Policymakers and local communities must co-operate to halt the potentially devastating effects of climate change in the coming years, ministry officials said yesterday during a conference in Can Tho City.
The Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, Pham Khoi Nguyen, said Viet Nam was one of the five countries most vulnerable in the world to climate change because of high population density in its low-lying delta regions.
He said the Vietnamese Government, in its efforts to address the impact of climate change, had signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
Each one metre rise in sea level could submerge 20-30 per cent of the country’s two largest deltas under water, he added.
Speaking at the meeting, Jeremy Bird, CEO of Mekong River Commission Secretariat, said that climate change in the Mekong Basin must be considered and assessed "in a trans-boundary and regional development context, including influences from upstream."
Climate change will affect all economic sectors, the sustainability of the eco-system and threaten food security in communities living along the Mekong River.
Bird urged countries in the Lower Mekong Basin to work together in adapting to the challenges of climate change.
Juzhong Zhuang, assistant chief economist of the Asian Development Bank’s Economics and Research Department, said Southeast Asia was highly vulnerable to climate change since a large proportion of the population and economic activities was located along coastlines.
The rice-yield potential in the region is projected to fall by up to 50 per cent by 2100, threatening food security, and a large part of the dominant forest could be replaced by areas with a low carbon sequestration potential.
Total damage could be equal a loss of 6.7 per cent of combined GDP each year by 2100, more than twice the world’s average, Zhuang said.
Zhuang said regional cooperation offered an effective means to deal with cross-boundary issues, such as water resource management, forest fire prevention, disaster and risk management, and control of disease outbreaks.
"The region is already adapting, but more needs to be done," he said. "One priority is to strengthen the overall adaptive capacity, including stepping up efforts to raise public awareness, conduct more research to better understand climate change and its impact, and enhance policy and planning co-ordination."