WB Pledges More Support for Vietnam Urban Flood Control Next Years

The World Bank (WB) will continue providing loans, technical support and input analysis for Vietnam to assist the country in controlling and dealing with urban flooding, an increasingly serious development challenge for the country. The WB’s guidebook entitled “Cities and Flooding: A Guide to Integrated Urban Flood Risk Management for the 21st Century,” released on Feb 14 emphasized that Vietnam is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters, including floods, and fast urbanization, leading to high risks of urban flooding. The guidebook also proposed some prioritized policies to control floods in many countries, including Vietnam which is among the ten most vulnerable countries by natural calamities, particularly tropical storms, floods, landslides and droughts. Vietnam’s socio-economic strategy in the 2011-2020 period and its socio-economic development plan for 2011-2015 are targeted toward building a modern industrialized society through the urbanization process.
Pressures from economic growth and rapid urbanization amid the global climate change impacts are putting urban residents at high risks of natural disasters, experts said, urging to integrate flood risk management into regular planning of cities and towns. Vietnam has been going ahead with a national program on community-based disaster risk management in 6,000 villages and districts since 2009, the WB noted. The WB has financed $161 million for Vietnam’s disaster risk management project to boost the early warning system and infrastructure for disaster mitigation. It has also funded more $75 million for post disaster reconstruction in 2010.  HCM City, the worst flooded urban in Vietnam, is facing serious inundations with a total 100 submerged places, including 61 in the inner city, which is greatly affecting the environment and live of local residents. It is estimated that flooding causes damages of roughly VND6.2 trillion ($295.23 million) to HCM City a year. (Vietnamplus.vn Feb 15, Tin Tuc – News Feb 15)