The monitoring mission of the V Office – AICS “Environment and land use” in Vietnam ended on December 9th, 2023. The mission, which lasted three weeks, is part of Office V’s monitoring activities for the year 2023, and included a week of institutional meetings and document analysis work at the AICS headquarters in Hanoi and two weeks of on-site visits at four project sites. Experts from Sogesid SpA, an institutional collaboration of AICS, also took part to the mission. During the activities, the experts alternated depending on the skills required for the various projects monitored.
During the first week, meetings were held with local authorities, including the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI), the Department of Water Resources Management and the National Hydrometeorological Agency of the Ministry of the Environment. The delegation also met with representatives of the donor’s community, including the European Delegation, World Bank, Asian Development Bank and UNDP.
During the following two weeks the delegation, accompanied by an MPI official and two members of the team from the foreign office in Hanoi, visited three WASH projects financed with aid credits: the project called “Water supply to Binh Thuan”, an initiative focused on drinking water purification and distribution, and two domestic wastewater collection and treatment projects called “Tay Ninh wastewater collection and treatment system” and “Nui Thanh urban sanitation, Quang Nam province”. The on-site visits were followed by meetings with the local authorities, consultants and builders involved in carrying out the works. The delegation also visited the provinces of Khanh Hoa and Ninh Thuan, where the second phase of an aid credit project for the project “Improvement of the flood forecasting and warning system in Vietnam, II Phase“. This last intervention included a training package for local technicians and the installation of weather monitoring stations in various sites in the area.
During the meetings and meetings, the Italian delegation examined project documents and interviewed authorities, local actors and stakeholders, adopting various monitoring tools including the Environmental Sustainability Matrix. The monitoring mission made it possible to highlight critical issues and good practices, and represented a precious opportunity for reflection on the future of Italian Cooperation in Vietnam and in the South East Asia and Pacific region, not only in the field of water resources management and monitoring environmental, but also of adaptation measures to climate change and the protection and conservation of ground, coastal and island ecosystems, especially with the intention to opening up towards the Western Pacific.
