Vietnam and the US have pledged further cooperation in climate adaptation after the Biden administration identified climate change as one of its top four priorities.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh at the virtual meeting with US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry. Photo: Hai Minh/VGP

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh and US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry made the commitment during the virtual meeting on March 30.

Minh said Vietnam is one among the most hazard-prone countries by climate change and it has been supporting international commitments on climate resilience and cooperating with different partners, especially the US.

He said the cooperation becomes more meaningful following the US’s reentry into the Paris Agreement.

President Joe Biden has passed an early flurry of executive action on climate change during his first weeks in office [January 2021], setting a goal of making the US carbon neutral by 2050 and quickly acting on campaign promises to address global warming.

Over the past years, the US government is moving ahead with the preparation of additional bilateral development assistance to support Vietnam’s effort to respond to climate change.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has shouldered with Vietnam, which is widely cited as one of the five countries in the world most vulnerable to climate change, because of high population density in lowland river deltas and coastal areas as well as its long coastline and geographic position in relation to cyclones.

The USAID Vietnam Mission anticipates programming additional development assistance funding in two broad areas related to climate change namely Adaptation and Sustainable Landscapes.

The funding is aimed to build adaptive capacity as well as reducing vulnerability to climate change risks and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in different sectors.

Earlier at the 2021 Climate Adaptation Summit (CAS 2021) held by the Netherlands on January 25-26, Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said the country needs an approximate US$35 billion to cope with climate change in the 2021-30 period.