Proposal to simplify environmental criteria and reduce the scope of Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs)

Draft amendments to the Environmental Protection Law 2020 are being circulated for feedback by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. A key provision would simplify environmental criteria for classifying investment projects, reduce the set of projects required to undertake Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs), and streamline procedures while continuing to devolve authority to localities, reduce pre‑verification, and strengthen post‑verification to enhance the responsibility of project owners in environmental procedures. Reduction of EIA requirements: The draft intends to further cut the categories of projects that must perform EIAs, including those in industrial parks and clusters, projects that do not pose high environmental pollution risks, small-scale projects, and those lacking sensitive environmental features. The assessment process would move toward issuing only a notice of the assessment result for simple projects, with local authorities maintaining authority and the Ministry conducting EIAs only for projects with large-scale cross‑regional impacts or those related to international agreements. The draft also revises licensing criteria for environmental permits to be clearer and more transparent, ensuring the scope of control remains appropriate under the Environmental Protection Law; it adds a category for projects not requiring an environmental permit — for example, investment projects for government office buildings and education facilities. The law would also provide two forms of EIA: detailed reporting with assessment, and simple reporting with a notice. The draft would expedite administrative processes, improve resource allocation, and create a more transparent, business-friendly environment to shorten the time to implement investments, production, and business activities. The draft also proposes encouraging political and social organizations to participate in the Eco-label program to socialize the certification of the Vietnamese Eco-label. Project classification into three groups and two forms of EIA reporting and approval. In addition, the draft proposes expanding decentralization of environmental procedures to local authorities, simplifying filing, reforming the process, and adopting simpler environmental classification criteria. The draft also notes that projects with high risk of environmental impact (Group I) must prepare a detailed EIA report and obtain assessment approval; Group II must prepare a simple EIA report and only be subject to notification; Group III with no potential environmental impact would only register environmental matters or obtain an environmental permit before implementation. Notably, the draft reduces the number of groups from four to three and shifts many objects from pre‑verification to post‑verification. The draft also outlines two forms of reporting and assessment for EIAs, tailored to the level of environmental risk.