Protecting, maintaining and restoring
ecosystems, especially water systems, is among the most urgent tasks for
strengthening the country’s resilience to climate change, said Dr Trần Văn Giải
Phóng, technical specialist at the Institute for Social and Environment
Transition (ISET). He spoke at a workshop of a project to develop a city
climate resilience index for Viet Nam. The project, carried out by the Ministry
of Construction’s Urban Development Department in co-operation with ISET and
the Asia Foundation, aims at providing localities with an overview of their
resilience against natural disasters and climate change, through which they can
come up with appropriate solutions to tackle the problems. From surveys and
research at five pilot cities in the first phase of the project, namely Lào
Cai, Cẩm Phả, Hội An, Gia Nghĩa and Cà Mau, experts find that critical
ecosystems have been destroyed or degraded significantly in recent years. Particularly,
lake and river systems and lowland areas of cities are highly prone to
encroachment under the high pressure of urbanisation, which exacerbates
flooding. “When land price increases, cities tend to fill in canals, rivers or
lakes to build new urban areas. This considerably reduces the natural water
drainage ability,” Phóng said, adding that cities do not have effective
mechanisms to protect and maintain the ecosystems providing environmental
services to safeguard them. Another important factor that will make cities more
climate change resilient is protecting the health and well-being of residents
in urban communities, the project finds. Surveys show that poor communities in
the five pilot cities, which are highly vulnerable to natural disasters like
storms and floods, have the most difficulty accessing public services like
water and electricity. From an economic perspective, it is necessary to
diversify industries to deal with the impact of natural disasters and climate
change so that communities have various options to choose, rather than relying
on only one type of job for their livelihoods, according to Dr Phóng. “For
example, some localities in the Mekong Delta region have for too long depended
on growing rice, while others rely only on aquaculture. When there were
environmental changes like drought or salt water intrusion, people found it
very hard to respond and adapt,” he said. Dr Đỗ Hậu from the Viet Nam Urban
Planning and Development Association, which is also involved in the project,
said response to climate change impact requires integrated planning by multiple
sectors of the city leadership. Up until now, planning has been conducted by
each sector separately while co-operation and co-ordination among sectors are
very limited. As a result, planning is usually inconsistent and even
conflicting. He also pointed out some notable difficulties that cities are
facing in increasing their climate change resilience, especially lack of
qualified human resources and sufficient funding. According to the project, the
city climate resilience shows the ability of cities, including individuals,
communities, organisations and urban systems to survive, cope with, adapt to
and develop amidst regular pressure and sudden environmental shocks. A city’s
resilience index measures four sectors, which are health and welfare, society
and economy, infrastructure and environment, and leadership and strategy. Among
five pilot cities, Cà Mau in the Mekong Delta and Gia Nghĩa in the Central
Highlands province of Đắk Nông were found to have the lowest performance. Hội
An City in central Quảng Nam Province tops the list with an overall score of a
little over 7.5 out of 10. The two-year project, which was launched last year,
will be expanded to assess 25 more cities.
Viet
Nam News p2 – December 20
New index for Viet Nam climate resilience
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