A sustainable developed city must have 3 factors: economy, social and environment. In fact, in recent years, the gap between the development of economy and environment in Da Nang is too big, showing in the economic development at 13.91% (2005) while the investment for environment protection made up only 0.8% GDP of the city. Based on the fact, the city have proposed the 3,562.96 billion dong project, surveying public opinion to meet the target of transforming Da Nang into Environmental City (EC). Experience from big cities in the world proves that too "hot" development will have to face with a variety of impediments such as: planning project, residents and particularly the environmental math. In Da Nang, the environment situation is in "red alert due to the pressure of the urbanization and industrialization", the quantity of non-treated waste released in environment is too much and remain too complicated problem to solve. At the moment, total liquid waste of the city is about 100,000m3/day in which industrial waste makes up 40%, but only Khanh Hoa industrial zone has fairly standard liquid waste treatment system, other industrial zones are free to release waste to lakes and rivers like: Bau Tram Lake, Cu-De river, Da Nang bay, Rong spring. This waste made these lakes and rivers polluted. In equivalent, there have approximately 1,200 tons of solid waste from industrial factories, resident areas, service system, hospitals… released to environment everyday. Meanwhile, the solid waste management capacity of the city is limited, the city has not implemented the collection and treatment of the solid waste in hygiene way, has not done the classification and recycling of solid waste in standard process. This situation happened badly in Khanh Son waste collecting area. Moreover, dust & smoke pollution from vehicles, noise pollution in resident area, smell pollution in seafood processing factories are directly destroying environment which leads to epidemic diseases on human being and animals, directly affecting the public health.

Based on the fact, the establishment of the project "Environmental City" is urgent issue at the moment, in order to meet the demands of sustainable development, public life quality protection. According to the project, in the period of 2008 - 2020, the most pressing action is balancing the development of economy and society with environment protection, create the initial condition for city’s sustainable development. Among 23 criteria of "Environment City", the most important ones are environment investment index not less than 1.5% city’s GDP; liquid waste standard level at 100%; the recycled solid waste level over 70%; not creating poisonous industrial waste; controlled dust & smoke areas over 90%. Besides, they must have plan to plant green trees in urban areas at level of 10m2/person, protect the biological diversity of forest by closing the natural forests, raising the forest cover level to 50.6% in 2015. Those objectives belongs to several projects such as: "Bus public transportation network in period of 2007 - 2015" costing 408 billions VND (25.5 millions USD); "Medical liquid waste treatment project" costing 64 billions VND (4 millions UDD); "Infrastructure of priority Da Nang city" costing 2,488 billions VND …

To fulfill the above-mentioned objectives, two main recommended solutions are raising public & business enterprises awareness and strictly manage environment protection by legal regulations. According to that, the standards for commune, ward, family inhabitant are created and exposed closely to public activities of environment protection. Environment knowledge is provided in education at all levels. Along with these solutions, there must have the specialized training to scientist expert team, ward and district officials who have knowledge about environment protection. However, the more important action is establishing and developing the environment police board belong to city police to regularly monitor and prevent environment problems and environment crime.

Source: MONRE Website, 15 August 2007