Environmental research

According to data from Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, there are currently 2017 trade villages nation-wide, with Red River Delta alone being home to 800 trade villages. Since 2004, with the government policy of promoting industrial development in rural areas, development and expansion of traditional trade villages have been taking place rapidly, leading to increased rate of environmental pollution. At present, in all the trade villages, income level has gone up but quality of life has gone down because environmental degradation and increasing health expenses have seriously undermined the sustainability of the trade village- a strategic part of industrialization of rural areas. Van village(Yen Vien), of Van Ha commune, Viet Yen district, Bac Giang province has a tradition of wine-making that emerged very early in history. Now, the traditional wine-making in Van village has expanded both in scale and output, with improved quality as well. Van village has 650 wine-making households (accounting for 73.4% of households in the village). Average output is 20000-30000 liter of a variety of wines(an average of 40 liters / household / day), mainly cassava wine and rice wine. Wine-making in Van village employs manual techniques of tradition and family secrets. Therefore the technical infrastructure of the trade village is substandard. The application of new technology is slow, hence quality of products is low, prices are high, reducing the product s competitiveness in the market. In addition to wine-making revenue, villagers obtain indirect revenue by utilizing residual grains as pig feed. Thanks to this available feed source, Van village raises an average of around 15,000 breeding pigs, creating a relatively large income for the people. However, the very development of wine-making, particularly massive pig raising, has brought about serious environmental pollution. The unplanned haphazard development of animal husbandry and mindless disposal of livestock waste in the ponds, village lane roads are causing serious pollution of air, surface water and affecting people s health (respiratory diseases, gastrointestinal diseases, nervous diseases). According to preliminary calculations the total volume of easily degraded solid waste (the leftover food and waste in pig raising) is around 7,000 tons per year. This very significant waste volume calls for appropriate policies as well as waste treatment methods in order to reduce environmental pollution. Investigations showed that the air here is polluted by waste gases from animal wastes such as H2S, NH3, CH4, H2S. Concentration level is exceeding the permitted level 1.5-4.1 times. For surface water, most of the environmental index for water coming from organic waste has exceeded the permitted level by many times, examples of NH4 + function in some places exceeded 78 times the allowed standard . With a large number of wine-making households, energy usage is also an issue to be dealt with. Research shows that the use of wine-making kitchen in village Van has low energy efficiency, leading to large consumption of fuel (coal). The objective of the project: To contribute to reducing environmental pollutions in the wine-making trade village of Van, improve the quality of life of the people and promote the sustainable development of traditional wine-making and animal husbandry. Specific objectives: To raise awareness and understanding of the government and the people on environmental issues in general and the environmental issues involved in livestock production and waste disposal of the community in particular. To build technical capacity to install and operate Biogas Model in villages 4 and 5. To construct the improved model of wine-making stove to improve energy efficiency. The mechanism of mass collecting and treating of animal waste is built and tested Main activities: Media: - Organise media activities in the community about environmental issues in livestock production and waste disposal of the community - Construct plans to clean up our environment every quarter and assign responsibilities in the community - Organise movements of cleaning of streets and public places - Draw lessons from the tried model and share the experiences Building models and contribute to policy: - Organise training of team workers to build and operate the Biogas model for the commune (10 people with certificates) and households participating in the project - Construct mechanisms to supervise the quality and costs for construction activities of Biogas - Construct of the technical and financial assistance for the large-scale implementation of Biogas at 02 villages (100 Biogas at 2 villages) - Build and test the improved models of wine-making stove in order to improve the energy efficiency. - Devise and test mechanisms to collect and treat animal waste

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