The Vietnam Innovation Day (VID) 2010, co-organized by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, The Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union - Central Committee, and the World Bank with the theme: “Climate Change”.
According to the World Bank’s World Development Report 2010, climate change (CC) is expected to hit developing countries the hardest.
Its impacts, including more droughts, more floods, more strong storms and more heat waves — pose special risks for agriculture, food, and water supplies, threatening and challenging poverty reduction efforts.
Tackling this immense challenge must involve bothmitigation - to avoid the unmanageable - andadaptation - to manage the unavoidable - all while maintaining a focus on itssocial dimensions.
Responding to Climate Change has been identified as a key challenge to Vietnam’s development progress.
The impacts of Climate Change to Vietnam are serious, and are an imminent threat to poverty reduction as well as the achievements of the Millennium Development Goals.
Water resources, agriculture and food security, health issues, and the low lying deltas and coastal areas of Vietnam are most vulnerable to climate change.
This program is an opportunity for innovative ideas that address local development challenges.
It identifies, shares, exchanges and directly supports small, bottom-up, innovative development proposals that deliver results, which can then be expanded or replicated.
The Program includes these major components:
Innovation Competition - an open competition, jury-mediated process whereby start-up funds are awarded to organizations proposing the most innovative ideas that will contribute to mitigate and adapt to Climate Change.
Knowledge Exchange – is a forum for knowledge sharing and open discussion on the subject of CC response in Viet Nam, that aims to strengthen legal and policy framework to facilitate responsive actions as well as encouraging the participation of different actors, especially the private sector and grassroots level in taking initiatives to reduce GHGs and to be more resilient to CC effects.
The 2010 Vietnam Innovation Day competition, on the theme of "Climate Change" awarded 30 community projects, financial totaling above US$ 415,000 on 6th May. Winning project will get a grant of up to US$15,000 in seed money to test their innovative ideas and to scale up efforts to respond to climate change, from the mountainous to delta, from urban to rural areas.
The winners were identified by a broadly-represented and highly respected panel of jurors from the Government, donors’ community, research institutions, civil society, and the media. They evaluated the proposals according to five criteria – contribution to addressing the issue of climate change, innovation and learning, feasibility, sustainability, reliability and participation and ownership.
The winning projects seek to respond to climate change by various means, from creating a math curriculum in schools with climate change contents, to establishing a café for young people as a place for climate change awareness raising, to improving the traditional cooker so that it emits less carbon dioxide. All the projects are highly appreciated for their creativity and the commitment of the project owners.
The competition, jointly organized by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the Youth Union and the World Bank, was open between January and May and attracted 262 proposals of which 61 were selected as finalists.
Its co-sponsors this year are:
The Royal Embassy of Denmark,
The Embassy of Finland,
NZAid - Newzealand Embassy,
UKAid,
Agency of French Development (AFD),
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The Vietnam Innovation Day (VID) 2010, co-organized by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, The Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union - