An underestimation of climate change and the slow process of correspondence are putting high risks on national development growth of Vietnam.
At the discussion session in the framework of international conferences “Pre-COP24 workshop: Opportunities and Challenges on Review and Implementation of Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC)”, Vietnam is said to change its development path to reduce poverty and create prosperity without contributing to global warming.
The ongoing NDC revision process is an opportunity to channel investments into low emission development and climate change resilience in Vietnam and to create a coherent policy framework.
However, the decarbonization and transformation, that the Paris Agreement calls for so urgently, will only secure broad-based public support if it goes hand in hand with a reduction of socioeconomic inequalities, which have widened dramatically in the past.
Industrialized countries must take the lead but Vietnam’s NDC need to show highly ambitious climate actions and should follow immediately to ensure a social just development.
Speaking at the conference, Hoang Viet, WWF-Vietnam, Co-chair of the Climate change Working Group in Vietnam (CCWG), insisted that: “If we do not set up the higher ambition of Green House Gas (GHG) emission reduction and implement practical action more quickly, the target of 1.5 degrees Celsius pathway reduction or 2 degrees Celsius will be failed.”
“The time has come for the fast, ambitious, and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement at the national level in all countries, including Vietnam,” said he.
Even though at high risk, Vietnam even after the revised technical report committed in a relatively modest way to reduce emissions till 2030. The global underestimation of climate change and the slow process of implementation of corresponding are putting additional risk on its national development.
At the end of August 2018, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment presented key contents of the first draft of the Technical Report of the updated NDC, the Vietnamese government now commits to nine per cent reduction of GHG emissions reduction by domestic means by 2030 compared to the Business as Usual (BAU) scenario.
The BAU scenario itself was raised from 787,4 million tons of CO2 to 888,8 million tons of CO2, the updated base year is 2014 (instead of 2010).
Next to high human costs, the impacts of climate change globally are already costing an estimated $1.6 trillion per year, expected to rise to over $4 trillion by 2030.
The 2015 Paris Agreement aims to enhance the worldwide response to the threat of climate change by limiting global temperature rise this century to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and strive to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
