Special edition  » The climate for change

Adapting to climate change requires building on the nation’s experience in disaster management

The location and topography of Vietnam make it one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. About 70 per cent of the population are at risk from an annual average of six to eight tropical storms and typhoons and consequent sea surges, seawater intrusion, flooding and landslides.

Disaster happens when a hazard is combined with an exposed, vulnerable and poorly prepared population. In Vietnam, disasters cause significant loss of life and extensive damage. Annually on average, in the period from 1980 to 2008, 530 people were killed mainly from climate related disasters, 2.3 million people were affected, and economic losses were in the region of US$212 million.

Many coastal residents have no disaster mitigation plans in place

Climate change will affect the disaster regime in Vietnam in many ways. It will increase the number, scale and intensity of climate-related disasters as well as the vulnerability of people, particularly through the degradation of the ecosystem, reductions in water and food availability and necessary livelihood changes.

Clearly, climate change poses one of the most significant threats to Vietnam’s continued development. There is already a growing body of evidence of extreme conditions in some parts of the country, causing disasters at unexpected times or intervals. Some would argue that events during 2009 – a succession of three typhoons hitting the country in rapid succession – are already evidence of this.

The poor and marginalised are particularly vulnerable and are being pressed beyond their capacity to cope with climate variability, changes and related disasters. According to the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction Secretariat, climate change will: “add yet another stress to those of environmental degradation and rapid unplanned urban growth, further reducing communities’ abilities to cope with even the existing levels of weather hazards”.

The major challenges that climate change brings to Vietnamese communities are that it increases disaster risk from climate related hazards, undermines the sustainability of existing livelihood strategies, and increases pressure on already depleted natural resources.

Two ways – mitigation and adaptation

There are essentially two ways to address the issue of climate change. One is mitigation - addressing the root causes by reducing greenhouse gas emissions caused by past and projected human activity, and the other is adaptation - managing its inevitable future impacts on the environment and society.

Adapting to climate change requires engagement in a range of activities including preparing risk assessments, protecting ecosystems, improving agricultural methods, managing water resources, building settlements in safe zones, developing early warning systems, instituting better building designs, improving insurance coverage and developing social safety nets.

Such adaptation measures are linked to sustainable development, as they reduce the risk to lives and livelihoods and increase the resilience of communities to hazards. Where feasible, adaptation and mitigation should be considered jointly, as some adaptation measures can contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, while conversely, mitigation measures can help reduce, and not inadvertently exacerbate, disaster risks.

Climate change adaptation (CCA) involves dealing with greater uncertainty and unpredictability and requires simultaneously, more information that can reduce this uncertainty, such as weather forecasts, longer term seasonal forecasts, as well as appropriate management of

resources and appropriate livelihood options that have potential to reduce vulnerability under the changing climatic conditions.

Here it is useful to note that adaptation to climate change inherently involves uncertainty. Disaster risk reduction (DRR), in contrast, is usually about “seasonal disasters” that have some known periodicity. Vietnam’s approach to the disaster risk reduction has to be one undertaken through the “lens of climate change”.

CCA and DRR are closely linked – the anticipated extreme weather events of the future will undoubtedly increase the number, intensity and frequency of disasters. It is often said that: “CCA starts with DRR and that DRR is a first line of defense in adapting to potentially devastating effects of climate change”.

While DRR focuses on a relatively short term time scale and on extreme events that exceed people’s capacity to cope with and recover from, CCA, in addition to this, also requires action based upon knowledge about the future situation and changes in average climate conditions that will, in time, make existing risk reduction practices less viable.

Where does Vietnam stand?

In Vietnam, accumulated experience and practice in disaster risk reduction provides significant capacities to adapt to climate change.

To be most effective, climate change adaptation should bring together approaches to disaster risk reduction, sustainable livelihoods and natural resource management, to secure and enhance assets within the analysis of climate change.

To achieve this, a variety of measures will be needed for adaptation, ranging from those focused on addressing specific impacts to activities that reduce vulnerability and manage risk when the scale and direction of climate change are less certain.

Vietnam has acknowledged that there are no “off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all strategies” for both DRR and CCA - as they must consider local factors. However, are many DRR tools and techniques that are tailored correctly to the local context that can be used for CCA and bring benefits to communities.

Despite intrinsic vulnerabilities to hydro-meteorological hazards, over the past decade or so, Vietnam has made significant improvement in DRR through the work of the government, international non-government organisations and Red Cross societies.

Increasingly DRR activity is becoming more cognisant of climate change and is being “tailor-made” to help counteract the added risks. There are clear inter-relationships between dealing with climate change and disasters.

Given that one of the major threats posed by climate change is an increase in extreme climate events, DRR is a natural entry point for adaptation.

Although less true in Vietnam - as the majority of disasters are climatically related - elsewhere, two communities of researchers and practitioners have evolved, one dealing with long-term environmental impacts of climate change and the other dealing with impacts of hazards/disasters on society.

Progress made

The broad areas of activities towards climate change adaptation in Vietnam include the establishment of a system to share information on disaster situations by the Central Committee for Flood and Storm Control (CCFSC) and for longer-term statistical purposes by the General Statistics Office, as well as the implementation of early warning systems.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has widely disseminated information about the development of climate change scenarios with booklets and maps.

Non-government organisations and the Vietnam Red Cross and sister societies have conducted risk assessments at various levels and with different scopes, disaster situation assessment, vulnerability assessment, flood/disaster risk mapping.

Increasingly policy makers from the country have taken part in international meetings on DRR and climate change, often with the support of the UN and other non-government agencies. Most recently senior government officials took part in the Global Platform on DRR in Geneva and a group of high level policy makers have undergone training and orientation, with the support of the UN, in preparation for COP15.

Significant improvements have been made in storm tracking and early warning of fishing and other vessels and provinces likely to be affected – mass evacuations of tens of thousands of residents in dozens of provinces in advance of recent typhoons undoubtedly saved lives.

Non-government organisations and the Red Cross – principally with funding provided through the European Commission Humanitarian Office – Disaster Preparedness have worked with many communities in disaster prone villages to help people understand the risks they face and how to respond to warnings.

With the aim of using knowledge, innovation and education to build a culture of safety and resilience at all levels, a CCFSC website database of resource material on DRR and community-based disaster preparedness has been established.

The government has recently approved a 12-year community-based disaster risk management programme that will focus on 6,000 communities, while organisations like Oxfam GB, are increasingly focusing on building the resilience of disaster prone communities.