Hanoi (VNA) – Hanoi is home to nearly 27,100ha of forest and forestry land, including 18,577ha under forest, which is considered a "green belt" protecting the local ecological environment.
The city’s forest coverage has reached 5.59%, mainly in Ba Vi, Soc Son, My Duc, Chuong My, Quoc Oai and Thach That districts and Son Tay town. Meanwhile, Hanoi still has 8,555 ha of forestry land that hasn't become forest.
In recent years, Hanoi has issued many guidance documents, assigned tasks to departments, agencies and the localities home to forest, and carried out many programmes and plans on forest care, protection and development to conserve biodiversity and expand forest coverage. As a result, relevant parties' sense of responsibility towards this work has been improved.
However, the local forest and forestry land area is now at serious risk of shrinking. The fact is blamed on an overlap between zoning plans on forest land, residential land and land of other purposes.
It is noteworthy that some localities are planning to propose municipal authorities remove overlapped areas from forest planning. If the proposal is approved, Hanoi's forest area will decrease sharply.
Therefore, protecting the existing forest area, the “green belt” of the capital, is an urgent task of each citizen and authorities at all levels.
Forest protection and development were also touched upon at a discussion about the draft revised Capital Law during the 15th National Assembly’s 7th session. Legislators suggested that Hanoi should focus on preserving and further developing the forest land area, and consider forest coverage expansion as a vital issue.
Another proposed solution is to minimise the projects seeking land-use purpose conversion. It is also considered consistent with the city’s forestry development strategy for the 2022-2025 period and beyond, which targets the forest coverage rate kept stable at 5.67 - 6.2% by 2025.
To this end, it is necessary for agencies and localities to speed up reviewing the current status of forests and forestry land to serve as a basis for the city to adjust the planning of three types of forest, namely special-use, protection and production forest, and conduct forest boundary demarcation. Localities should properly manage and protect natural forests, gradually recover and improve the quality of existing forests, and strengthen forest owners' management capacity. Land allocation should be linked to forest allocation while cadres who lend a hand to violators be strictly dealt with.
Under the 2024 socio-economic scheme issued by the municipal People’s Committee, Hanoi also plans to grow 200,000 - 250,000 trees along urban roads this year to help raise the tree coverage to 8-10 sq.m per person by 2025. There are about 1.8 million trees in local urban areas at present.
Regarding gardens and parks, the city has completed the renovation process of five gardens: Truc Bach in Ba Dinh district, Hoang Van Thu in Hoang Mai district, Dien Hong in Hoan Kiem district, Ngoc Lam in Long Bien district, and Le Truc in Ba Dinh district. Five new parks in the districts of Cau Giay, Ha Dong, Long Bien, and Nam Tu Liem have also been built while renovation plans for three major parks - Thong Nhat, Thu Le, and Bach Thao - have been approved./.
