Dont tell mama new york

Brussels (VNA) – The Embassy of Vietnam in Belgium held a get-together with overseas Vietnamese on March 4 to celebrate the Lunar Year of the Buffalo .

At the event, Ambassador to Belgium Vu Anh Quang extended his greetings to the local Vietnamese community, and voiced his encouragement to the community after a year full of hardships caused by COVID-19 , while expressing his gratitude for their activities in support of the homeland.

Quang, who is also head of the Vietnamese mission to the EU, also informed the participants on future activities, along with the results of the fight against COVID-19 in Vietnam, the country’s socio-economic development and success of the 13th National Party Congress which took place before Tet (Lunar New Year) festival.

Despite difficulties, the association of Vietnamese people in Belgium raised 6,000 EUR (7,170 USD) for flood victims in Vietnam’s central region last year, which helped farmers at a cooperative to resume production and stabilise their lives, according to a member of the organisation./.

VNA

The target was set forth in the National Strategy on Gender Equality for the 2021- 2030 period recently adopted by the government.

The strategy also defined a number of new goals for the country to further make progress in gender equality in various areas and fulfil its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

Accordingly, the number of paid women employees in Vietnam will increase to 50 percent by 2025 and around 60 percent by 2030, while the percentage of women working in the agriculture sector among all employed women will decline to below 30 percent by 2025 and less than 25 percent by 2030.

The rate of female directors or owners of businesses is expected to reach at least 27 percent by 2025 and 30 percent by 2030.

The country also aims to reduce the average time women spend on doing the unpaid housework to 1.7 times by 2025 and 1.4 times by 2030 as compared to that of men.

By 2025, 80 percent of women suffering from domestic and gender-based violence will be given access to at least one of basic support services, and the figure is expected to reach 90 percent by 2030.

The sex ratio at birth will be 111 boys per 100 girls by 2025 and 109 boys per 100 girls by 2030. The maternal mortality rate will drop to 42 per 100,000 live births by 2025 and below 42 per 100,000 live births by 2030.

Gender and gender equality are planned to be integrated into curriculum at schools and pedagogical universities from 2025.

The country will hold a month-long campaign for the promotion of gender equality and gender-based violence prevention and response from November 15 to December 15 every year.

Source: VNA

That was announced at the meeting with Deputy Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Vo Van Hoan yesterday upon approval of the department’s plan.

In addition to job creation, the Department planned to provide vocational training for 371,000 students as well as offering 300,000 jobs to employees and reduce poverty households by 0.4 percent.

At the meeting, Mr. Hoan requested the Department to support foreign experts who are working for companies in the city by allowing them to enter Vietnam as soon as possible but still follow Covid-19 preventative measures.

Simultaneously, the Department must take heed of training to workers and enhance connection between skilled employees with employers to satisfy enterprises’ demand of high quality workers.

Additionally, the Department must pay attention to job creation for former drug addicts and apply friendly management in drug rehabilitation facilities.

The enforced rest due to the COVID-19 pandemic may have been a boon for the country’s two best-supported teams Hanoi FC and Hoang Anh Gia Lai ahead of the mid-March restart.

As Vietnam is among the most threatened countries by climate change, the state and people take decisive action, photo Le Toan

The government has promulgated Resolution No.06/NQ-CP on the Action Programme on continuing the implementation of Resolution No.24-NQ/TW by the 11th Party Central Committee on active response to climate change, improvement of natural resource management, and environmental protection.

The action programme, to be implemented until 2025, lays a foundation for ministries, agencies, and localities to formulate and implement their own plans on responding to climate change while strengthening natural resource management and environmental protection.

Under the programme, efforts are to be made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7.3 per cent below the business-as-usual scenario by 2025, and achieve 5-7 per cent in energy conservation out of gross energy consumption.

To this end, some key solutions are to be taken. Specifically, the government orders ministries and agencies to formulate and implement sturdy policies on shifting to digital economy, and development and expansion of models on circular economy, green economy, and low-carbon economy.

