Strengthening resilience to the effects of climate change for vulnerable coastal communities in Vietnam (18-12-2018)
On December 18, in Hanoi, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program in Vietnam (UNDP), the Ministry of Construction and the People's Committees (People's Committees) of provinces including Nam Dinh, Thanh Hoa, Quang Binh, Thua Thien Hue, Quang Nam, Quang Ngai and Ca Mau hold a workshop on the project “Strengthening resilience to the impacts of climate change for vulnerable communities Vulnerable coastal Vietnam” in 2018.
This is the first project funded by the Green Climate Fund (GCF) with the support of UNDP and implemented for 5 years (2017-2021). The objective of the project is to increase the resilience of vulnerable coastal communities to climate change-related impacts in Vietnam, through safe housing for coastal communities vulnerable to increasing storms and floods; great increasing the coverage of mangrove forests to provide a natural buffer zone between the sea and coastal communities; providing reliable climate risk information to help guide the planning of risk and tolerance information to climate change.
According to Mr. Tran Quang Hoai, Director General of the Vietnam Disaster Management Authority, MARD, Project Director, in 2018, the project supported provinces to build 1,092 safe houses against floods and storms; support planting and recovering 199.46 ha of mangrove forest. This basically removes difficulties in determining the area and unit price of planting and restoring mangrove forests through integrating with existing programs and projects of the Government and proposes a number of potential livelihood models to help affected communities affected by mangrove planting and restoration; supports and implements 10 TOT training courses (at central, regional, and provincial level) and 100 TOF training courses (at commune level).
Ms. Caitlin Wiesen, Acting Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Program in Viet Nam acknowledged the active participation of the Directorate of Forestry, MARD and the Ministry of Construction in assisting in enhancing the resilience of provinces to natural disasters through project activities. It can be said that 2018 is a successful year of the project, the disbursement of counterpart funds to beneficiaries in the house construction component to withstand the impact of climate change is particularly important.
Referring to the 2019 plans, Mr. Vu Thai Truong, UNDP Project Manager said that the project will focus on supporting the construction of safety houses against storms and floods for 1,380 households in the 5 provinces of the project; review and approve the list of beneficiaries in 2019 and 4,000 households for the whole project; organize communication activities and competitions for designing safe houses; build safety house monitoring system against storms and floods; propose a new program on home safety against storms and floods in 28 coastal provinces. At the same time, the Project will continue to build and complete the system of Vietnam's coastal forest database and implement plans to link mangrove forest data to Web: climaterisk.org.vn; support implementation of livelihood activities and gender mainstreaming plans; support activities of monitoring mangrove forests, and communication activities related to mangrove forests.
Nhu Nguyet