German partners help Delta cities adapt to climate change

Can Tho, August 19 (VNA) – The German Federal Enterprise for International Cooperation (GIZ) and Siemens company will team up in a project to make urban areas in the Mekong Delta resilient to climate change. Representatives from the German units had a working session with the Steering Committee for the Southwestern region and Mekong Delta officials in Can Tho city on August 18. Nguyen Phong Quang, deputy head of the committee’s standing board, said climate change has wrecked havoc on the Mekong Delta, as evidenced by seawater intrusion and more devastating, frequent floods, storms, and whirlwinds. As the region needs more financial assistance for carrying out measures coping with these global phenomena, the GIZ and Siemens’s support is appreciated, he added. GIZ expert Severin Peters said they will pilot the project in one Mekong Delta city and multiply the model to other regional localities later. The project, lasting for six to eight months from late 2014 to mid-2015, will assess the selected city’s climate change resilience and implement the best possible measures to promote its adaptation, he noted. Finance for the project will be mobilised from GIZ’s potential sponsors such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Japan International Cooperation Agency. Vietnam is one of the five countries most vulnerable to climate change in the world and its rice hub, the Mekong Delta region, is among the three large deltas worldwide worst hit. Scientists forecast if the sea level rises by one metre, about 70 percent of land in the Mekong Delta region will be intruded by saltwater, Vietnam will lose two million hectares of farmland, and many littoral localities will be inundated.-VNA