As we all know well, climate change is a global issue. However, impacts of climate change may differ from region to region. Therefore, learning from our neighbors would be a very wise decision…

As one of the countries most threatened and challenged by climate change impacts, Viet Nam considers responding to climate change vital to its development, and has developed a series of national climate change policies, including a climate change strategy, a green growth strategy, and a national action plan to respond to climate change. To develop these policies, Viet Nam has carefully studied experiences from many countries, especially from Southeast Asia, and countries with similar situations and development levels. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP), through its Southeast Asia Network of Climate Change Offices (SEAN-CC), has provided important contributions for this learning process.

Allow me to mention one example of such cooperation: the ongoing development of our National Appropriate Mitigation Action (NAMA) policy. After the 18th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 18) to the UNFCCC, NAMAs attracted strong interest from many development sectors in Viet Nam. Many NAMAs, from project to sector level, are being developed, including some which are about to be finalized, for cement production, the building sector, transportation, steel production, waste management and agriculture. However, one question remains: how to finance these NAMAs with limited readily available resources? At a time when we were trying to determine the best way to begin, the SEAN-CC network helped us get a better understanding of the issue, the challenges and the opportunities. We were able to learn from other countries and experts the importance and the process of prioritizing NAMAs, how to harmonize mitigation with sustainable objectives and ways for allocating sufficient resources to develop and implement NAMAs.

Further, we also learned about the National Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) Framework for Indonesia’s National Action Plan for Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emission Reduction and other countries’ experience during our very open and informal discussions among SEAN-CC network members, at a technical level. This was every useful for our country as we are also embarking on the development of our national MRV system. The framework and methodology are equally applicable to an economy-wide action plan for GHG emissions reductions similar to Indonesia’s, or to sector specific NAMAs. Understanding in detail our Indonesian friends’ approach assisted us as we got our work under way. Some of our experts will soon visit their counterparts in Jakarta to continue this exchange of knowledge, for mutual benefit, in a true South-South cooperation spirit.

This is what this network of climate change offices is about; it is “a people’s network”. A network of people working together, interested in finding out which solutions their peers adopted in another country. Sharing experience and lessons are invaluable. Regional networks of climate change offices play this unique role of a facilitative link between the international climate change negotiations process and our daily business of designing and implementing practical climate change responses domestically, many of which are direct actions that have to be taken at the national level as per recent COP decisions. Such networks represent a modest, yet essential, building block to enable various actors around the globe to take action and contribute to GHG emissions reduction, and, equally important, to better adapt to climate change impacts.

Next year, as we all know, the emphasis will be on the preparation of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). Again, capacity building services in action, through our flexible and clever networking, will be part of the solution to meet this new milestone on our journey from Lima to Paris and the much anticipated next global agreement on climate change. But the story will not end with sealing the deal. Many details will have to be sorted out and tested before 2020, and agreed actions implemented on the ground. These are new major challenges ahead of us. Viet Nam and other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states would like to count on the SEAN-CC network as they set off on this journey.