Vietnam's climate woes ignite
national strategy By Vanya
Walker-Leigh
HANOI - Vietnam, hailed as a
development success story for lifting millions out
of poverty and staying on track to meet all its
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, is
seeing its future progress severely threatened by
the impact of global climate change.
Unprecedented climate-related catastrophes
in recent years have turned government and citizen
attention onto the pressing need for proactive
climate change policies, although the speed of
global warming is beyond Vietnam's control and
depends more on major industrial nations' future
greenhouse gas emission reductions agreed within
the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change.
Vietnam's National Climate Change
Strategy launched this March dramatically
describes the nation as one of the country's most
affected by climate
change, "with the Mekong River Delta being one of
the three most vulnerable deltas in the world
alongside the Nile and the Ganges".
By the
end of this century average temperatures could
have increased by two to three degrees Celsius,
the Strategy warns, with major changes in rainfall
patterns threatening devastating floods and
droughts, while the sea level is set to rise by
between 0.75 to one meter.
The policy
document adds, "About 40 percent of the Mekong
River Delta, 11 percent of the Red River Delta and
three percent of other regions will be submerged,
with two percent of Ho Chi Minh City [Vietnam's
commercial capital, home to over seven million of
the country's 86 million inhabitants] under
water."
Any slump in production in the
huge Mekong Delta rice bowl will have grave
national and global food security implications,
since Vietnam is the world's second-largest rice
exporter.
The Asian Development Bank's
report, "Addressing Climate Change and Migration
in Asia and the Pacific", issued this March,
forecasts that by 2050 some 9.5 million Vietnamese
will be at risk from the impacts of sea level
rise.
The Ministry of Natural Resources
and the Environment (MONRE) is leading
implementation of the national Strategy.
"Building on a previous National Target
Programme for Climate Change launched in 2008, the
Strategy focuses on both adaptation and
mitigation, while setting guideposts for the
short, medium and long term as well as ten
strategic tasks," Pham Van Tan, deputy
director-general of MONRE's International
Cooperation Department, told IPS.
"The
three action phases [go] up to the end of this
year, from 2013-2025 and 2016-2050, aiming at a
careful balance between adaptation and mitigation
- the latter to counter the expected rapid
increase in greenhouse gas emissions implied in
Vietnam's ambitious industrialization plans. We
will also pursue regional approaches with our
neighboring countries."
Strategic tasks
include developing wide-ranging actions on food
and water security, sea level rise, increasing
forest cover and renewable energy use, emission
reductions, community capacity development for
adaptation and scientific and technological
development. Provinces and cities are tasked with
developing their own plans, merged with national
goals, involving the private sector and civil
society.
Extensive support over the long
term from international donors is seen as critical
to the Strategy's success. However, it warns,
"Since Vietnam has become a middle-income country,
international support will be decreased and
cooperation carried out on a win-win basis." New
types of funding will hopefully emerge "through
new financial and technology transfer mechanisms
from developed countries".
The Strategy's
ninth and 10th tasks relate to international
cooperation and financial resources, to be
channeled through a national Green Climate Fund to
be set up by MONRE at the Prime Minister's
request. An international investment conference
envisions inviting foreign businesses to invest in
adaptation-related infrastructure.
"A
climate change donor support group [comprised of
countries and multilateral institutions], set up
in 2008 to interact with the government as well as
coordinate our actions, is currently chaired by
Germany and the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP)," Juergen Hesse, director of the
Natural Resources Programme at the Vietnam office
of GIZ (the German development cooperation agency)
told IPS.
"GIZ is cooperating with several
other donors as well as the World Wildlife Fund
and the International Union for the Conservation
of Nature on coastal zone protection in the Mekong
Delta, which includes restoration and extension of
mangrove belts and upgrading existing dykes while
determining key 'erosion hot spots' where new ones
would be most needed."
Broadening existing
climate change cooperation to support the new
Strategy was discussed during two high-level
visits to Vietnam last month, first by UK Foreign
Secretary William Hague, followed by the European
Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, as well
as by the recently appointed Director-General of
the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Jose
Graziano da Silva during his visit in March.
"Non-governmental organizations, both
Vietnamese and foreign, have been working on
climate change for some time through field
projects and their Climate Change Working Group,"
Vu Trung Kien, director of the Climate Change
Resilience Center, told IPS. "We talk with the
government but don't sit on the National Climate
Change Committee and have a few entry points at
provincial levels so far. Lack of capacity, lack
of information at all levels is a huge problem."
The government admits that its climate
change actions can only succeed as part of a broad
"green economy" framework, a radical departure
from the environmentally destructive growth
policies followed after 1975.
The related
National Green Growth Strategy being drafted under
the prime minister's leadership will hopefully be
launched in time for the upcoming United Nations
Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil,
known as Rio+20, from June 20-22.
As the
climate change strategy tellingly warns, "public
awareness on climate change remains limited and
one-sided: too much attention towards the adverse
impacts ... and too little to changing production
and consumption behaviors towards.low-carbon,
green growth.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road,
Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
