skip to Main Content

BUILDING CAPACITY FOR CLIMATE RISK ASSESSMENTS IN VIETNAM: A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH FROM CSI PROJECT

Vietnam has been ranked among the most dynamic emerging economies around the globe for the past decade [1], thanks partly to the support of infrastructure establishment. Yet, at the same time, the country suffers from extreme impacts of climate change, notably in terms of property and infrastructural damage. Meanwhile, there is a lack of systematic approaches that require infrastructure investments to consider climate risks in their planning, design, and operation stages. As a result, it creates a budgetary burden related to regular maintenance costs, or costs incurred whenever the infrastructure collapses following unpredictable climate events.

Taking all these aspects into account, it is reasonable to place more emphasis on climate risk assessments and on the application of climate proofing measures right from the investment planning process.

This paradigm shift is crucial and calls for further consolidation via four pillars of capacity enhancement, namely individual, organizational, network, and legislative capacities (loosely based on the capacity WORKS model). This approach also largely resonates with the scope of the IKI project Enhancing Climate Services for Infrastructure Investment during the 2017 – 2023 period.

Capacity building for climate risk assessment normally manifests under four pillars as follows.

The first prong is individual capacity. It represents one’s technical competence to develop climate services from raw data, to evaluate risks, or to design a sustainable investment plan. Within the climate risk context, CSI chooses the PIEVC Protocol as the guiding orientation. It enables users to quantify and categorize risks in relation to budget constraints in a systematic manner, from which optimal adaptation strategies are built.

Organizational capacity outlines the functions or missions of one organization to help bring climate risk assessment into existing procedures. That is, an organization seeks to exchange knowledge, promote awareness of climate risk assessment, and further evaluate its potential to be integrated into current regulations. As a case in point, during the partnership with Vietnam Meteorological and Hydrological Administration (VNMHA), CSI and VNMHA reach a consensus on the increasing need to develop and use climate services in current national contexts. This government body even goes so far as to establish a new internal department solely responsible for climate services. In response, the project CSI has offered VNMHA the digitalized historical dataset of Vietnamese climate throughout the past 32 years, setting the fundamental yet solid stage for future expansion of climate services.

Network capacity is another prong to be addressed. Climate risk assessment cannot be discussed nor used in a vacuum. Thus, network capacity serves as the channel to disseminate current, modified and new knowledge, to connect climate service providers with users, and to learn from existing experiences based on free consultation. In fact, CSI has successfully built a platform called International Practitioners Network, where any relevant stakeholder could join to learn from one another about climate risks and vulnerability assessments regardless of their technical background. As of now, the platform has garnered many frequent users from Costa Rica, Nigeria, Uganda, and Vietnam. These users will soon be convened in an in-person international conference in Canada in April 2023.

Last but not least, capacity enhancement needs to be leveraged on a legislative scale to obtain maximum effect. In other words, CSI aims to facilitate the introduction of climate risk assessment into existing policy/legal frameworks. As of 2017, CSI provided direct support for the modification of some government decrees and circulars. For instance, a suggestion to consider climate change effects in the process of strategic environmental assessment was approved and rewritten on the Vietnamese Environmental Protection Law. Or on a smaller scale, CSI plays a pivotal part in building provincial socio-economic development plans, i.e Kien Giang, An Giang and Ca Mau’s. This is achieved by successfully convincing investors and project managers to factor in climate risks in the planning stage and potential impacts one infrastructure might have on its surrounding ecosystems (i.e risk level and greenhouse emissions). More importantly, CSI also partners up with other government and academic institutions to design a visualized decision support tool, packed with science-based information on the geographics, geology and hydrology along the vulnerable Mekong Delta’s coastline. This tool might not necessarily replace official planning documents yet provides comprehensive concept and viable solutions to draft future provincial/ regional plans.

Capacity building is a long and bumpy path. Even if one actor manages to fit all four pillars inside a particular setting, there is no guarantee that new changes will persist in the long run. Therefore, lengthening the flow of information and knowledge is more than just necessary. This could mean organizing ToT (training of trainers) workshops on a national level, as did CSI in June 2019 and February 2023, where climate experts delivered their hands-on experience of risk assessment to key decision-makers.

A team of diverse backgrounds engaging in an adaptive workshop for the transport sector. Source: GIZ

Another way CSI tries to circulate their knowledge is through their published handbooks, which we highly recommend for academic institutions. You can download the complete document package in this link.

Figure 2. CSI Trainer and Trainee handbooks – knowledge product of CSI project

If you have any inquiries or wish to benefit from these tools, please visit the CSI project via their following websites.

Contact 

(Dr.) Nguyen Thi Minh Ngoc, Senior Technical Advisor, GIZ Vietnam

ngoc.nguyen1@giz.de

Global Project “Enhancing Climate Services for Infrastructure Investments” (CSI)

For further information please visit:
» CSI Website

» CSI Policy Brief

» CSI Product Landscape

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH

Registered offices
Bonn and Eschborn, Germany

Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 36 + 40
53113 Bonn, Germany
T +49 228 44 60-0
F +49 228 44 60-17 66

Dag-Hammarskjöld-Weg 1 – 5
65760 Eschborn, Germany
T +49 61 96 79-0
F +49 61 96 79-11 15

E info@giz.de
I www.giz.de

Registered at

Local court (Amtsgericht) Bonn, Germany: HRB 18384
Local court (Amtsgericht) Frankfurt am Main, Germany: HRB 12394

VAT no.

DE 113891176

Chairperson of the Supervisory Board

Jochen Flasbarth, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development

Management Board

Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel (Chair)
Ingrid-Gabriela Hoven (Vice-Chair)
Anna Sophie Herken

Unsubscribe | Here you can unsubscribe from this newsletter.

In charge of this newsletter:
Daniel Herrmann, IKI.vietnam@giz.de
IKI Interface Vietnam
GIZ Office Vietnam
Project “Support to Vietnam for the Implementation of the Paris Agreement II” (VN-SIPA II)

Editor: Tran Xuan Quynh

Photo Credits:
GIZ, Climate-smart agriculture for ethnic minorities in central Viet Nam, DeRISK SE, ETP, Café REDD, Pixabay

The IKI Vietnam Newsletter is administered by the IKI interface in Vietnam hosted by GIZ. It informs regularly about news of climate change and biodiversity projects in Vietnam financed by the International Climate Initiative (IKI). The International Climate Initiative (IKI) is an important part of the German government’s international climate finance commitment. Since 2022 the IKI is implemented by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) in close cooperation with the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV) and the Federal Foreign Office (AA).

https://www.international-climate-initiative.com/

IKI Independent Complaint Mechanism (IKI ICM)

Any person who is (potentially) negatively affected by an IKI project, can file a complaint via the IKI Independent Complaint Mechanism (ICM). 

It works to enable people who suffer (potential) negative social and/or environmental consequences from IKI project. ​

  • Any person or a group of persons, or a community that has been or may be affected negatively by an IKI project may file a complaint.​
  • Persons wishing to do so can report integrity and/or corruption issues, such as misuse of funds, fraud etc.​
  • If persons experience reprisals in relation to an IKI project or a complaint, they can also use the mechanism. The affected person(s) can authorise a representative to file and pursue the complaint on their behalf.​

To find more information or to file a complaint go to:​

https://www.international-climate-initiative.com/PAGE396-1

Back To Top