Experts at a conference in Hanoi on May 3 discussed the plan, which is expected to cost VND208 billion (US$9.9 million) and has adopted 2005 as the base year for comparisons.

"The draft plan will be completed by the end of this month and then submitted to the Government for approval," said Tran Hong Ha, Deputy Minister of National Resources and Environment.

According to the Department of Meteorology, Hydrology and Climate Change, several sectors continue to emit large amounts of green house gases in Vietnam, including energy, agriculture and forestry.

The measures proposed to reduce these harmful effects include developing biogas technology, changing the diet of livestock, collecting and recycling agricultural by-products and using water-saving rice cultivation methods.

Many of the potential solutions involve the application of modern technologies to promote efficiency and the increased use of renewable energy and fossil fuels.

The plan is focused on addressing the management of carbon credit, which is a generic term for any tradable certificate or permit representing the right to emit one tonne of carbon dioxide or one tonne of another greenhouse gas with a carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e), according to the Department of Meteorology, Hydrology and Climate Change.

In other words, a carbon credit is a certificate showing that a government or company has paid to have a certain amount of carbon dioxide removed from the environment.

The plan also aims to increase control over carbon credit trading activities, to develop the carbon market within the country and to promote Vietnam's participation in the international carbon market.

The department also said that as of April this year, there were 112 projects in Vietnam recognised by the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Executive Board as CDM projects. They will help reduce the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 51 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Clean Development Mechanism allows a developing country with an emission-reduction or emission-limitation commitment under the Kyoto Protocol to implement an emission-reduction project.

Vietnam currently ranks fifth among countries with the largest number of CDM projects.