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Consultative workshop on the draft revised Law on water resources: adding new regulations

15:15 16/10/2023

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In October 2023, the National Assembly's Science, Technology and Environment Committee on coordination with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment organized a consultative workshop in Da Nang city to collect comments and recommendations on the revised Law on Water Resources. Vice Chairwoman of the NA Committee for Science, Technology and Environment Nguyen Thi Le Thuy and Director of the Department of Water Resources Management Chau Tran Vinh co-chaired the workshop.

Speaking at the Workshop, Deputy Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Le Thuy informed that so far, there had been 137 times for comments with the total of 609 comments on the draft revised Law. In particular, at the 5th Session, there were 98 National Assembly delegates giving comments at groups with 439 comments, 23 National Assembly delegates giving comments at the Plenary with 112 comments and 04 written comments. At the 25th meeting, the National Assembly Standing Committee received 5 comments. At the Conference of full-time National Assembly Deputies, there were 27 comments. The majority of opinions of National Assembly deputies agreed on the need to promulgate the revised Law on Water Resources and basically agreed with many contents of the draft Law.

Consultations on the draft revised Law have been widely conducted after each NA session through many workshops. The current draft has been the 7th version with some other sub-versions according to each consultation workshop. The revised draft Law includes 10 chapters and 86 Articles. According to the Standing Committee of Science, Technology and Environment, after being reviewed, it is found that the Party's viewpoints and policies in the entire draft Law, particularly the Conclusion 36 of the Central Government on ensuring water source security and safety of dams and reservoirs in the period 2021-2030, with a vision to 2045 has been fully institutionalized and concretized. In the revised draft. The revised Law also attaches to 4 large issues proposed by the Government to the NA at the Proposal Document No. 162, particularly ensuring water source security; water economy, socialization of the water sector and protection and prevention of harmful effects caused by water.

Overview of the Conference

The draft Law being revised focus on 4 groups of policies that have been approved by the National Assembly, including (i) Ensuring water source security, (ii) Socialization of the water industry, (iii) Water resources economics, (iv) Protect water resources, prevent and combat harmful effects caused by water and amend and supplement a number of other policies. In particular, the revised Law has some main new points, specifically:

1. Additional regulations to ensure water source security

- Specific regulations on coordination and distribution of water resources.

- Regulations on ensuring the maintenance of minimum flow on rivers and thresholds for groundwater exploitation.

- Additional regulations on investment priorities for development, storage, and recovery of water sources.

- Contents on rive basins integrated planning.

2. Amending and supplementing regulations on water resource protection

- Regulations on functional zoning of water sources.

- Protecting the quality of domestic water sources.

- Additional regulations for restoring degraded, depleted, and polluted water sources.

- Regulations on prevention and control of landslides in river banks and lakes.

- Specific regulations on making and publishing a list of lakes, ponds and lagoons that are not allowed to be leveled.

3. Amending and supplementing regulations on water exploitation and use.

4. Additional regulations to promote socialization in the field of water resources.

5. Additional regulations to gradually shift from management with administrative tools to management with economic tools.

6. Additional regulations on responsibilities of ministries and sectors.

At the Workshop, NA members and experts, scientists, leaders of local Departments of Natural Resources and Environment, water exploitation and use enterprises highly appreciated MONRE for its leading role in preparation of the draft revised Law. Participants also shared their view that the Law revision is a necessary requirement to contribute to protecting water resources and ensuring national water security. Participants’ comments and recommendations focused on scope of regulation, explanation of terms, policies and state management contents on water resources, money for granting exploitation rights. water resources exploitation, national database on water resources, and management of water exploitation and use in real time, organizing river basins, etc.

In her conclusion, the Deputy Chairwoman said that all comments and recommendations on the revised draft Law would be fully synthesized and taken into consideration for the draft finalization. Vice Chairwoman Thuy requested the Department of Science and Technology under the NA Committee for Science, Technology and Environment to fully take note all participants’ comments for the new version to be presented at the sixth session in October of the National Assembly.

Hoang Xuan Huy

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