Environment

Vietnam has about 60% less mangrove forest than 70 years ago, according to a recent report.

Efforts to curb the deadly trade in rhino horn appear to be gaining traction, with a poll finding that demand for the animal part in Vietnam has dropped by more than a third over the past year.

Discarded phones and tablets are among waste products that will be retrieved and processed from January 1, 2015, under a decision taken by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.

The Vietnam Red Cross in collaboration with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies have just released the 2014 World Disaster Report.

A dozen households in Hanoi have been living in unsanitary conditions as a result of sewage water rising to their doors.

Several rare wild animals have recently been discovered in U Minh Ha Forest in the southernmost province of Ca Mau, according to the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

More than 800 people, mostly older people, took part in a meeting to mark the International Day for Disaster Reduction (IDDR) in southern My Tho City, Tien Giang province on October 13.

Newly built seafood and garment factories have polluted once-pristine rural areas in the Mekong delta, but relief seems far away.

Heavy metals in the soil, including lead and zinc, threaten the land environment around industrial zones in Dong Nai province.

A one-year-old Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica) has been moved to the northern Ninh Binh Province's Cuc Phuong National Park for further care.

The government of Vietnam has recently decided to spend VND3 trillion on climate change related projects, said Deputy PM Hoang Trung Hai.

A new plant species, thought to exist nowhere else in the world, was discovered in Xuan Lien Nature Reserve in Thanh Hoa Province.

Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai has urged all ministries, sectors and localities to draft their own response plans for strong and super strong storms by June next year at the latest.

Deputy Hoang Trung Hai underlined the role of forests in coastal areas in coping with climate change and sea level rise during a meeting with a Government committee on forest development and protection on October 6.

The Cress Centre of the National University of Hanoi and Xuan Lien Nature Reserve in Thanh Hoa Province discovered about 30 Roosevelt's muntjac, a species believed to have gone extinct 84 years ago.

The Vietnam Environment Administration (VEA) under the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment and the United Nations Environment Programme jointly held a national capacity building workshop on controlling the illegal trade in chemicals and waste in Hanoi on

Thang Long Environmental Service Joint Stock Company has opened a VND160 billion (US$7.6 million) waste treatment plant in Hanoi's outlying district of Son Tay that uses advanced incineration technology to process 400 tonnes of garbage per day.

Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai has called for faster work on the building of the National Centre for Disaster Management and Operation, Research and Rescue.

The French Agency for Development (AFD) has pledged 20 million EUR (25.4 million USD) in loan for the fourth tranche of the Support Programme to Respond to Climate Change (SP-RCC) in Vietnam.