HANOI, VIETNAM – 30 January 2013: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has contracted ICEM to provide technical assistance to the Vietnam Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) to implement the project to Promote Climate Resilient Rural Infrastructure in Northern Vietnam.

The objective of the overall project is to reduce vulnerability of local infrastructure in the northern mountain areas of Vietnam to the adverse impacts of climate change, and also to create a policy framework conducive to promoting resilient development in the northern mountains zone. Vietnam’s northern mountain provinces have developed more slowly than the rest of the country; by 2009 the region still had 30% of its population living in poverty, in part due to low levels of infrastructure development. The area is particularly vulnerable to the projected effects of climate change, which include significant increases in rainfall intensities and therefore runoff, landslides and floods.

The project will run from January 2013 to December 2015. ICEM activities will support one component of the project intended to demonstrate low cost, easily implementable measures to reduce the vulnerability of rural infrastructure to extreme climate events. The remaining four components concerning mainstreaming and capacity development are administered by UNDP.

Bioeng.mapICEM will conduct activities in Bac Kan, Son La and Thai Nguyen, undertaking training and capacity building, to promote bioengineering as an alternative, low cost approach to increasing the resilience of rural infrastructure to extreme weather events such as rainfall and floods. The focus areas of the project will be on small to medium scale irrigation and/or drainage systems, rural roads, water supplies and district and commune markets.

> More info about this project
> More news updates from this project