Viet Nam is experiencing rapid economic growth. At the same time, the country’s population grows and its population migrates increasingly from rural to urban areas. Taken together these factors exert enormous pressures over on the quality of the environment and natural resource base of the entire nation. Fortunately growing government attention and an increased amount of public resources are being provided to meet some of these challenges. Notably Official Development Assistance (ODA) continues to be a significant source of support to the Government of Viet Nam as it moves to address the serious threats to the environment.

This third Compendium of Environmental Projects in Viet Nam provides an analysis of all completed, ongoing and planned ODA environmental projects in Viet Nam, as of the end of 2003. Data and information used for the analysis were provided by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE), various other concerned ministries in Viet Nam, as well as from databases maintained by the United Nations Development Programe (UNDP) and other donors. A series of surveys and interviews were undertaken to augment the available data.

The Compendium builds on the work of the first and second Compendiums, which covered the periods 1985-1995 and 1995-1999, respectively. In the tradition of the previous publications, this Compendium continues the analysis of trends in support of ODA for work on the environment, donor and beneficiary activities, and provides an examination of how Government targeted areas of environmental interest compare with those where ODA resources are focused. However, this Compendium goes a step further to analyze trends in overall ODA over the period 1995-2002 in this field, and attempts to establish linkages between these environment ODA trends with the recent research-based findings on environment and sustainable development in Viet Nam.

The production of this Compendium was possible only with strong collaboration of Government agencies and many other international and national agencies. We very much appreciate both their involvement and contributions to this collaborative exercise. We hope that the Compendium will provide a strong basis for information exchange and cooperation between the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, other ministries and the international donor community, particularly within the framework of the International Support Group for Environment (ISGE). In addition, we trust the continued dialogue and information flow on environment initiatives and trends will foster even greater aid effectiveness as well as deeper cooperation in the future. The ecological and environment treasures of Viet Nam deserve