“If you look at the ten hottest years ever measured, they’ve all occurred in the last 14 years, and the hottest was 2005. Temperature increases are taking place all over the world, and that’s causing stronger storms. This is the biggest crisis in the history of this country. Early this morning, hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans…”

The former US Vice President Al Gore grabbed world attention two years ago, with a controversial documentary film about global warming.

“The arctic is experiencing faster melting.  If this were to go, sea level worldwide would go up twenty feet”. 

Some critics disputed the science in the film. 

But global organisations have since warned of severe consequences if the world’s poorest countries don’t act immediately to protect their land and people from climate change.

This August, torrential rain in northern Vietnam caused flashfloods which left more than 160 people dead or missing, and thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.

Some international researchers predict such extreme events will only become more frequent and more intense as the global temperature rises.

Last year, a report commissioned by the UK government warned that a potential temperature rise of 5 to 6 degrees next century would take humans into unknown territory - triggering devastating storms, floods, droughts, forest fires and heat waves.

In Central Vietnam, coastal areas have long been hit by destructive typhoons.

49 year old Nguyen Thi Bay lives by the coast in central Quang Nam province, in a home listed as a poor household.

She’s at a climate change survey meeting in the fishing village of Tan An.

The meeting has been arranged by the US non-governmental organisation, The East Meets West Foundation, to assess the impact climate change is having on local people.  

“I built my house in April 2006, but then typhoon Xangsane came in September that year, and swept half of it away.  The roof of my house blew off and the kitchen was destroyed”.

Nguyen Thi Bay says she’s had to borrow money to repair her house, where she lives with her young daughter: “My house only cost 9 million Dong in total to build.  It’s very simple and I don’t know if it can survive another storm, so I live in fear”.

Last November, floods sparked by heavy rain killed dozens of people in the region, and flooded more than ten-thousand homes.

A local fisherwoman, Dang Thi Toi, says the floodwaters swept away 35 fishing boats in Tan An hamlet: “These were the most serious floods I have ever seen. It was like Noah’s Arc.   I stood on the dyke, watching lines of fishing boats being swept out to sea, but we couldn’t do anything about it”.

Dang Thi Toi says the government provided people with food and medicine, and later with loans. But she says having lost her boat, and with five children to look after, she’s still in debt. Stronger storms would only exacerbate the plight of the poor here. Toi says it’s getting harder to predict when the floods will hit: “For several months we thought it was the flood season, so we put away all of our fishing boats, but the floods didn’t come.  Then for some months we didn’t think the floods would happen, but they did. Floods didn’t used to happen here in April and May, but now they do… these are the months that we usually go fishing offshore”.

Drought - one of climate change impacts in Vietnam

Climate change experts predict that floods in coastal areas will increase, because they’ll take longer to drain as the sea level rises, due to melting ice caps and the expansion of sea water.

Higher seas and increasing intensity of storms will mean bigger waves, known as storm surge, which will reach further inland.

For Vietnam, sea level rise has been described as “potentially catastrophic”.

A report from the World Bank this year estimates that, with a one metre rise, Vietnam could lose 28 percent of its wetlands and ten percent of its GDP.

Separate research from the Bank warns that global warming could cause the sea to rise by one to three metres this century.

The Vietnamese Government is modeling its response on a scenario of a one metre rise by the end of the century.

“It’ll affect those most, that are least capable of adjusting.  For most communities, particularly rural communities, and poor urban communities, they are going to have a hard time”.  

Jeremy Carew-Reid is the director of the International Centre for Environmental Management, a research and consulting group based in Vietnam and Australia.

Using satellite imagery, he’s mapped out the effects that a one-metre sea level rise would have in Vietnam, under current conditions

He’s found that close to 20 percent of Vietnam’s communes would be flooded in part or in whole – directly affecting nearly 6 million people.

85 percent of the flooding would occur in the Mekong River Delta.

Jeremy Carew-Reid says this would be felt acutely by poor communities, not least because salt water would intrude further onto the agricultural lands they depend on for their livelihoods: “When you consider that most of the Mekong Delta is a metre or a metre and a half above sea level, then the potential for salination to move up deeply in the delta, 150 kilometres, and to affect agricultural lands, the potential for probably up to a third of the delta to be permanently flooded, that’s a pretty significant impact when you consider that the Mekong is the breadbasket of the country; 60 percent of agricultural productivity is from the Mekong Delta”.

Once arable land has been dowsed with salt water, it can take years to grow crops on it again.

Freshwater and saltwater farming also stands to be seriously affected by flooding and the influx of salt water.

