Hue Environment and Resource Department

http://stnmt.thuathienhue.gov.vn/portal/?GiaoDien=1&ChucNang=201&NewsID=20100305071924

Campaigns

Youth unions of High Schools and University of Hue in recent years often organize summer volunteering campaigns in order to collect rubbishes on Perfume River and takes care of plants at Parks. However, the situation of environmental degradation has still been happening and continues to get worse day after day. According to recent research results, this serious situation is mainly the consequence of lack of participation and supports from local community such as local householders, pupils, students; their loose of collaboration and cooperation between stakeholders such as Hue Environment and Urban Work Company, Hue Resource and Environmental Department and Hue Transportation Department as well as others.

Problems

From “Doi Moi” Reform occurred and free market economy was accepted in 1980s, Hue has quickly developed in terms of economic growth and administrative reform, and was identified as the number one urban area on 24/8/2005. However, pressure from rapid population growth, urbanization and lack of awareness about environmental issues has led to increased environmental degradation in the Hue City. There are many serious problems emerging in the city such as waste, sewage, plant disappearing, disordered advertisement boards, and roadway and roadside encroaching. These problems are negatively affecting the community’s health and damaging urban landscape in the Hue City. These issues have been mentioned and discussed in the mass media in recent years. The Hue City Council has in recent days organized conferences on city environmental and community’s health problems, and these environmental problems have been prioritized to be addressed.

Hue City

Hue City is located in central Vietnam on the banks of the Perfume River, just a few miles inland from the Thuan An sea. It is about 700 km (438 mi.) south of the national capital of Hanoi and about 1100 km (690 mi.) north of Ho Chi Minh City-the country's largest city formerly known as Saigon. Its population sits slightly over 340,000 people (Statistics, 2008). It was the imperial capital of the Nguyen Dynasty. As such, it is well known for its monuments and architecture. Presently, Hue comprises 27 administrative divisions, including 24 urban wards and 3 rural communes (Statistics, 2008). The Hue City is an important trade centre surrounded by rice fields. Chief economic activities include tourism and the manufacture of textiles and cement. Hue is connected by road and rail to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. The Hue City is also served by Phu Bai international airport.

identifying risks and risk management strategies

Possible risks and risk management

Risks are something that may happen and if they don’t, will have a positive or negative impact on the project. Analysing, identifying and managing the risk are an important part of the projects success. Risk analysis will be done to identify what may go wrong during the implementation of the project in order to reduce its influence to achieve the project’s goal. For this project, the project staff have conducted a risk analysis as well as examined some research results. The project staff have decided that the risks can be initially identified and divided into three types: (1) risks directly associated with project design and implementation; (2) community risks; and (3) risks from external factors.

- Risks directly associated with the project design and implementation

In terms of risks to the project itself, there may be a possibility of excessive time necessary for building the groups and the number of project staff may have to increase. Issues of implementation time and number of the project staff can be serious weaknesses for dialogical approach. Particularly if this approach is completely new for the project staff. In order to response to this weakness, the project will employ seasoned community development workers who have been working at this community for a long time. The project will provide training courses in dialogical approach such as dialogical skills and community analysis skills for these staff before carrying out the project. This kind of risk management strategies have applied and showed effective in some projects.

- Community risks

For risks to local community, there may be the possibility of lose of collaboration and cooperation between Hue Resource and Environment Department (HRED), Hue Transportation Department (HTD), and Hue Environment and Urban Work Company (HEUWC). There may also be a difficulty while the groups work with other stakeholders in order to establish effective collaboration. This is because the groups are not official organizations which have been established by Vietnamese Government. To be able to address this challenge, the project will look for help from local government, women unions and youth unions to convince other stakeholders to participate in and contribute to environmental problem solving. 

- External risks

In relation to external risks, there may be difficulties while dealing with the environmental problems due to previous regulations of local authority such as local environmental regulations which may differ from district to district. There may also be challenges for the project in undertaking environmental problem solving due to growing city area. To reduce these difficulties, the projects workers will actively negotiate with Hue Environment and Resource Department who is legally responsible for dealing with the environmental issues at the city to get supports from them. The project will partner with other non government organizations such as JBIC to support the project in terms of human and financial resources in case of the project extended.

 - Risk Management Framework

Based on identifying three kinds of risk that may occur while currying out the project, a risk management framework has been developed in order to respond to these risks and make sure the project success.

Risks	Preventive responses	Developmental responses	Corrective responses
Excessive time necessary for building the groups	Using seasoned CDWs	Training CDWs	Partnering with youth unions and women unions while doing the project
Lose of collaboration and cooperation between HRED, HTD, and HEUWC	Working with these institution employers and get an agreement before doing the project	Partnering with youth unions and women unions at these institutions	Linking environmental programmes of these institutions together
Barrier of previous regulations of local authority	Gaining an agreement from local authorities before doing the project	Workshops on environmental issues	Setting up a new regulation on environmental protection

project outline

By applying the dialogical approach and using the micro and mezza methods, there are three stages in this project. The first stage of the project is to build environmental action groups. There are two activities in this stage: establishing a relationship with local community. While establishing relationship with community and building groups, the project worker will organize informal meetings/workshops about environmental protection and living environments surrounding the communities in café shops. The objectives of these activities is to create a space in which every person can come and share their thoughts about the cities environmental issues, connecting people who have the same concerns about environmental issues. In terms of building groups, the project workers will link the people who have the same stories and interests and then, build specific groups based on their desire and concerns. There are about seven meetings and workshops during this stage. The meetings/workshops will let people share their concerns and connect with people who have the same issues. The final workshop is to build groups, vote group leaders and secretaries. The expected results/outcome of this stage is a list of participants for each group

The second stage of the project is about providing short training courses on environmental protection issues for environmental action groups. In this stage, the project workers will provide some short training courses for members of each group. The project workers will also  partner with Faculty of Environment and Ecology, at The University of Science-Hue University to provide these training courses. The project also invites the representatives of Hue Resource and Environment Department to participate in these training. There are three training courses for three groups. The objectives of this activity are to build capacity for participants such as basic knowledge about collecting rubbish and sewage processing, develop skills and knowledge to negotiate with other stakeholders; assist groups to work out their action plan to deal with the specific problems that concerns them. The expected outcomes of this stage are that each group can work out and hold an action plan to deal with the problems.

The third stage of the project is to deal with the problems. In this stage, each group will actively work in partnership with other stakeholders such as Hue Environment and Urban Work Company and Hue Environment and Resource Department to devise a strategy as to how to solve the problems more effective. These include how to collect the rubbish at trade centres, the processing of sewage and reordering advertisement boards. Methods and approaches to improve and address the problems more effectively are based on an agreement between each group and the stakeholders, especially local government and Hue Work and Sanity Urban Company. During this the time, the project workers will work alongside each group and help them if needed, providing advice to facilitate the project. The expected outcomes of this stage are that the rubbish and sewages are removed, and the advertisement boards are reordered, and streets become cleaner.