HCM CITY — The city’s response to climate change needs a paradigm shift in approach – from preparing to fight it to learning to live with it, experts agreed at a conference yesterday.

They also said that the city was lagging far behind its regional peers in countries like Thailand that began implementing adaptation measures many years ago.

City authorities have set the task as a top priority, however, and begun taking considerable efforts to prepare for the challenges ahead. Yesterday’s conference was a highly significant step, said an official of the city’s Natural Resources and Environment Department.

Dr Nguyen Trung Viet, head of the department’s Solid Waste Division, said one of the most challenging aspects was that the work had to begin from scratch because no data was available to base action plans on.

"We don’t even know how much power is consumed a year by the hotels in the city," he said, adding this led to a failure, for instance, to have proper studies done on effective use of electricity.

"We’ve affirmed that our main task is to adapt to the change, not cope with it, and that there is no need for the country to cut down on greenhouse gases emissions because the emission proportion in Viet Nam is quite low," he said.

Other scientists at the conference agreed with Viet, saying that "adaptation" would enable "flexible" minds to comprehend the impacts of climate change on many fields and define tasks to mitigate them.

Viet said he has discussed with several related agencies and departments the need to identify specific tasks for each to carry out and set up a networking group to implement the tasks.

"I need young, capable staff with good expertise, and good command of the English language for the group," he said, explaining that climate change related programmes would last for 15 to 20 years and most of the knowledge used would be drawn from countries further ahead in the field.

This knowledge, which he called technology transfer, would be one of two major factors. The second – funding – would be raised mostly from international funding allocated for cutting down on greenhouse gas emission that developed countries have set up to help developing nations.

This would account for half of the funds, while 30 per cent would be taken from the State exchequer and the city and business communities would contribute 10 per cent each, Viet said.

Viet explained that his division has been assigned by the city to be in charge of preparing and executing climate change adaptation plans.

Rising tides

HCM City is one of 10 cities in the world most vulnerable to climate change, including Calcutta, Dacca, Shanghai, Bangkok and Yangoon, said Vu Thuy Linh, another department expert.

She said 154 wards and communes in the city were frequently flooded by rising tides, and this number would go up to 177, or 61 per cent of the city’s area, by 2050. This would go up further to 71 per cent in the case of storms, she added.

"Unemployment would exert more pressure on the city’s economy at a time when salt-water intrusion takes farming land away from farmers in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta provinces and they have to migrate to HCM City to find jobs."

Phan Thu Nga, head of the Scientific Activities Division of the city’s Science and Technology Department, confirmed the prediction, saying climate change would have highly adverse impacts on agriculture and health.

"The challenge is to find ways to adapt to climate change, mitigate losses and maintain development for the future," she said.

Action plan

"Through the recent discussions, an action plan has been drafted for the city with strong involvement of the Department of Communication and Transportation and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development," Viet said.

Other departments and agencies would be involved in refining it further, he added.

The transportation department would deal with air pollution from the large number of vehicles that commute every day in the city and think of ways to save power in the city’s lighting system.

It would also work on creating green corridors along the streets and delineate lanes for bicycles, he explained.

The agriculture department would research the impacts of climate change, like rising temperatures, and try to identify plants that can be grown in different weather conditions, as well as ways to use salty water.

"We shouldn’t think about building dykes to prevent floods from rising sea waters," he said, "because the city cannot afford the US$80 billion it would take to develop a dyke system like in the Netherlands."

The conference was the first major action of the city in adapting to climate change and its report would serve as the basic document for People’s Committee Chairman Le Hoang Quan at the Copenhagen summit on December 14-17, according to Dao Anh Kiet, director of the city’s Science and Technology Department. — VNS