Economic structure of the Northern key region from the perspective of sustainable development

In addition to the above-mentioned environmental issues, the problem of cross-border environmental pollution, environmental incidents caused by natural disasters and human activities are having complex and unpredictable developments.

Thus, the economic restructuring has both positive and negative impacts on the ecological environment. Thanks to the economic restructuring, it has helped increase the accumulated investment resources to improve the environment. But most of the impacts are negative. More than anyone else, it is the localities and the people who are directly affected by that impact. Hai Phong is a typical example, because Hai Phong contains all the sensitive and complex environmental issues caused by the economic restructuring process. [16]. Environmental pollution also has a negative impact on economic restructuring. Therefore, without active environmental protection measures, the cost of overcoming the consequences of environmental pollution in the future will be many times greater than at present, and economic growth itself is unlikely to be able to compensate for the damage to the environment and people's health.

2.4. CONCLUSION

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The decision to establish three key economic zones, including the Northern Key Economic Zone, will significantly contribute to promoting the economic growth of each region, as well as the whole country. Although there are certain limitations, the Northern Key Economic Zone has an important position and role in the socio-economic development of the whole country. It is a region with sufficient conditions and advantages to develop industry, especially heavy industry, high-tech industry, develop science and technology, train highly qualified human resources, develop services and tourism for rapid, effective and stable growth.

The economic structure of the region in recent times has had a clear shift towards industrialization, modernization and proactive international economic integration. The GDP growth rate is quite high, each year is higher than the previous year; in which agriculture increases by 4.7%; industry increases by 14.8%; services increase by 12.6%. That growth has a large contribution from the sectors in the non-agricultural sector. The proportion of sectors with high labor productivity, containing high intellectual content is increasing and the proportion of sectors with low productivity is decreasing in the total social labor force.

society; marking the economic restructuring that has begun to go into depth and has better quality. The greater openness of the economy is a positive trend when our country has become a member of the WTO. Economic components have also shifted towards increasing the proportion of the private economy and foreign capitalist economy (although relatively obscure); reducing the proportion of the state economy (but still ensuring the leading role in the economy). The economic structure has shifted from simple to complex with an increasing number of industries and products, and an increasingly wide range of linkages; shifting from a low-level state to a higher-level state, increasingly meeting development requirements. The economy has initially accumulated and created reinvestment to solve pressing social and environmental issues.

However, the economic restructuring has not ensured sustainability in all three aspects of economy, society and environment. The economic potential is still small; the economic growth rate, although quite high, is still not commensurate with the potential and strengths of the region; the region has not yet become an industrial nucleus in the North, attracting industries from neighboring regions to develop together; the economic structure itself is not reasonable in terms of the proportion between sectors, between territories, especially between rural and urban areas, between developed and underdeveloped regions. Many urban areas and industrial zones develop spontaneously, without planning. The economic restructuring has also contributed to solving social problems, but many problems remain unresolved and are becoming more and more complicated, such as housing for workers, unemployment in urban areas and employment in rural areas, social evils, traffic accidents, the conversion of agricultural land into urban and industrial land, migration and labor issues, the gap in living standards and income, poverty, etc.

The unreasonable economic restructuring has also increased the risk and level of pollution and environmental degradation, especially in urban areas and industrial zones. In the process of forming a new economic structure, the selection of industries and products with high risks of causing environmental pollution has not been properly and satisfactorily raised. The environmental problems of craft villages are extremely difficult. Meanwhile, the limited attention and investment in developing service industries has also reduced the ability to limit the increase in environmental pollution.

environment, because the service industry has very little negative impact on the environment. Awareness, capacity and concern for environmental protection among sectors, levels, communities and businesses are still very limited.

Social and environmental issues will impact the economic development process. Without proactive and timely measures, it is impossible to ensure the economic restructuring of the Northern Key Economic Zone from the perspective of sustainable development.

Chapter 3

ORIENTATION AND MAIN SOLUTIONS TO ENSURE ECONOMIC STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE NORTHERN KEY ECONOMIC REGION FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

3.1. MAIN ORIENTATIONS TO 2020 ON ECONOMIC STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NORTHERN KEY ECONOMIC REGION

The State's orientation and policies for the development of the Northern Key Economic Zone influence and are decisive for the orientation of economic restructuring of this key economic zone. Therefore, the author has summarized related issues and generalized them into scientific bases for the research on the orientation of structural transformation and proposed important solutions for successful economic restructuring.

3.1.1. General assessment of the current development orientation and policies of the Party and State affecting the economic restructuring of the Northern Key Economic Zone from the perspective of sustainable development

3.1.1.1. Some limitations of current orientations and policies

The Prime Minister's Decisions No. 747/TTg, No. 145/2004/QD-TTg, No. 191/2006/QD-TTg, and the Politburo's Resolution No. 54-NQ/TW are key documents guiding the economic restructuring of the region during the period of accelerating industrialization and modernization until 2020. However, economic restructuring is also governed by other policies and laws of the Party and the State, especially the policies and development orientations of relevant ministries, branches and localities.

The development orientation according to Decision No. 145/2004/QD-TTg will create favorable conditions for the process of economic restructuring towards sustainable development, creating a strong transformation and active integration into the world economy. However, in current orientations and policies, the issue of promoting potentials and strengths

of the region in terms of natural resources, human resources, historical traditions, culture and geographical location; the requirement for balanced and harmonious development between localities and territorial regions has not been properly raised.