The sector, known as aquaculture, is developing faster in the Mekong Delta than anywhere else in Vietnam.

In Soc Trang province, it’s the main source of income.

On a shrimp farm in coastal Soc Trang’s Long Phu district, turbines pump seawater in and out of a pond the size of a football pitch.

The rapid growth of shrimp farming here over the past two decades has reduced poverty and boosted economic growth.

But the industry’s success is a double-edged sword.

Thousands of hectares of coastal mangrove forest have also been destroyed to make way for the farms.

And mangroves have been proven to protect coastal areas from storms and typhoons.

Ly Hoa Khuong is the national coordinator of a natural resources management project in Soc Trang, funded by the German government and implemented by the development agency, GTZ: “According to Japanese research, with a 5 year old 1,500 metre wide forest belt, a one metre wave will be reduced to 5 centimetres by the time it gets to the landside of the forest”.

Local officials say they’ve managed to restore nearly 4-thousand hectares of forest beyond the dyke system since 1992, with international and government assistance.

Travelling by boat to the edge of the forest on the East Sea, local landless people are helping plant young trees.

 “We transport the trees to the boat, and then we wait until the tide goes down, and the land appears, and we start planting the trees”.

50 year old Pham Thai Lien used to cut down the trees, trading the wood for rice or using it as firewood.

Now, she says the project gives her work in the months of unemployment in March, April and June.

And she says it ensures her family income from the fish and crabs they catch every day in the forest mud flats.

But Lien is also aware of the wider benefits of the forest: “It helps to prevent storm surge, and I’m afraid that without the forest, the destruction of the typhoon in 1997 could happen again”.

The typhoon was the worst to hit southern Vietnam in 100 years.

High seas and flooding killed more than 400 people, left thousands of fishermen missing and almost 80,000 homes destroyed across the wider Mekong region.

The mangrove forest has since been strengthened along many affected areas of Soc Trang.   

But National project coordinator, Ly Hoa Khuong, says he’s concerned about erosion along an 18 kilometre stretch of the coast where there is still very little forest left.

He says erosion there poses a great risk to the dyke: “If the dyke system is destroyed, salination will happen, the sea water will flow over the area. From September to December this area is affected by the monsoon. Without the dyke system this area will be flooded.  This is a big headache for us, because if the land is eroded it’s difficult for us to plant mangrove forest there”.

The government is considering mangrove rehabilitation as part of its national response to climate change.

Associate Professor Tran Thuc, is the Director General of Vietnam’s Institute of Meteorology, Hydrology and Environment.

He heads the drafting group for Vietnam’s “National Target Programme on Climate Change”, which will set the country’s priorities and timeframes for response: “Mangroves play two roles.  First of all it works as a sink of carbon, so it can mitigate climate change, mitigate the greenhouse gas emissions.  Secondly it can protect the coastal areas from the attack of the waves.  But climate change will make it difficult, because if the sea level rises about half a metre, the whole area of mangroves will be destroyed. So in planning mangrove plantations we have to take into account the effects of climate change on mangroves”.

Tran Thuc suggests in the future, mangroves will have to be moved further inland.

Environmentalists say damage that’s already been done to natural systems like mangroves across Vietnam will only compound the effects of climate change.

Jeremy Carew-Reid from the International Centre for Environmental Management: “We have a situation where most watersheds have lost most of their forests, which means that the run-off and the flood events are more extreme; it’s not flattened out by the impact of forests.   Our coastal systems, a lot of the inshore fisheries have already collapsed, productivity has dropped through loss of mangroves systems, nursery habitats and over-fishing.  Coral reefs are already under stress.  So you’ve got these highly stressed natural systems, some are on the verge of collapse.  Now any additional stress, even if it’s small from climate change is going to have a very quick and major impact”.

Jeremy Carew-Reid says heavily polluted river systems like the Saigon Dong Nai are already struggling to provide enough clean water for the rapidly growing city of Ho Chi Minh.

He warns that climate change could escalate conflict between water users in the country’s commercial capital: “You’ll have the agricultural sector demanding more through irrigation, domestic users crying out for clean water, regular water supply, we’ll have 65 percent of Vietnam’s enterprises which are situated there, crying out for clean regular water supply”.  

As climate change takes effect, more extreme droughts would mean less water to flush the pollution out of the river, while increasing storm surge and sea level rise would keep the pollution in the city.

The Southern Institute for Water Resources Planning says upstream areas of the river system have suffered increasing drought and flooding over recent years.

Its deputy director, Nguyen Ngoc Anh, says the construction of reservoirs in the Dong Nai River basin has helped ensure water supply downstream, in the city.

