Viet Nam is located in Southeast Asia, with a coastline of about 3,260 km and a sea area of about one million km2 including two archipelagos of Spratly and Paracel, along with more than 3,000 large and small islands along the coast. The country has a tropical and monsoon climate with an average temperature of about 28oC; average rainfall in various regions ranges mostly from 1,400 mm to 2,400 mm. With such hydro-meteorological characteristics, Viet Nam often faces extreme climate phenomena such as storms, tropical depressions, floods, inundation, droughts, etc. In recent years, climate change in Viet Nam continued to happen in an adverse trend, extreme climate events continued to be recorded with stronger intensity and higher frequency. Over the past 50 years, the average annual temperature in Viet Nam has increased by about 0.5oC, and sea level has risen by about 20 cm. El-Nino and La-Nina have been increasingly strongly affecting Viet Nam. Due to the impact of climate change, the frequency of occurrence of large-scale extreme weather events is higher. Abnormal phenomena of climate and weather have occurred continuously in many regions, causing landslides, flash floods on a large scale with huge devastation in Yen Bai in 2017, Thanh Hoa in 2018, 2019. The historic heavy rain within 60 years caused huge damage to Ha Giang and some provinces in the North. Especially, recently, the Central region has suffered natural disasters: multiple floods and storms with huge losses of humans and properties of the State and people. The CC impacts become the cause of climate security challenges and potential threats to the stability and development of the country.

Recognizing the importance of climate change response and disaster risk reduction, in recent years Viet Nam has made many efforts in Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reduction activities. The contents of State management of climate change have been fully codified in the Law on Environmental Protection 2020. Accordingly, the Law stipulates (at point c, item 2, Article 90) that the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) shall assume the prime responsibility for the developing ‘Guidelines for assessing the CC-induced impacts, vulnerabilities, risks, losses and damages’.

This report synthesizes and analyzes relevant concepts and studies in Viet Nam and other countries related to CC-induced impacts, vulnerabilities, risks, losses and. These are important information to inform the development of a Circular guiding the assessment of CC-induced impacts, vulnerabilities, risks, losses and damages.