Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Coping with climate change in Vietnam

VietnamNetBridge: Eighty local and foreign experts in global-warming adaptation are in Can Tho for a regional symposium that involves government partners, non-government organisations (NGOs), donor agencies and corporate partners. Experts at the three-day event are discussing innovative climate-change mitigation models that have been successfully implemented in Southeast Asia.

The goals of the symposium include creating a dialogue between partners in the ASEAN community and designing effective community-based climate-change adaptation models. Two to three possible adaptation measures will be taken back to each partner office to share with the local community in Can Tho. The community partners will then help design the preferred adaptation models.

Based upon the local context in Laos and Viet Nam, the symposium will place a specific focus on climate-change mitigation in agriculture and natural-resource management at the community level.

A low-lying, densely populated area, the Mekong Delta is the heart of rice production in Viet Nam and is one of the world's most vulnerable regions to climate change. "Our side of the project will be based in Can Tho, where 84 per cent of its area is used for agriculture, with more than 90 per cent of it for rice production," said Nguyen Minh The, deputy director of Can Tho's Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

"The average alleviation of the province lies between 0.6 and 0.8 metres above sea level and it is particularly susceptible to river and seawater intrusion," he added. Experts predicted that a possible 30-cm rise in sea levels could destroy the city's rice crops, he added....

Near Can Tho, shot by Bùi Thụy Đào Nguyên, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

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