Report: Climate change threatens economic growth of Vietnam

In its report, the ADB found that climate change poses a serious obstacle to sustainable economic growth in the Southeast Asian country and could undo much of the economic growth experienced over the past decade unless effective remedial actions are undertaken.

It said by the end of the century, Vietnam could see mean temperatures shoot up to eight degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as the global mean temperature rises by only half that amount.

The findings of the report bore particularly unwelcome news for neighbouring Thailand and Pakistan as well, which it ranked along with Vietnam as the most vulnerable to threats such as flooding, storm surge, cyclones and landslides, due to their weak institutional capacity to address the problem.

Clearly the report was not a fair framing of the climate change debate and the Manila-based bank – chose to take a heavily biased approach – and frame the risks in economic terms to make the issue harder for countries like Vietnam, Thailand and Pakistan to ignore.

The vulnerability of the countries was in large part due to a continued overreliance on fossil fuels, the report added, suggesting that Vietnam, Thailand and Pakistan could avert the climate change disaster by simply shifting to renewable energy sources.