Photo: Nguyen Huu Thanh

Ha Noi, 24 November 2017 - Implementation of Viet Nam’s first project funded by the Green Climate Fund took a step forward today as the Inception Workshop for the “Improving resilience of vulnerable coastal communities to climate change-related impacts in Viet Nam” project was successfully completed.

Provide more than $29 million USD in grant finance, the UNDP-GCF project seeks to create transformative impact by replicating and scaling-up proven successful approaches to increase access to flood and storm resilient housing, reinforce mangrove storm surge buffer zones and improve access to quality climate change risk information.

The event was attended by representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), Ministry of Construction,  Ministry of Planning and Investment, seven highly impacted coastal provinces, civil society groups, Viet Nam Women’s Union and other stakeholders. The event was preceded by a two-day technical session to familiarize participating representatives and officials with the project’s objectives and expected outputs and to develop an overall 5-year work-plan for implementation.   

“With the country resources and support of the international organizations, the Government of Viet Nam has invested in programs to improve the resilience of the communities for natural disasters and climate change.  However, as we saw recently with Storm #12, with the unpredictable impact of climate change and extreme weather events, coastal communities are particularly vulnerable” said Mr. Hoang Van Thang, Vice Minister of MARD at the workshop.

Ms. Caitlin Wiesen, UNDP Country Director noted: “The Storm #12 (Damrey) that caused more than 100 fatalities, destroyed more than 3,000 houses and affected more than 4 million people, mainly in coastal areas of Viet Nam, urge all of us to take actions to reduce impacts of climate change. This project is particularly relevant and timely, it adopts a people-centred, integrated approach to resilience building in vulnerable coastal communities in 28 provinces of Viet Nam’s coastline.”

During the workshop, all provinces and national partners jointly agreed plans to implement the project, and shared their understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders to ensure effective implementation of the project from 2017 to 2022.

For more information, please kindly contact:

Phan Huong Giang
UNDP Media and Communication Analyst
Email: phan.huong.giang@undp.org; Mob: 0948466688

Le Quang Tuan
Viet Nam Disaster Management Authority, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development
Email: lequangtuan.pctt2015@gmail.com;