To the rescue of Hai Phong Bay: a reinforced partnership

"In June 2010, we were invited to a briefing on the work done in phase 1 at a seminar organized at Hai Phong.
The director of IMER and the chairman of the People's Committee of Hai Phong stressed the importance of the project for their city.
The motivation of all the Vietnamese partners and their determination to set up effective resources was clearly demonstratedt. Besides, the UNDP report identifies the Vietnamese coasts as priority zones in terms of risks associated with climate change: one more reason, if one were needed, to support the project."

Marie-Marguerite Bourbigot

A vast number of industrial harbor activities, still flourishing fisheries, beaches dotted with restaurants and families enjoying the seaside ...: the city of Hai Phong provides just about all the human activities that could be offered by its exceptional situation on the edge of the China Sea. For instance, it is the second Vietnamese city for harbor activity and one of the starting points of sea outings into Halong Bay.
Yet it already suffers from this exceptional situation.
Its waters are severely polluted, to the point of becoming a real hindrance to fishing and tourism, and the bay is silting up, which is liable to jeopardize the traffic of big ships in the port.

Thousands of kilometers away, the city of Brest has already experienced similar problems and is now solving them under a "bay contract" signed with all the stakeholders: regional authorities, companies, nonprofit associations, university, etc. The nonprofit Technôpole Brest-Iroise, founded for this purpose - to save the roads of Brest - has therefore set up the project of assisting Hai Phong by sharing its experience and expertise.

Studies to guarantee food safety

Since the cooperation agreement signed between the People's Committee of the City of Hai Phong and Brest Métropole Océane in 2007, an ambitious multi-player and multidisciplinary partnership has been established between the two cities. It has materialized in a "Hai Phong Bay management" project, alongside the Brest Littoralis group, the University of Western Brittany, Brest Métropole, Technôpole Brest-Iroise, the People's Committee of Hai Phong and the IMER Research Institute (Vietnamese Institute of Marine Science).

In 2008, the Veolia Foundation already participated in the pool of international lenders wishing to participate in this innovative initiative. During this phase 1, IMER personnel were trained in methods of sampling and laboratory analysis of the water of the bay, and a Geographic Information System (GIS) was developed to incorporate all the data gathered, to identify the levels of pollution, and to facilitate subsequent environmental management of the bay.

It is now important to pass on to phase 2 of this important project, and the Foundation is renewing its accompaniment. Scheduled to begin in late 2010, this new step has the overall objective of designing and setting up concertation and decision aid tools and methods to guarantee quality management of Hai Phong Bay.
More specifically, phase 2 is broken down into four modules:

• installation of an executive body;
• development of the GIS and decision aid software supplements;
• studies on the quality of the marine environment (identification of "hydrology and mineral pollutants" data);
• supply of expertise and tools to design decision aid scenarios in areas such as pollution patterns, impact analyses, the identification of pollution sources, and environmental damage.

Phase 2, a significant complement to this task, will see reinforced cooperation between the University of Western Brittany and the Vietnamese University of Nha Trang (UNT). This cooperation, focused on the theme of food safety associated with the consumption of products of the sea, will allow an accurate assessment of the risks to consumers of seafood and fish supplied by the aquaculture practiced in the bay waters.

Besides the grant to the project from the Veolia Foundation, Veolia Environnement will add its assistance in the form of skills provided by specialists of the Veolia Environnement Environmental Analysis Center to the UNT students.