Vietnam is a country caught in a quandary that is facing many developing countries that emerged too late to catch the growth wave of the 90s and 00s- how to balance industrialization with an ever-more-fragile environmental situation. For countries that are in low-lying tropical zones, however, these concerns go far beyond the hypothetical- climate change presents a clear and present threat. Vietnam is faced with the difficulty of crafting policy to mitigate the damage incurred by countries that developed earlier in entirely different regions of the world, while simultaneously diminishing the impact of the country’s own economic growth- an unenviable task.
 
Premier Nguyen Tan Dung recently announced that the country needs to take decisive action, and has urged the Ministry of Natural Resources to complete an action plan by February. This comes just after the announcement that 15 provinces issued action plans in the past year. In addition, Premier Dung asked the country’s Ministry of Planning and Investment to finalize a Green Growth Strategy for the period from now until 2020, as well as a vision for how the country can sustainably develop by 2050.
 
The premier said that the country’s efforts to date had been too weak, and a much more serious approach is needed. He cited the country’s National Target Program, a monitoring program that was initiated in 2008, as a policy that had failed due to weak co-operation between institutional partners and far too limited resources.

The new plan will likely consist of four main features- national adaptation to climate change, increased preparedness for natural disasters (as a consequence of sea level rise), ensuring food and water supplies, and consolidating dyke embankments. Rather than focusing on emissions, the Vietnamese plan- taking into account the country’s limited influence over international geopolitics- instead focuses on adjusting to and mitigating the potential damage from climate change.

The country’s climate change committee and a group of outside consultants evaluated 240 proposals from local and regional administrators, ultimately choosing 19 for the country’s final action plan- focusing on the most urgent and actionable programs.