“The situation is urgent,” said Muthukumara Mani, World Bank lead environmental economist, based in Hanoi.
Even state media, after years of near silence on air quality, has become noticeably vocal in Vietnam, a one-party state.
VietnamNet, the official news site of the ministry of information and communications, published a rare call for action in January, warning air pollution was “a crisis demanding immediate attention”.
Authorities declined to talk to AFP but Mani said there was recognition of the problem “at the highest level in the country”, citing a trip to China made by senior Hanoi officials to learn how Beijing fixed its once-awful air.
While Hanoi has floated the idea of low-emission zones and devised an action plan that aims for “moderate” or better air quality on 75 per cent of days annually, it is not clear whether either will be enforced.
“The issue sometimes with Vietnam is that people pay much more attention to targets than what’s actually being delivered,” said Bob Baulch, professor of economics at RMIT University Vietnam.
Tran Thi Chi had years of breathing difficulties before she made the difficult decision to uproot from the city centre house where she lived for more than a decade.
“The air in Hanoi had become so thick that I felt like I didn’t have oxygen to breathe,” said the 54-year-old, one of the first of her friends to buy an air purifier.
But millions of others have no choice but to live with the noxious air, prompting environmental activists to push for faster change – until authorities launched a crackdown.
Nguy Thi Khanh, founder of GreenID, one of Vietnam’s most prominent environmental organisations, was a rare voice challenging Hanoi’s plans to increase coal power to fuel economic development, before she was jailed in 2022.
Four other environmentalists were also imprisoned between 2022 and 2023.
“This repression has had a chilling effect that has made it virtually impossible for people to advocate for the government to address the problem of air pollution,” said Ben Swanton of The 88 Project, which advocates for freedom of expression in Vietnam.
Vietnam has pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, which should help improve air quality, but government statistics show coal imports were up 25 per cent last year compared to 2023.
Chi is fearful for the city she has always loved.
“We need urgent, realistic measures from authorities,” she said.
“We have no time to wait around.”
