HANOI, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam needs some 25 trillion Vietnamese dong (1.1 billion U.S. dollars) to address expected El Nino damage during the 2016-20 period, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) on Friday.
In 2016 alone, the country will need some 3.7 trillion Vietnamese dong (166 million U.S. dollars) to assist people restoring agricultural production, repairing clean water supply stations, and upgrading urgent projects to prevent drought and infiltration by salt water, local Vietnam News online newspaper quoted MARD as saying.
Tran Dai Nghia, head of the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agricultural and Rural Development's Environment and Natural Resources Economy and Research Faculty, said at a recent seminar that Vietnam was one of three nations in the world seriously affected by climate change and rising sea water.
"Climate change has been happening intensely and faster than what relevant offices predicted in 2012," Nghia said, adding that from late 2014 to 2016, due to the El Nino weather phenomenon, as many as 18 localities in Vietnam's south central, the Central Highlands and Mekong Delta regions have experienced drought and saline water intrusion in widespread areas.
The lives of some two million people, and hundreds of hectares of rice farming, have been badly affected, said Nghia.
In addition to drought and saline intrusion, heavy rains from January to October 2016 have caused heavy losses to the central region's people, according to the MARD.
Dang Duc Anh, from the National Center for Socio-Economic Information and Forecast, said at a seminar on impacts of environment on Vietnam's medium-term economic prospect held in capital Hanoi on Friday, that climate change has had impact on all regions nationwide and all areas, with water resource, agriculture and rural development, healthcare and coastal regions being the hardest hit.
It is forecast that during 2016-2020 period, natural disasters and environmental pollution can lead to an average decrease of 0.6 percent in gross domestic product (GDP) each year, Anh said.
In order to mitigate impacts of climate change on sustainable development, Anh proposed that clean energy including bio fuel, new energy, and renewable energy should be encouraged to use while companies should be granted limits for air pollutant emissions.
Dang Kim Khoi from MARD's Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agricultural and Rural Development, on Friday recommended seeking an effective channel of early warning, as well as enhanced direct and technical assistance by the government at occurrence of natural disasters.
Meanwhile, Nguyen Xuan Kieu, deputy director of the Northern Mountainous Irrigation Center at the Viet Nam Academy for Water Resources, added that the country needs to develop a flexible agriculture sector that could adapt to climate change, applying advanced techniques and sustainable practices, and use progressive irrigation methods to improve the efficiency of water and fertilizer.
These advanced methods also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, production costs and increase economic efficiencies on cultivated land, as well as create high-quality crops, said Kieu.
