VietNamNet Bridge – To cut 25% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, Vietnam would need more than US$21 billion, according to a seminar on climate change in HCMC last week.

Illustrative image -- File photo

At the seminar on Vietnam’s contributions to mitigating the impact of climate change, Nguyen Khac Hieu, deputy head of the Department of Meteorology, Hydrology and Climate Change, said Vietnam’s GHG emissions reduction projects are mostly in the fields of energy, agriculture, land use and waste treatment.

Total greenhouse gas emissions in Vietnam are forecast to amount to around 787 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030, compared to around 247 million tons in 2010.

Vietnam is expected to make a commitment to an 8% emissions cut by 2030.

However, Vietnam will be able to weigh raising the reduction rate to 25% if it gets bilateral and multilateral foreign aid. And in this case, Hieu said, Vietnam would need US$21.1 billion, with around US$3.2 billion coming from local sources and US$17.9 billion from international donors.

Regarding the emissions reduction credits in Vietnam, Vietnam had had 254 Clean Development Mechanism projects recognized by the CDM Executive Board as of June 2015.

Vietnam ranks fourth globally in terms of CDM projects with a potential emissions reduction of around 137.4 million tons of carbon dioxide. Of the 254 CDM projects, energy, waste treatment and forest planting projects account for 87.6%, 10.2% and 0.4% respectively.

Vietnam has got 13 million certified emission reduction credits (CER), ranking 11th globally.

Hieu said that while the credit price was quite high in 2009 with over US$20 per credit, it has slid considerably and now stays at around US$0.5 per credit.

Those involved in CDM projects are required to pay 1.2-2% of total revenues generated from CER sales to the Vietnam Environmental Protection Fund, which has collected some VND49 billion so far.

In the past 50 years average temperatures have increased by 0.5 degree Celsius, sea levels have swollen by around 20 centimeters, and extreme weather phenomena and disasters have tended to surge in both frequency and intensity.

In the climate scenario the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment released in 2012, with a temperature rise of 2-3 degrees Celsius and a sea level surge of 78-100 centimeters towards 2100, over one-fifth of HCMC’s area would be flooded, directly affecting around 7% of the city’s population.

Talking about the growing frequencies of floods in big cities in Vietnam, Professor Tran Thuc, vice chairman of the Advisory Council for the National Committee on Climate Change, told the Daily that signs of extreme weather have emerged, with heavy downpours in the rainy season and severe drought in the dry season.

“We have proposed changing data about rain frequency so that cities and provinces can upgrade their drainage systems. HCMC should quickly recover the canals which have been clogged to facilitate drainage while building reservoirs to absorb rainwater,” Thuc said.

SGT