Enhance the women’s empowerment in Vietnam’s climate policies

The conference “Ready for COP25: Ways towards inclusive NDC implementation” was held in Hanoi on 8 October 2019. Participants shared experiences and recommendations with the Vietnam government on the implementation of its commitment to the Paris Agreement, and on the upcoming mission to the 25th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP25) in Chile. The conference was organised jointly by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and SNV in coordination with the Climate Change Working Group (CCWG) and WWF-Vietnam.

The conference was attended by more than 120 representatives from national and local government, embassies, development agencies, research institutes and universities, CSOs, international organisations and UN agencies. It provided an opportunity to strengthen CSOs' engagement with the revision process of the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to mainstream gender equality. The NDC is a report affirming Vietnam's commitments to the Paris Agreements to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and outlining the actions and policies needed to achieve its goals .

At the conference, the NDC revision and gender mainstreaming process was presented and discussed. Local government representatives shared their initiatives on gender-responsive climate smart agriculture. SNV presented its experience to mainstream gender-equality in climate smart agriculture in the FLOW/EOWE project (funded by the Netherlands Ministry for Foreign Affairs). In particular SNV highlighted a gender-responsive SRI model and dragon fruit value chain in Binh Thuan province; as well as a women-led asparagus cooperative model of Cham ethnic group in the dry sandy area of Ninh Thuan province. “These models show great contribution with practical evidences of how to do gender sensitise policies to the NDC recommendations and revision in Vietnam”, a representative at the conference shared.

Conference participants expressed their appreciation the strong commitment by Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, as the country focal Ministry for gender mainstreaming in the NDC finalisation process. “Climate crisis and gender inequality are the most critical challenges that hinder development of human beings. It is essentially important to have stronger commitments and practical actions of all parties to cope with and reduce risk these threats through every policies, plans and smalles initiatives of all government agencies, organisations, and communities. The long way ahead, think big but start small”, Ms Tran Tu Anh, programme manager of the SNV EOWE/FLOW project, emphasised.

Ms Alison Rusinow, SNV Country Director Vietnam delivered the closing remarks of the conference, providing a strong message, “Women indeed have agency in this mandate, they are making change”.