Vietnam - Sun shines on climate change initiatives

"The focal point of this green development strategy is how to determine the country’s GHG emissions, which is  a very important foundation for international community’s commitments"

>> The Climate for Change

A key international community-backed legal framework will help Vietnam effectively respond to climate change.

The draft national strategy on climate change, trumpeted last week by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment’s (MoNRE) Institute of Meteorology, Hydrology and Environment (IMHEN), would receive international community backing and help Vietnam more effectively respond to climate change, said UNDP assistant country director Dao Xuan Lai. “The strategy should have been made long time ago, given Vietnam is considered one of the few nations expected to be the most heavily affected by climate change,” Lai told VIR.

To be valid from 2012 to 2050, the draft strategy has nine strategic tasks underlining an urgent need for modern climate change mitigation and monitoring techniques, forest plantation, ensuring national food security and water resource security, development of new renewables, planning of industrial and urban development, waste management, climate change awareness improvement and international cooperation.

Each strategic task would be specifically assigned to an economic sector which would then design and implement specific programmes on combating climate change, the MoNRE said.

“The strategy is of prime importance in the Vietnamese government’s battle against climate change as it will include long-term orientations and targets for Vietnam to mitigate climate change impacts and create influential information on climate change among the public, businesses and international community,” Lai said.

“This strategy, developed from the government’s National Target Programme on Responding to Climate Change issued in December, 2008, will be a major framework for the government, ministries, sectors and localities to make their own plans on responding to climate change and sustainable development,” Lai said.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said the Vietnamese government considered climate change “a vital issue” and responding to climate change must closely link with sustainable growth while pursuing a low-carbon economy.

The draft strategy sees Vietnam having a low-carbon economy, which can successfully respond to climate change and play an important role in the region by 2100. It also determines three implementation stages, under which greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions are to be integrated into the nation’s socio-economic development activities, with possible future revisions of the strategy in a manner suitable to the nation’s responses to climate change.

Additionally, the draft also embraces 10 different key climate change-related programmes, such as water resource management, climate change science, GHG emission monitoring, urban areas’ climate change responding, irrigation, and multiplying models to successfully fight climate change.

“But, much remains to be done as this draft strategy still has general information. It must be made in detail,” Lai said.

The UNDP said climate change would be one of the biggest challenges for Vietnam’s socio-economic development, especially people living on agricultural production activities, and for the country to reach its Millennium Development Goals. The MoNRE reported that Vietnam’s average temperature augmented 0.7 Degrees Celsius between 1951-2000. It was expected that the temperature would rise 2-3 degrees Celsius in the 21st century.

Over the past 20 years, Vietnam’s sea level rose 20 centimetres and was expected to be increasing another 30cm over the next 50 years. Also last week, a new scenario on climate change and sea level rises in Vietnam was made public by the IMHEN. This scenario has been updated from the one issued in 2009 with new figures about expected temperature rises and changes in rainfall and humidity in coming decades in different parts of Vietnam.

Notably, if the sea level rose one metre by 2100, some 10.5 per cent of the Red River Delta area would be inundated by sea water, while this rate would be 2.5 per cent in the central coastal region, 20.1 per cent in Ho Chi Minh City and 39 per cent in the Mekong River Delta.

Meanwhile, the rate of population to be directly hit by this disaster in these regions would respectively be 9.4, 8.9, 7 and 34.6 per cent by 2100.

The new scenario also forecast increased temperatures from 1980-1999 to 2100. Specifically, the temperature would rise 2-3 degrees Celsius in winter, 2-2.5 degrees in spring, summer and winter in northern and southern regions respectively, and 3 degrees in the central regions by 2100.

IMHEN vice head Nguyen Van Thang, who is also vice chairman of the National Target Programme on Responding to Climate Change’s office, said this scenario would continue being updated every year, so the government could revise measures to cope with climate change and call for international support.

But he said that under the National Target Programme on Responding to Climate Change, nearly half of ministries and sectors had failed to issue their own action plans for combating climate change during 2010-2015.

“Some governmental authorities are too slow. This will affect the government’s programmes calling for international financial and technical support for responding to climate change. The remaining ministries and sectors will have to complete these plans next year,” Thang said, adding that many tasks needed to be completed in 2012.

These included the national programme on climate change science and technology, minimising climate change’s impacts on the Socio-economic Development Strategy 2011-2020 and the Socio-economic Development Plan 2011-2015. For example, the draft national strategy on green development for 2011-2020 with a vision to 2030 was recently submitted to the National Steering Committee on Climate Change headed by Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai for discussion and approval next year.

“The focal point of this green development strategy is how to determine the country’s GHG emissions, which is a very important foundation for international community’s commitments,” Lai said. Over the past years, international debates have been focused exclusively on trimming down GHG emissions as the best solution to cope with climate change.

According to UNDP, Vietnam’s per capita GHG emission volume remained far lower than that in many developed nations. However, they sharply augmented, from 0.3 tonnes in 1990 to 1.2 tonnes in 2007, when the world’s average per capita GHG emission volume was 4.4 tonnes, the US (20.6 tonnes), Russia (10.6 tonnes), United Kingdom (9.8 tonnes), France (6 tonnes) and China (3.8 tonnes).

Lai said UNDP and other international donors stood ready to help Vietnam perfect its approach in responding to climate change.

Thanh Tung | vir.com.vn

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