Page 267 - Ebook HTKH 2024

GREEN URBANIZATION FOR GREEN ECONOMIC GROWTH IN
VIETNAM

119
Nguyen Van Phuc

Abstract: Green economic growth is a strong model to ensure socio- economic sustainable
development. The model is built on some key pillars, including the reduction of wastes from the
production and consumption processes as well as processing these wastes in order to recover the
natural and social environment. Urbanization is an objective process in the socio-economic
development of every country, which is currently accelerating at an unprecedented rate.. The process
itself and the urban life consumes a major amount of goods and services, provides a major contribution
to the economic development, but creates the major share of production and consumption wastes. Thus,
urbanization and urban life, either in the world or in Vietnam, is the major source of environmental
pollution. Therefore, the urbanization with less wastes and less environment pollution- the green
urbanization- is one of key solutions for the green economic growth. Ensuring the relationship is
especially urgent in Vietnam now, but requires contributions of all stakeholders, from the government,
business entities to individual citizens.
Keywords: Green growth, urbanization, green city, green economy

1. Introduction
Urban areas are the survival space of 56% of the world population, contributing

80% of world GDP in 2023. “Cities play an increasingly important role in tackling
climate change, because their exposure to climate and disaster risk increases as they
grow” 120 . WIPO also clarifies that “cities and their populations are highly vulnerable to
climate change” 121 . Under normal conditions, urban regions contribute a high
percentage to the economical development of a country, operate with higher
productivity and utilize resources more efficiently. On the opposite side, cities
contribute the dominant share of usage of resources and products/ services provided by
economic activities, especially energy, generate high percentage of wastes and cause

environment pollution at critical level 122 .
In principle, the relationship between urbanization and environmental degradation
changes in accordance with the environmental Kuznets curve, meaning an increasing
level of urbanization is linked with an increasing environmental degradation. However,
Eeckhout and Hedtrich confirmed this possibility after finding out that large cities are
more green than small cities and rural areas; they use energy and resources more

efficiently. These arguments hint to increasing the priority for the developing big cities
in comparison with small and medium cities, a suggestion going in the opposite extent
of opinions of many international leading urbanists currently.

119 Yersin University, Email: vanphuc.nguyen@gmail.com
120 World Bank data. Urban Development Overview (worldbank.org)
121 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO, 2022)
122 Jan Eeckhout, Christoph Hedtrich (2021), Green urbanization. PLoS ONE 16(11): e0260393

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