Given the magnitude of climate change impacts on the natural environment, development and infrastructure, economy, and public health in the region, it is imperative that climate change mitigation and adaptation are adequately addressed at the City Level. Local authorities will play a key role to combat climate change by developing climate action plans to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the impact of climate change. Tam Ky City is ready to move forward for the Climate Action Plan development.
On 14 October 2020, Tam Ky organized a virtual training for city representatives on Climate Action Plan formulation under the IUC Asia project. Supported by the CDP and UN-Habitat, the session aimed to share the general knowledge of Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM) program, highlighting the benefit and the reporting platform. It also provides an understanding of the technical assistance provided by IUC Asia to Tam Ky – to assist Tam Ky Develop the Climat Action Plan in a way to pursue their ambition of the urban climate change resilience.
Shandy of CDP shared the established Common Reporting Framework, would guide GCoM cities in assessing their greenhouse gas emissions, climate change risk and vulnerabilities (CRVA), as well as planning and reporting in an integrated and coherent way. This would enable cities to identify and take the right actions in a timely manner, as well as for better identification of shared challenges, greater cooperation, and the development of common responses to the impacts of climate change. GCoM cities agreed to make key data publicly available through the GCoM via regular reporting, which is needed to track overall progress in achieving the aims of the alliance.
Later in the training session, Laids of UN-Habitat explained in more detail the GCoM requirements and recommendations for undertaking a CRVA – one of the initial stages for developing climate change adaptation plans. The first step of CRVA required the need to identify the past, current, and future climate hazard and their impacts. The second step involved the vulnerability, focusing on the need to identify affected population groups vulnerable to each climate hazards. This information can help the local government to gain a better understanding of the vulnerability dimension of risks and in prioritizing climate adaptation actions. The third step was to assess adaptive capacity, which includes factors that enable a city to adjust its systems in view of current and future risks, adequately respond to its impacts.
UN-Habitat demonstrated the adopted tool for CRVA and highlighted the data required. Further, the city was expected to continue data gathering based on historical and statistical; as such UN-Habitat Team would assist in database consolidation.
