Vietnam, UNDP hold seminar on responding to climate change

HANOI, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Vietnam and Vietnamese Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MNRE) held here on Friday an international seminar on climate change and unexpected weather change in Vietnam, attracting officials from those two agencies, and local and foreign experts in the field.

In recent years, phenomena of negative weather change and natural disasters in Vietnam have occurred complicatedly and unforeseeably. To respond to climate change, the MNRE had updated information and made public in 2009 and 2012 scenarios of climate change and sea water rising in Vietnam, said Minister Nguyen Minh Quang at the seminar.

According to the MNRE, those scenarios were based on methods to build up climate change situation and results from reports of the United Nations' Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which will help Vietnam's policy-makers in releasing, reviewing and implementing strategies, plans and projects in the context of climate change in Vietnam.

Vietnamese scientists will be able to coordinate with their foreign partners in concretize their reports on unexpected weather change and natural disasters in Vietnam, which will contribute to the country's release of appropriate policies and effective implementation for national and local sustainable development, said the minister.

According to Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, the downstream and large urban areas will be most vulnerable to climate change and natural disasters' impacts, such as floods and drought. Close cooperation between governmental agencies and local residents should be promoted, along with the release of the early warning about those disasters for the local people to evacuate and plans to cope with them when those disasters happen.

Participants at the seminar focused on a report by the IPCC about management of the risks and unexpected natural disasters, with an aim to boost suitable response to climate change.

Round-table discussions were also held on Vietnam's strategy on climate change in the context of climate change and unexpected changing weather in Vietnam, and demands for suitable response to climate change from branches in urban development in the country. Enditem