The first memorandum of understanding on coping with climate change wassigned on Nov. 18 between the Ministry of Natural Resources andEnvironment, Vietnamese Non-governmental Organisations and ClimateChange (VNGO&CC) and the Climate Change Working Group (CCWG).
Under the MoU, tentative activities for 2012 include a dialogue onmainstreaming climate change adaptation and disaster risk education intothe socio-economic development plan at local levels, and exchanginginformation and experiences in applying community- and ecosystem-basedapproaches to adaptation.
Vu Thi Bich Hop,chairwoman of VNGO&CC, said the MoU will be a favourable premise forparticipation and contributions by NGOs together with the Vietnamesegovernment in efforts to cope with climate change.
“We elected the two provinces of Ben Tre and Quang Nam to carry outpilot projects on community-based adaptation and improving publicawareness for ecosystem-based adaptation,” said Nguyen Thi Yen, chair ofthe CCWG.
To date, 11 out of 63 provinces andcities have finished their coping-with-climate-change plans, most ofwhich are central coastal and Mekong Delta coastal provinces. Theseplans fall under the national target programme to respond to climatechange, said Truong Duc Tri, deputy head of the Department ofMeteorology, Hydrology and Climate Change.
Thedepartment plans to compile strategies for young people from the primaryto the postgraduate levels on how to approach information relating toclimate change, he said.
He added that the supportprogramme to respond to climate change will receive nearly 265 millionUSD in donations from the Japan International Cooperation Agency, theFrench Development Agency, the World Bank, the Australian Agency forInternational Development and Korea Eximbank in 2012.
More than 80 percent of the population and all Government staff willreceive basic information about climate change and its impact by 2015,one of the key targets under the National Target Programme to respond toclimate change.
The budget for implementingnational target programme activities in the 2009-2015 period isestimated to reach 1.9 trillion VND (93.6 million USD), with 50 percentcoming from foreign sources./.