24 October 2014: UN-Habitat participated in a two-day, high-level event examining ‘Environment Change and Urbanization in the South East Asia Region.’ Commenting on how climate change will affect rapidly urbanizing areas in the region, Nguyen Quang, Director of UN-Habitat Viet Nam, noted that climate change has had “a direct effect on key urban infrastructure such as transportation, water supply and energy, and exacerbates urbanization problems.”

Participants highlighted the significance of the event location, Saigon, Viet Nam, pointing to the critical environmental and urbanization challenges the country faces and the opportunity to learn from the various approaches the Government has taken to address them. Viet Nam is among the top 10 countries in the world for exposure to climate change, with most of its poor living in areas vulnerable to flooding, according to UN-Habitat. A number of parallel sessions at the event examined case studies from the country, including a scientific and technological program in response to climate change in Ho Chi Minh City and urban flood and erosion management in Can Tho.

The attendees, which represented over 50 organizations from Indonesia, Thailand and Viet Nam, also had the opportunity to hear about case studies from other parts of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, such as a comprehensive land-use plan in Bangkok, Thailand and UN-Habitat’s Cities and Climate Change Initiative in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Samoa, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

The workshop was held 17-18 September 2014 and organized by the Urbanization and Global Environmental Change (UGEC) project of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP), which is hosted by the UN University (UNU). UGEC is conducting a series of five of these workshops across Africa, East Asia, the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Eastern Europe. [UN-Habitat Press Release] [UGEC Website] [IHDP Website]