Large areas of agriculture land in Krong No district of Dak Nong province in Central Highlands region lack water due to droughts (Photo: VNA) Hespoke at a recent workshop of a project to develop a city climate resilienceindex for Vietnam.
Theproject, carried out by the Ministry of Construction’s Urban DevelopmentDepartment in co-operation with ISET and the Asia Foundation, aims at providinglocalities with an overview of their resilience against natural disasters andclimate change, through which they can come up with appropriate solutions totackle the problems.
Fromsurveys and research at five pilot cities in the first phase of the project,namely Lao Cai, Cam Pha, Hoi An, Gia Nghia and Ca Mau, experts find thatcritical ecosystems have been destroyed or degraded significantly in recentyears.
Particularly,lake and river systems and lowland areas of cities are highly prone toencroachment under the high pressure of urbanisation, which exacerbatesflooding.
“Whenland price increases, cities tend to fill in canals, rivers or lakes to buildnew urban areas. This considerably reduces the natural water drainage ability,”Phong said, adding that cities do not have effective mechanisms to protect andmaintain the ecosystems providing environmental services to safeguard them.
Anotherimportant factor that will make cities more climate change resilient isprotecting the health and well-being of residents in urban communities, theproject finds.
Surveysshow that poor communities in the five pilot cities, which are highlyvulnerable to natural disasters like storms and floods, have the mostdifficulty accessing public services like water and electricity.
Froman economic perspective, it is necessary to diversify industries to deal withthe impact of natural disasters and climate change so that communities havevarious options to choose, rather than relying on only one type of job fortheir livelihoods, according to Phong.
“Forexample, some localities in the Mekong Delta region have for too long dependedon growing rice, while others rely only on aquaculture. When there wereenvironmental changes like drought or salt water intrusion, people found itvery hard to respond and adapt,” he said.
DrDo Hau from the Vietnam Urban Planning and Development Association, which isalso involved in the project, said response to climate change impact requiresintegrated planning by multiple sectors of the city leadership.
Upuntil now, planning has been conducted by each sector separately while co-operationand co-ordination among sectors are very limited. As a result, planning isusually inconsistent and even conflicting.
Healso pointed out some notable difficulties that cities are facing in increasingtheir climate change resilience, especially lack of qualified human resourcesand sufficient funding.
Accordingto the project, the city climate resilience shows the ability of cities,including individuals, communities, organisations and urban systems to survive,cope with, adapt to and develop amidst regular pressure and suddenenvironmental shocks.
Acity’s resilience index measures four sectors, which are health and welfare,society and economy, infrastructure and environment, and leadership andstrategy.
Amongfive pilot cities, Ca Mau in the Mekong Delta and Gia Nghia in the CentralHighlands province of Dak Nong were found to have the lowest performance. Hoi AnCity in central Quang Nam province tops the list with an overall score of alittle over 7.5 out of 10.
Thetwo-year project, which was launched last year, will be expanded to assess 25more cities.-VNA
VNA
