainably developing marine economy, consolidating defense and security, and protecting the country’s sovereignty over seas and islands.

However, according to the report of the Sea and Islands Survey Department, under the Vietnam Administration of Seas and Islands, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the statistics and management of survey data of ministries, sectors and localities are not unified. Surveys are mostly focused on coastal and shallow seas. Not much attention has been paid to deep and high seas. Surveys haven’t provided sufficient, timely and accurate data for the making of guidelines and policies for national socio-economic development, etc.

In the coming time, in order to successfully realize the goal of “Assessing accurately the potentials and values of important marine resources; At least 50% of Vietnam’s sea is surveyed in terms of natural resources and environment at the scale of 1:500,000 and some focal areas will be surveyed at large scale; establishing computerized system of data on sea and islands which is integrated, accessible and updated” that has been defined in the Resolution No. 36-NQ/TW of the Party Central Committee (12^th tenure), it is necessary to focus on adjusting the system of plans, policies and laws in order to enhance the quality and effectiveness of the study and survey of natural resources and environment of sea and islands, and the state management over this work; strengthen the supervision and checking over the implementation of ongoing projects while proposing new projects which are urgent; focus on the deep and high seas, and the areas which are data-free and prone to environmental incidents; increase high skill human resource and have favorable policies for the surveying staff; enhance the effectiveness of coordination between ministries, sectors and coastal localities; strengthen international cooperation in the surveys, etc, contributing to providing more sufficient, timely and accurate data which are necessary for the planning, management, exploitation the natural resources and environment of seas and islands in the new situation.

Nguyen Duc Phu