A national project to explore and assess the management of sea resources and environment during the 2006-11 period was able to yield important results.

These included building centres to cope with oil spills in three regions and collecting important data on sea resources to help boost the country's marine economy potential, Vietnam News Agency reported.

Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai and head of the National Steering Committee on Assessing Sea Resources and Environment reaffirmed the importance of the marine economy to the country's security and socio-economic development at a meeting on Monday.

During the project's implementation, progress was made to systemise all legal documents pertaining to sea and island protection, natural resources management, sea hydrometeorology and policies related to building human resources for the sector.

Hoang Duong Tung, deputy head of the National Environment Administration, said research conducted within this project had helped improve efficiency of weather forecasting and limit the damage caused in coastal areas.

The project had helped identify spots vulnerable to environmental degradation, methods to calculate economic loss incurred from environmental damage, and systematic criteria to assess the level of environmental degradation in several vital coastal areas.

Under the national project approved in March 2006, 18 out of 20 sub-projects were carried out, including one to assess the potential of oil extraction in the sea and the continental shelf, the country's biodiversity and sources of aquaculture in Vietnam's coastal areas.

The deputy PM called for the project in the 2011-20 period to focus on studying the potential of exploiting far-off sea areas.

Hong also expressed the need to encourage private sectors to participate in sea resources development and protection in addition to the training of human resources.

Source BERNAMA