Vietnam is greatly affected by climate change, therefore, how to cope with this challenge is becoming an urgent task, said scientists.

The 2009 World Environment Day o­n the theme “The Earth needs us to join hands to prevent climate change” shows the greater attention the world is giving to environmental protection.

Silent crisis

Climate change affects both the environment and the country’s sustainable development. Kofi A. Annan, President of the Global Humanitarian Forum o­n May 29, introduced a major new report o­n the human impact of climate change. The ‘Human Impact Report: Climate Change – The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis’ is the first ever comprehensive report to look at how climate change affects people and their ways of life.

The report estimates that climate change today accounts for over 300,000 deaths throughout the world each year, the equivalent of an Indian Ocean Tsunami every single year. By 2030, the annual death toll from climate change will reach half a million people a year.

It also indicates that climate change today seriously affects o­n the lives of 325 million people. In twenty years time that number will more than double to an estimated 660 million, making it the biggest emerging humanitarian challenge in the world, impacting o­n the lives of 10% of the world’s population.

Economic losses due to climate change already today amount to over $125 billion per year. This is more than the individual GDP of 73% of the world’s countries, and is greater than the total amount of aid that currently flows from industrialised countries to developing nations each year. By 2030, the economic losses due to climate change will have almost trebled to $340 billion annually.

According to the report, the majority of the world’s population do not have the capacity to deal with the impact of climate change without suffering a potentially irreversible loss of wellbeing and loss of life. The populations most gravely at risk are over half a billion people in some of the poorest regions that are also highly prone to climate change – in particular, the semi-arid dry countries from the Sahara to the Middle East, Central Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, South and South East Asia, and small developing island states.

The international community has made a great effort to cope with this challenge but there remain differences over how to reduce green house gases between developed and developing countries. Therefore, another climate agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012 is expected to be reached at the 15^th UN Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark at the end of this year.

Vietnam’s effort

Scientists conffirmed that Vietnam is o­ne of countries most seriously affected by climate change. Currently, losses caused by the environmental damage accounts for 1.5 percent of the country’s GDP. By 2100, the average temperature will have increased by 2.3⁰C and sea levels will rise by 0.74m. Millions of people living near the sea will be directly affected. The impact of climate change will also slow down the progress in poverty reduction that Vietnam has made in recent years.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that the average losses caused by climate change in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam may be around 6.7 percent of GDP by 2100, double the rest of the world’s losses. ADB warns that the agricultural sectors in the four countries will be seriously affected and large areas of agricultural land will have disappeared.

Vietnam has made a great deal of effort to cope with the challenge. Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Pham Khoi Nguyen said that Vietnam has strictly applied environmental standards, encouraged local people to use environmentally friendly technologies to reduce the greenhouse effect and conducted research o­n how to cope with rising sea level in 2100.

The national programme to deal with climate change was approved by the Prime Minister o­n December 2, 2008 with the strategic target of evaluating the impacts of climate change o­n agricultural land and other areas over a certain period and developing action plans to effectively deal with it in the short-term and long-term. The programme will be implemented nationwide over three periods: 2009-2010, 2011-2015 and after 2015 at an estimated cost of VND1,965 billion. The agricultural sector o­n May 29 2009 announced its action programme framework to deal with climate change and considers it a priority task.

However, Although the authorities have acknowledged the serious impact of climate change if local people’s awareness is not improved and prime forests continue to be cut down they will not achieve the expected results

(Source: VNS)