Legal Framework and Its Implications for Environmental Risk Management in Inland Waterway Transport of Dangerous Goods: The Case of Vietnam
Keywords:
Inland Waterway, National Legal Regulations, Dangerous Goods, IWT, Environmental Risk ManagementAbstract
Transporting dangerous goods (DG) on inland waterways (IWT) has caused significant environmental and safety failures, especially in Vietnam, where inland waterways play a vital role in the country’s logistics network. This study analyzes Vietnam’s current practices in managing environmental risks during the transport of DG, and compares these regulations with international standards such as the UN Model Regulations, ADR, and the IMDG Code. Although Vietnam has made significant improvements in the classification, labeling, and licensing structure of transport, there are still limitations in enforcement, digital monitoring, and professional training. The paper uses data collected from the Ministry of Transport’s Survey and Price Assessment Study, and applies a qualitative analysis method to compare Vietnam’s legal regulations with international standards. Finally, the paper proposes necessary steps to improve modern risk management capabilities through legal updates and enhanced operational rationalization, along with the application of modern technological tools such as AIS, GPS and IoT to enhance monitoring and management capabilities. These recommendations are expected to support future-oriented policies, contributing to the creation of a safer and more sustainable inland waterways operation system in Vietnam.
References
[1] A. Oggero, et al., "A survey of accidents occurring during the transport of hazardous substances by road and rail," Journal of Hazardous Materials, vol. 133, pp. 1-7, 2018, doi: 10.1080/17445302.2020.1827632.
[2] Ministry of Transport of Vietnam, "Survey to assess the current status and develop technical guidelines for risk control and response to environmental incidents in the transportation of dangerous goods on inland waterways," 2021.
[3] M. A. Fox, "Dangerous Goods and Hazardous Materials," Glossary for the Worldwide Transportation of Dangerous Goods and Hazardous Materials. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 54–57, 1999, doi: 10.1007/978-3-662-11890-0_21.
[4] Government of Vietnam, Decree No. 34/2024/ND-CP on the List of Dangerous Goods and the Transport of Dangerous Goods by Road and Inland Waterways, March 2024.
[5] A. Kumar, "United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as a specialized agency for environmental protection and sustainable development," Yearbook of International Environmental Law, vol. 34(1), 2023, doi:10.1093/yiel/yvae022.
[6] A. N. Sexton, J. N. Beisel, C. Staentzel, et al., "Inland navigation and land use interact to impact European freshwater biodiversity," Nature Ecology & Evolution, vol. 8, pp. 1098–1108, 2024, doi:10.1038/s41559-024- 02414-8.
[7] P. Wang, H. Zhang, J. Li, and Y. Tian, "Numerical simulation of habitat restoration for floating fish eggs in the upper Yangtze River tributaries," Sustainability, vol. 16, no. 5, pp. 1799, 2024, doi:10.3390/su16051799.
[8] A. L. Marcu Turcanu, L. M. Moga, and E. V. C. Rusu, "Analysis of some essential aspects related to the navigation conditions on the Danube River," Inventions, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 97, 2021, doi:10.3390/inventions6040097.
[9] V. Pencheva, A. Asenov, I. Georgiev, B. Ivanov, and I. Zanev, "Study of inland waterway transport routing options under conditions of uncertainty in navigational restrictions," Transport Problems, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 89–99, 2023, doi:10.20858/tp.2023.18.3.08.
[10] International Maritime Organization, IMDG Code: International Maritime Dangerous Goods Code, Amendment 40-20, London, UK: IMO Publishing, 2020.
[11] United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), European Agreement concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road (ADR), 2023, Edition. Available: https://unece.org.
[12] Mekong River Commission (MRC) Navigation Programme, Carriage, Handling and Storage of Dangerous Goods along the Mekong River — Volume I: Risk Analysis, April 2012, doi:10.52107/mrc.ajgt3g.
[13] M. Zhang, D. Zhang, S. Fu, P. Kujala and S. Hirdaris, "A predictive analytics method for maritime traffic flow complexity estimation in inland waterways," Reliability Engineering & System Safety, vol. 220, pp. 108317, 2022, doi:10.1016/j.ress.2021.1083174.
[14] H. Ding and J. Weng, "A robust assessment of inland waterway collision risk based on AIS and visual data fusion," Ocean Engineering, vol. 307, pp. 118242, 2024, doi:10.1016/j.oceaneng.2024.118242.
[15] M. Liang, J. Su, R. W. Liu and J. S. L. Lam, "AISClean: AIS data-driven vessel trajectory reconstruction under uncertain conditions," Ocean Engineering, vol. 306, pp. 117987, 2024, doi:10.1016/j.oceaneng.2024.117987.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Tien-Dat Tran, Thi Duyen-Anh Pham
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, which permits copying, redistributing, remixing, transformation, and building upon the material in any medium so long as the original work is properly cited.
