Pollution

(Note: It is incredibly difficult to attain environmental information in Vietnam because there is no centralized data portal, much of the record is not available for public usage, and many reports from international organizations only focus around bigger cities, especially Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh. Even the annual Statistical book for each province, which is usually at least 500 pages, only includes several lines about environmental issues, mostly on natural disaster and damages. Therefore, I am very uncertain if I can attain enough detail to answer any of questions, but I will try my best to list everything that is relevant.)

Again, here is the map of the Northwestern Region in Vietnam (the one in cyan color)

I. Waste Management:

This is the map of solid waste collection and disposal in Vietnam, taken from the National Environment Report on Waste Management 2017 (PDF, in Vietnamese, page 178 – this is the newest one). The base color represent the amount of waste collection in 2016 in tons/day and the columns represents the amount of waste disposal in 2014, 2015, and 2016 in tons/day.

Here, we can see that the Northwestern provinces have relatively low number of both, and there is a general increase in waste disposal from 2014-2016. For example, in page 42, there is a specific data on the amount of urban municipal solid waste generated in Dien Bien: 19,929 tons in 2012; 20,221 tons in 2013; 25,279 tons in 2014; and 26,284 tons in 2015. There is no earlier data available (even though there are reports for as far as 2007 but without specific provincial number).

On page 49, there is information about the Lao Cai Apatite mine: the soil and rock discharged 2.5 times more than the ore (the coefficient of soil removal is 2.5), the solid waste discharged is about 3 million tons of waste rock and soil per year. And on page 110, there is a short report on water pollution on Buoi River due to Hoa Binh Sugar Factory Joint Stock Company. However, there is no data on “3 largest emitters” (I highly doubt that we ever record these kinds of data in Vietnam at all).

This is the graph of Proportion of pollutants in domestic wastewater in regions across the country (the Northern region, which includes the Northwestern region, is in dark red, with the three first columns are urban areas and the other three are rural areas), taken from National Environment Report 2015 – National Environment Status 2011-2015 (PDF, in Vietnamese, page 7). Here, we can see that relatively, the wastewater pollution in the region is less severe than the rest of the country.
(This 280-page report itself is quite informative, it just happened to have absolutely no other helpful information other than this graph.)

II. Vulnerability and Environmental Justice

(Note: There is probably data available, but they are not collected/centralized. Hence in order to make any sort of correlation will be a whole research project by itself, and will probably take much longer than doing a homework. Hence, I try to find results that are already published.)

The only case I can find is from the paper Vegetation fires and air pollution in Vietnam. We can see the correlation (one that is actually quite intuitive), that in Vietnam active fires happen more in areas with forest as the main land cover, including the Northwestern region and the Central Highland.

Here are the maps (page 269 and 270):

And here is a rough map I made about GRDP per capita in Vietnam, which also show a correlation between poverty (income level) and active fires. The data is taken from the wiki page of List of Vietnamese administrative units by GRDP per capita (in Vietnamese), with statistic taken from the 2018 Statistical Yearbook of Vietnam, Chapter 2 (PDF, in Vietnamese and English).