The economic growth targets in Decision No. 145/2004/QD-TTg are likely to be achieved sooner than the set deadline. Therefore, these targets should be reconsidered. The reason is that the basic premises have been created and the actual economic growth in the recent past has been over 12%/year; the policy environment has been built with attention and is becoming more and more open, the potentials and strengths of the region will be fully promoted; a new "wave" of investment with larger scale and intensity will appear due to the increasingly strong international economic integration process, especially when our country has become an official member of the WTO. However, the issue that needs more attention is the quality of growth. If there are active measures to encourage the development of high-tech industries, improve the intellectual content and labor productivity in products and services, especially in the tourism, trade, post and telecommunications, information technology, science and technology, healthcare, finance, banking, education and training, public transport and consulting sectors, it will create driving forces for socio-economic development and industrialization and modernization. Although these issues have been mentioned, they are very vague and lack specific focus.

Current orientations and policies have not yet provided a roadmap and specific measures to ensure balanced and harmonious development among localities in the region, between urban and rural areas; especially for slow-developing localities such as Ha Tay and Hung Yen; the issue of prioritizing the development of economic corridors; mountainous and coastal districts in the region; and ending spontaneous and unplanned development.

Among the solutions proposed in the orientations and policies, there is still no focus on developing enterprises and improving the operational efficiency of state-owned enterprises; investment efficiency; promoting the socialization of services in healthcare, education, culture, physical education, sports, entertainment, recreation and environmental protection,... areas that have had many weaknesses in recent times.

The goals, tasks and solutions for social development are set out quite specifically, but not fully, such as only mentioning the goal of job creation, without paying attention to high-productivity jobs and jobs for farmers; need to review the goal of reducing the unemployment rate to about 6% by 2010 (while this rate in 2005 was about 6%). Improving the quality of education, training, health, culture and society; controlling the rate of natural population growth, migration and labor; solving poverty along with solving the problem of income inequality in society, converting agricultural land into industrial parks, urban areas and other public works; social evils, traffic accidents; improving the quality of the social security network has not been given adequate attention.

Prioritizing the development of economic and social infrastructure is a crucial condition for creating a shift in economic structure in the right direction. On the one hand, the investment in development itself will also create growth in the construction and service sectors. On the other hand, when the infrastructure is completed, it will create conditions for the process of shifting the economic structure towards industry - service - agriculture. However, the requirements for developing environmental protection infrastructure have not been properly set, especially the development of waste collection and treatment networks; systems of green parks and water surfaces.

The targets and tasks on environmental protection are still too general and do not closely follow the targets and targets on environmental protection stated in the Economic Development Plan.

- The national social development strategy for the period 2006 - 2010 and the National Environmental Protection Strategy to 2010, with a vision to 2020. [20], [65]. This shows the lack of synchronization and unity in current orientations and policies, especially between socio-economic development policies and environmental policies.

Based on the documents of the Central Party, the Government, the Ministries and branches are urgently developing development plans for sectors and fields for the Northern Key Economic Zone. All 8 provinces and cities in the region also have their own development plans. The plans and development plans of the localities have continued to specify the development contents in the area, setting out goals, tasks, solutions and distribution.

responsibility for implementation, outlining the work to be done in the specific conditions of the locality. However, regional development plans and local development plans are sometimes not organically unified; the plans do not reflect the perspective of sustainable development. The plans issued by localities are often general, do not fully quantify development indicators, especially environmental indicators, there are sometimes conflicts between development goals, measures and sanctions are weak, resources to ensure are unclear; the connection and coordination in implementation organization have not been properly set out. (Table 3.1, Appendix).

3.1.1.2. Limitations of current policies and orientations

The above limitations in development orientations and policies for the Central Highlands Economic Zone, besides objective reasons, are still mainly subjective. First of all, the review, revision, supplementation, adjustment, and construction of new mechanisms and policies for the region have not been carried out regularly and continuously; the concretization and implementation of the Government's policies and guidelines on regional development are still slow and lack synchronization between sectors and levels.

Environmental protection issues have not been fully considered in the process of planning and developing plans at both the central and local levels. Development plans and plans often focus too much on economic growth and resource exploitation while ignoring environmental protection; environmental infrastructure planning is not considered an indispensable part.

Among the current types of planning, plans such as socio-economic development planning, industry and sector development planning, urban and industrial park construction planning, land use planning and plans have not been carried out in a synchronous manner, lacking mutual reference. For example, the current land use planning system still tends to arrange land types for administrative management purposes, without fully calculating economic and environmental efficiency.

The reason for this situation is primarily due to the awareness of policy makers and decision makers about the importance of environmental issues. Environmentalists are often left out of the development policy-making process, while economists rarely participate in the process of making environmental policies. On the other hand, we lack a legal corridor to integrate environmental protection issues into development plans; especially the lack of resources to implement environmental protection plans. 24

The linkages between provinces, cities and sectors with each other and between the Central and local governments in the process of building and implementing policies are still too loose, especially in the fields of investment attraction, infrastructure construction, resource exploitation and environmental protection, human resource development and labor use. Up to now, there is still no unified state management organization for the whole region; the capacity for comprehensive management, especially according to ecosystems, such as river basins, is still very limited.

3.1.2. General orientation on sustainable development of the Central Highlands Economic Zone

Promoting the potential and strengths of geographical location, human resources, natural resources, historical and cultural traditions, and infrastructure systems to accelerate socio-economic development in an effective and stable manner; ensuring balance and harmony between immediate and long-term interests, among regions and territories; taking the lead in attracting foreign investment and actively and effectively integrating into the world economy; taking the lead in industrialization and modernization of the country, always playing a leading role for both the Northern region and the whole country; promoting and supporting other regions, especially disadvantaged regions, to develop together; development must be closely, reasonably and harmoniously combined in all three aspects of economy, society, and environment; strengthening and consolidating national defense and security.

24 Before the Law on Environmental Protection 2005 was promulgated, there was no legal provision requiring consideration of environmental protection issues in the process of formulating, appraising and approving development plans and projects.

Economic structure of the Northern key region from the perspective of sustainable development - 18

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