In addition to an increase in state budget in investing into responding to climate change, and managing natural resources and the environment, the government will have a flexible mechanism on allocating the use of natural resources under a market mechanism. Notably, the government will “develop markets for environmental goods and services, the carbon market, public-private partnership models, and green credits and green bonds, as well as mobilise investment capital from non-state sources,” according to Resolution 06.

To enable investors, Resolution 06 stressed that a number of related laws will be revised soon, including the Law on Land 2013, the Law on Minerals 2010, and the Law on Efficient Use and Saving Energy, as well as many other related documents.

Championing the cause

Disaster and climate challenges have become a top priority for policymakers in Vietnam. This is evidenced in national and sector strategies, and these challenges are identified as one of the key pillars of the new national development plan for the next decade. For example, the government approved the National Climate Change Strategy in 2011, and the Vietnam Green Growth Strategy in 2012, which lay out a vision through 2050. Also, the government adopted the Support Programme to Respond to Climate Change for 2016-2020 that supports policy reform, capacity building, and increased investment for prioritised climate change and green growth actions in key sectors including energy, transport, forestry, and water resource management.

Internationally, the government has also championed the cause of the environment, including at the 2015 Paris Conference.

Climate and disaster risks are now recognised as a direct threat to Vietnam’s aspiration to become a high-income economy. Direct and indirect disaster losses are affecting not only the economy’s resilience and sustainability, but also its capacity to maintain rapid and inclusive growth. For instance, rapid infrastructure development in the absence of the consideration of disaster and climate risks is leading to rapidly growing exposure and vulnerabilities to adverse natural events.

“With an anticipated growth of 265 per cent over the next 10 years, annual average direct disaster losses on the coast alone are expected to grow to $4.2 billion a year,” stated the World Bank in its recently-published report on how Vietnam can become a champion of the green recovery.

The Asian Development Bank also said that the rapid expansion of gross fixed capital formation has been unplanned and without consideration of climate and disaster risks, leading to the rapid growth in people and assets exposed to adverse natural events. When all this environmental damage is combined, it is estimated to cost between 4 to 8 per cent to GDP every year due to a combination of direct negative effects on the stock of natural capital, as well as that of indirect externalities on labour productivity and on quality of physical infrastructure.

In addition, development gains could be undermined by the loss of human life; destruction of commercial property, cultivable land, and infrastructure; reduction in agricultural yields and labor productivity; loss of tax revenues; and strained public budgets from spending on relief and reconstruction. For example, farmers in the Mekong region have already recorded declining agricultural yields caused by poor development practices, including water mismanagement and land exhaustion, according to the World Bank.

Changing behaviours

“Vietnam is standing at a crossroads of post-pandemic recovery. It has an opportunity to set itself on a greener, smarter, and more inclusive development path that will bolster resilience to future shocks from both pandemics and climate-related disasters,” said Carolyn Turk, World Bank country director for Vietnam. “The authorities must tackle the environmental and climate challenges with the same sense of urgency as they have done with COVID-19 because the costs of inaction are already visible and will become increasingly irreversible. The recent tropical storms in Vietnam’s central region and rising air pollution in the country’s major cities are good illustrations of this fragility.”

According to the World Bank, two lessons from the successful management of the global health crisis could be extended to the environmental agenda. The first lesson is that the best way to cope with an external shock is to be prepared in advance and move with early and bold actions. Secondly, beyond vision and capacity, the ability to embrace innovation and experiments is instrumental to change individual and collective behaviours, which lays at the root of strategies to cope with health and climate threats.

Ocean levels have already risen 20cm over the past three decades and could increase by a further 75cm by 2050 compared to the latter part of the 20th century. This could lead to flooding of 40 per cent of the Mekong Delta, 11 per cent of the Red River Delta, 3 per cent of coastal provinces, and over 20 per cent of Ho Chi Minh City, directly impacting 10-12 per cent of Vietnam’s population and 10 per cent of GDP, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.