UNDP raises Phu Yen students’ awareness of climate change

This event is one of the activities in the competition “Resilient house design - sustainable communities with climate change in coastal areas”. This is an initiative of the project “Improving the resilience of coastal communities to climate change in Vietnam” supported by the Green Climate Fund (GCF), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the Vietnamese Government.

At the event

The activity aims to share with students and teachers the important role of low-cost resilient housing and improve their understanding of climate change in coastal areas. It is also an opportunity for students to show their creativity and apply their knowledge to practical designs. More importantly, it helps students become familiar with design features that benefit the community in mitigating the effects of climate change.

These awareness raising activities were held in Hanoi in September and received interest from hundreds of construction students and teachers, as well as construction engineers and architectures all over the country.

Phu Yen is one of the central coastal provinces that is most heavily affected by natural disasters and climate change. In 2017 alone, typhoon No12 (Damrey) damaged nearly 1,000 houses in the province out of a total of more than 130,000 houses that were severely damaged by the storm.

Climate change is increasingly having negative affects on people's lives and prosperity. It is also likely to increase in frequency and intensity with extreme weather events such as storms, floods and landslides. Sea level rise will cause the loss of agricultural land, threaten food security and affect people's daily life. The poor will be especially vulnerable to climate change due to lack of nutrition, financial capacity, and access to information enabling them to cope with climate change in a timely manner.

Translated by Chung Anh