English | Tiếng Việt
Hanoi has ambitious goals through its’ 2030 Greater Hanoi Master Plan, which addresses current challenges of increasing urbanization and competing land uses, rising land prices, industrialization, relocation of rice paddies and other agricultural land, food security, resource scarcity, sanitation and pollution of water bodies. The timing of the strategy creates an opportunity to potentially link identified phosphorus priorities within the Strategy’s sector implementation plans which are under development. Further, the administrative boundaries of Greater Hanoi, which now include a third of the province and substantial agricultural land, creates an opportunity for streamlined urban planning around the reuse of the city’s organic waste in agriculture.
The P-FUTURES project is designed to facilitate projects by helping diverse city actors come together to envision and design future plans that meet multiple objectives, including sustainable waste management and agricultural production.
Local research partner:
Institute for Environmental Science & Engineering, National University of Civil Engineering, Hanoi
Key contact: Assoc. Prof. Viet Anh Nguyen vietanhctn@gmail.com
Hanoi’s waste management sector is making great headway towards the city’s ambitious goal of 70% organic waste recycling by 2050. Everyday approximately 6500 tones of household waste are produced in the city and this is expected to double by 2030. Ninety percent of this waste is landfilled. One landfill operated by Urenco, Hanoi’s main waste service provider, separates the organic fraction from collected waste, producing a compost available for use free of charge. The compost is in high demand, especially in the landscaping sector associated with new construction. However, agriculture accounts for approximately 70% of the national economy creating a large potential demand and market for recycled phosphorus through high quality compost. While pre- and post-collection separation of organics remains a challenge, as well as scaling up production, the success of this initiative demonstrates possibilities for the near future.
On November 25th 2014 the first P-FUTURES Phase 1 workshop was held in Hanoi at the National University of Civil Engineering brining together 23 participants – 13 local stakeholders, 5 local researcher partners, and 5 international research partners (see PARTNERS).
Workshop objectives were to:
- Explore risks and vulnerabilities for Hanoi to the global phosphorus challenge (such as fertilizer price spikes, algal blooms, growing food demand, inefficient sanitation infrastructure, etc.)
- Explore opportunities for Hanoi to effectively adapt to such challenges, taking into account Hanoi’s future visions and existing plans.
- Contribute to shaping the future research agenda for P-FUTURES in all four cities to develop tools to transform the way cities manage phosphorus
Process:
Hanoi Workshop agenda: English or Tiếng Việt
Hanoi Workshop presentation: English or Tiếng Việt
The inaugural P-FUTURES workshop in Hanoi was conducted simultaneously in English and Vietnamese through translators. Unlike the other workshops, this was held as a plenary session, to ensure adequate translation and communication.
Exploring the current situation: Following introductory presentations on the emerging global phosphorus scarcity and pollution challenge, several local participants highlighted their current sector priorities, pressures and drivers, to create a shared knowledge base. As a single group, participants mapped out how their sectors were related to phosphorus and explored a ‘what if’ scenario of the price of phosphorus spiking 500% again to identify how Hanoi specifically is vulnerable to the global phosphorus challenge.
Voting for priorities in the Hanoi P-FUTURES stakeholder workshop
Developing future transformative goals: After a diverse range of sustainable phosphorus case examples from around the world, participants were asked “If there one thing you could change about Hanoi (given what you heard today) what would you change?”. A facilitated discussed probed what existing resources were available, what would be required and who would need to be involved to achieve these goals.
Identifying priority actions: Participants were asked to identify what actions were required to achieve their identified goals. The group voted and formulated these as 5 priority projects, identifying which stakeholders needed to be involved.
Outcomes & key highlights
Current situation: local stakeholder priorities:
- Avoid depending on other countries for food and phosphorus
- Managing water pollution (98% of Hanoi’s lakes are eutrophied)
- Managing solid waste, sanitation livestock manure and resource recovery
Future transformative goals: participants developed a range of goals and identified current capacity to achieve these goals:
- Reuse all phosphorus from livestock manure – there is a huge amount of phosphorus available in manure, however fertilizers are too cheap and there are no incentives to use manure – adaptive technologies, farmer willingness and training would be required. Extension service providers and the Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development were identified as key actors who would need to be involved.
- Effective government policy around livestock manure reuse – although there are existing national policies that relate to livestock, further policies, tools, and enforcement strategies are needed to take into consideration the spatial and temporal variability in manure availability across regions. In particular a need for a focus on household level management was highlighted
Priority actions: Initiatives identified to enable necessary shifts towards these goals include (listed in order of most popular):
- undertake a Greater Hanoi phosphorus budget update (foundational to support other measures), undertaken in collaboration with utilities, academics and government authorities
- assess the viability of phosphorus-recovery technologies via pilots, in collaboration with farmers
- identify appropriate and effective policies to support sustainable phosphorus futures in Hanoi, in collaboration with government authorities
- Analyse market demand for recovered phosphorus together with farmers, academics and wastewater and solid waste utilities; and
- Assess phosphorus use
Hanoi urban farmer washing vegetables before market
Local and international research partners visited a diversity of sectors in bustling Hanoi and surrounds prior to and after the workshop. The research team went to various neighborhoods of different densities, income levels, construction periods and history to obtain a better sense of how Hanoi is transforming and what opportunities and pressures are facing residents and governing bodies in managing the growing urban region. Researchers also visited food markets to discuss the logistics of both the food supply chain from farm to consumption and food waste management, urban and peri-urban farms, a landfill and composting plant, and the wastewater treatment plant.
The international research team also had an immersive experience of rice planting, cow-based ploughing and cooking in a northern district of peri-urban Hanoi.