But he says pollution of the river has become a serious problem: “Some old industrial zones like Bien Hoa which were established before 1975, they still use outdated equipment without taking waste treatment into consideration.  How to deal with the pollution by these old zones is a problem not only for HCM city but also for neighbouring provinces.  For newly established industrial zones, they are put under pressure of industrial development, so sometimes they pollute the environment, especially the water environment”.

Ho Chi Minh city’s Science and Technology department says the city is home to 14 industrial, exporting and processing zones.

Phan Minh Tan, the head the department, says 13 of the 14 zones have installed centralized, waste-water treatment systems to help combat pollution.

And he says measures are underway to deal with salt water intrusion in the outlying district of Can Gio, the district forecast to be hardest hit by sea level rise: “In Can Gio we have established a water filtering factory to help turn the brackish water into fresh water.  With initial capacity of 5000 cubic metres a day, we plan to raise the capacity to 15,000 cubic metres a day”.

International experts are watching to see how Ho Chi Minh city adapts to climate change forecasts.

Earlier this year, an OECD report ranked Ho Chi Minh City fifth out of 136 large port cities whose population will be most exposed to coastal flooding by 2070 due to storm surge and high winds.

In a downtown cafe, customers casually sip their drinks.

Just how much do Ho Chi Minh city dwellers know about the threat of climate change?

Sometimes I hear the words climate change on the weather forecast, and I wonder what’s that? //   The earth is warming and pollution is increasing, so we need to reduce the number of motorbikes and fumes to reduce global warming. // It rains and it’s cold, that’s all I can tell you //  It’s raining harder every year, and it floods houses in the city, and the rain lasts for a long time, even up to four to five hours. 

A report from the International Centre for Environmental Management shows 12 per cent of the city’s population are living in areas forecast to be flooded by a one metre sea level rise – unless the city can take effective action to adapt.

And it says the main areas of population growth, and areas where the poor live, are highly threatened.

City authorities are considering building a system of sluice gates along the river and a dam around the city.

Sea and river dykes have been used for over a thousand years in Vietnam to combat flooding - most in northern Vietnam.

But international experts warn Vietnam must not rely solely on engineering solutions, nor put them in place without thorough assessment of the impacts.

Dr Tran Thuc, the head of the Institute of Meteorology, Hydrology and Environment, agrees.

He says Vietnam’s draft National Target Programme on Climate Change outlines that there are many ways to adapt to climate change: “The first adaptation measure is to escape, that means to go away from the affected area.  The second way is to live with it, to adjust the life, to fit to the change of the climate.  It means that we have to have construction measures, or non-construction measures”.

Dr Thuc says planners need to start taking climate change into account when building in high-risk areas.

But he says first of all, Vietnam needs a better understanding of which areas are going to be affected by climate change, by when and how.

He says the National Target Programme prioritizes the response from 2009 to 2015: “In this period, we have to analyse the impact of climate change, we have to identify the adaptation measures to develop the climate change scenario, and each vulnerable ministry and sector and province has to develop their action plan to respond”.

He concedes this will be no easy task.

Like other developing countries, Dr Thuc says Vietnam does not have enough expertise to tackle climate change.

To help deal with this challenge, international donors are stepping up to the table.

The Government of Denmark has just approved a 40 million US dollar package to support Vietnam’s National Target Programme on Climate Change and national energy efficiency over the next five years.

The Danish Ambassador Peter Lysholt Hansen says the priority is to improve Vietnam’s climate change impact scenarios, and to raise awareness across Vietnam.

He says Denmark will also support pilot projects in two of the worst-affected provinces, of Ben Tre in the Mekong Delta and Quang Nam in central Vietnam: “The idea is to initiate pilot projects which can hopefully then feed into the national target programme when they are rolling it out in all provinces. But we are also trying to introduce climate change into the provincial planning.  You have to see this, in my view, as part of the development challenges of Vietnam.  That means that in the socio-economic development plans you have to have climate change integrated in everything”.

Denmark also chairs the Donor Group on Climate Change along with the United Nations.

Ambassador Hansen says having one common response from the donors will make it easier for the government to coordinate its action with them.

But he says coordination between Vietnam’s sectors and ministries is also vital: “I think in Vietnam’s case  we are very fortunate that the Prime Minister has decided to head the national steering committee on the climate change programme, which I think gives us a lot of assurance that he will see that there is coordination. But we know from our own countries, coordination across ministries, across sectors is very difficult”.

Knowing how to adapt to global warming is not only new to Vietnam, but to the whole world.

Vietnamese climate change experts say the approach Vietnam must now take is learning by doing.