Vietnam updates its climate change commitments

Photo: Hanoimoi

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE), the UN Development Program (UNDP), and Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment organized the event.

The workshop aimed to collect opinions on the content, the roadmap and the role of relevant sides in the review and update of Vietnam’s NDCs (nationally determined contributions).

To ensure the updated NDCs’ trustworthiness and feasibility, it is necessary to collect documents, information, research findings and climate change response efforts in all fields and from groups affected by climate change, said Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, Nguyen Tuan Nhan.

Nhan asked development partners, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, ministries and sectors to provide necessary information or conduct supplementary studies to assist the NDC review and update.

Increasing commitment

The Paris Agreement, adopted in December 2015, is the first legal document that binds each country’s responsibility and commitments, through NDCs, to coping with global climate change. Accordingly, each country is expected to submit updated NDCs every five years to help keep a global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, and make efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius and achieve net zero emissions in the latter half of the century.

The Development Counselor of the German Embassy in Vietnam, Martin Hoppe, said Vietnam’s Power Development Master Plan, implemented by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, shows Vietnam’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Reaching the goals of the renewable energy strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2030 will help achieve NDC’s conditional goals. This provides the opportunity for Vietnam to significantly increase its commitment to mitigation in the updated NDC. “We are glad to contribute to this process through ongoing projects in a number of areas, funded by the German government,” he said.

Budget shortage

UNDP Country Director for Vietnam, Louise Chamberlain, said many localities in Vietnam have been implementing the Green Growth Strategy well. However, the state budget will not be enough to meet all the NDC-related demands, so Vietnam should have policies to encourage the private sector’s involvement, and this should also be built into the updated NDCs, she said.

Koji Fukuda, Chief Technical Advisor, JICA SPI-NAMA (Vietnam), a Japanese project to help Vietnam enhance capacities in planning and implementation of measures to reduce emission, said such areas as transportation, agriculture and industrial production, which are discharging large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2), need emission reduction solutions. Low-carbon technology could be a choice for these industries, he said.

Fukuda added that the industrial sector could apply energy efficiency standards in such fields as production of beverages, plastics, chemicals, steel, and paper. The transport sector needs to analyze more thoroughly the potential and energy efficiency in railways, roads, airways, and waterways, and the agricultural sector should consider treatment of agricultural waste, and close coordination between energy, agriculture and wastes (biogas, organic compost, fertilizers) and between energy and Lulucf (biomass, biofuels, forest protection).