Vietnam Oks France-funded Climate Change Adaptation Project

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has approved a EUR20-million loan by the French Development Agency (AFD) for the Support Program to Respond to Climate Change (SP-RCC) in the country. This is part of the national target program on climate change adaptation adopted in Dec 2008 which was funded by AFD and the Japanese Investment and Cooperation Agency (JICA). The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment was empowered to closely work with other agencies to carry out the program effectively and on schedule. The impacts of climate change is showing clear signs across Vietnam, including the recent increase in atmospheric temperatures, sea level, droughts, floods, unseasonable storm, which will severely cause harms to agricultural production, its related processing industries, as well as sea, island areas and ecology, experts said. Vietnam is listed among five hardest-hit countries by climate change. If sea level rises one meter, 5% of land, 11% of population and 7% of agricultural land of the country would be affected with the losses estimated at 10% of GDP. The country is making efforts to build a monitoring system on climate change and sea level rise in order to put it into operation by 2015 in a move to mitigate their negative impacts. So far, the Vietnamese government has mobilized over $1.2 billion in aid from the international community in efforts to deal with climate change. (Vietnamplus.vn Nov 14, dmhcc.gov.vn Nov 15)