Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Nguyen Van Duc was speaking at a seminar to launch the World Bank (WB)’s World Development Report 2010 (WDR 2010) in Hanoi on February 4. He said climate change poses challenges to Vietnam’s sustainable development and poverty alleviation.

While affirming the Vietnamese government’s efforts to cope with and mitigate the damage caused by climate change, Duc expressed his hope that ither countries and international organisations would increase support for Vietnam in this field.

Under the theme of “Development and Climate Change”, WDR 2010 urges the countries of the world to act now, act together, and act in accordance with their specific circumstances on the issue because no single nation can take on the interconnected challenges posed by the problem.

“Global cooperation is essential in increasing energy efficiency and developing new technologies,” says the report.

The report also shows that climate change threatens all countries throughout the world, especially developing ones, which face 75-80 percent of the potential damage it will cause.

“Many people in developing countries live in physically exposed locations and economically precarious conditions, and their financial and institutional capacity to adapt is limited,” says the report.

The report insists that countries use clean energy and invest in adaptive measures to protect their populations and economic development from the impact of climate change. It also calls for increasing financial reserves to address the problem by the way of promoting the invention and popularisation of climate-smart technologies.

“High-income countries need to act quickly to reduce their carbon footprints and boost the development of alternative energy sources to help tackle the problem of climate change,” according to the report.