A safe house is handed over to a poor family in Thua Thien - Hue province (Photo: UNDP)
Hanoi (VNA) - Safe housing was hailedas one of the successes of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), a project to improvethe resilience of Vietnam’s vulnerable coastal communities to climate change-relatedimpacts, a conference held to review project implementation this year anddiscuss plans for 2021 heard.
The project is being carried out by the Ministry ofAgriculture and Rural Development, the Ministry of Construction, and the UnitedNations Development Programme (UNDP).
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and recent storms andflooding ravaging Vietnam’s central region, more than 3,500 safe houses havebeen built under the project by the end of the year, over 3,300 ha of mangroveforest replanted, and 24 livelihood models successfully rolled out, generatingincomes for poor local coastal families and providing training for in excess of39,000 officials and citizens.
Tran Quang Hoai, Director General of the Vietnam Disaster ManagementAuthority and head of the project, said that most GCF houses remained safe even during the recentstorms and called for the project to be replicated.
UNDP Resident Representative Caitlin Wiesen spokehighly of efforts from the project management boards at both central and locallevels to fulfil most of the project’s five-year targets.
The project aims to build a total of 4,000 safehouses, restore 4,000 ha of mangrove forest and give 20,000 residents access toinformation on climate change and natural disaster.
Next year, the project will devise new safe housingprogrammes in 28 coastal localities, care for over 3,380 ha of mangrove forestin five provinces, and bolster work in mitigating risks from natural disasters.
The GCF project aims to increase the resilience ofvulnerable coastal communities to climate change through safe housing, protectvulnerable coastal communities from increased flooding and storms, provide robustmangrove coverage to establish a natural buffer between coastal communities andthe sea, and enhance climate risk information to guide climate-resilient andrisk-informed planning.
According to the Ministry of Construction and theUNDP, more than 100,000 safe houses are needed in 28 coastal provinces andcities, and priority must be given to 24,000 in coastal areas./.
