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Green Productivity: Integrated Community Development For Poverty Alleviation

APO Demonstration Projects in Vietnam

 ©APO ISBN 92-833-2330-0

Successful GPDP  in eleven villages of Vietnam

Table of Contents

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FOREWORD

The Asian Productivity Organization (APO) started its Green Productivity (GP) program in the mid-1990s in response to the challenges of sustainable development arising from the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. The primary objective of the GP program is to integrate productivity improvement with environmental concerns. Hence, the APOfs GP program is guided by the twin objectives of productivity enhancement and environmental protection. This linkage of productivity and the environment is a key feature of the APO approach to GP.

The implementation approach adopted by the APO for the GP program is demonstration projects, wherein factories or enterprises are chosen to demonstrate the feasibility and viability of combining productivity and environmental concerns. These projects serve as models for replication in other similar businesses, both within the country and in other APO member countries. The results achieved by the Green Productivity Demonstration Program (GPDP) are widely disseminated by the APO through the publication of documents, audio-visual materials, organizing workshop meetings and seminars, and sponsoring observational study missions to the GPDPs.

The initial GPDPs taken up by the APO were primarily in the industrial sector in general and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in particular. Over the years, however, the GP concept has expanded to the agriculture as well as service sectors. The Vietnam Productivity Center (VPC) and the Vietnamese Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (MOSTE) successfully implemented the first GPDPs at the community level under the APO support, thus exploring new avenues for GP application.

Between 1998 and 2001, GPDPs were successfully implemented in eleven villages in Vietnam. This was an exemplary form of cooperation among various agencies such as the APO, the Directorate for Standards and Quality (STAMEQ), MOSTE, various provincial Departments of Science, Technology and Environment (DOSTE), Departments of Rural and Agricultural Development (DRAD), the communities where projects were implemented, many research institutes, and others. It is heartening to note that in the next phase of the project, the Vietnamese Government is expanding GP projects to seventy-two communities in Vietnam.

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