Environmental news 07/11/2026

POLLUTION CONTROL AT SOURCE: AN IMPERATIVE DEMAND FROM INCIDENT RESPONSE PRACTICE
In environmental protection, remediating pollution after contaminants have widely dispersed is vastly more difficult and costly than controlling them directly at the source. Drawing from years of hands-on experience in environmental incident response, Mr. Pham Van Son – General Secretary of the Vietnam Association for Conservation of Nature and Environment (VACNE) and Director of the Vietnam Environmental Incident Response Center (SOS Center) emphasizes that pollution control mandates must be established right at the point of origin and maintained continuously along contaminant dispersion pathways.

The Sea Is the Destination, but Pollution Control Must Begin on Land

Vietnam is accelerating the development of marine economic sectors, including shipping, tourism, aquaculture, fisheries, coastal industry, and renewable energy. Parallel to this growth, the imperative to protect the marine environment is becoming increasingly urgent.
However, marine pollution does not always originate at sea.
Stormwater runoff, leachate, oily wastewater, chemicals, or industrial effluents from land-based manufacturing facilities can travel through drainage systems, streams, and rivers toward downstream areas. Consequently, an inland incident can easily become a major threat to rivers, estuaries, and coastal waters if not contained in a timely manner.

Waste oil and oily wastewater generated from routine fishing vessel operations

From response practice, Mr. Pham Van Son highlights a critical reality: While administrative management authority can be divided among provinces, sectors, and domains, the dispersion pathways of pollution cannot be partitioned. A river continues to flow through multiple jurisdictions before reaching the sea, irrespective of administrative boundaries.

The Further Pollution Spreads, the Lower the Controllability

During the initial hours of an incident, while oil or chemicals remain confined within containment bunds, workshops, drainage pipes, or ditch segments, isolation, pumping, and collection operations can still be executed with high concentration.
Conversely, once contaminants enter major rivers or disperse into the open sea, the response equation changes completely.
Marine oil spill incidents require strict containment measures to prevent widespread contamination
For soluble substances, dilution within massive water volumes renders physical recovery virtually impossible compared to containment at the source. For oil spills, currents, waves, and winds can rapidly spread slick over vast areas. The eventual disappearance of a visible surface oil sheen does not signify that the contaminant has vanished from the environment.
Therefore, proactive prevention and advance preparedness carry paramount significance in incident response.

From Risk Identification to Resource Preparedness

According to Mr. Pham Van Son, safeguarding marine environments early and from a distance must be operationalized through actionable measures at the facility level: identifying hazard sources, characterizing potentially dispersible substances, modeling dispersion vectors, identifying downstream sensitive receptors, and pre-establishing tactical control points.
Crucially, this requires preparing personnel, vehicles, specialized equipment, and response supplies that can be rapidly mobilized within the first hours of an incident. An emergency response plan is only truly valuable when the resources designated within it can effectively reach the scene and be deployed when a crisis strikes.
This imperative also highlights requirements for refining legal frameworks governing environmental protection and marine/island resources. Regulations must not only assign responsibilities but also establish seamless coordination mechanisms among sectors, local authorities, and waste source owners in alignment with the physical pathways of pollution dispersion.
At the Second Session of the 16th National Assembly, draft amendments to the Law on Environmental Protection and the Law on Marine and Island Resources and Environment continue to be discussed, with numerous inputs regarding environmental incident handling mechanisms, inter-provincial coordination, and waste source controls.

The sea is the final destination for aquatic flows, but marine protection must begin upstream

From an incident response operational perspective, the key requirement is a decisive shift from a reactive consequence handling mindset to proactive risk control directly at the source. When pollution hazards are identified, controlled, and paired with pre established response plans, the capacity to limit dispersion boundaries and mitigate environmental damage is significantly enhanced.

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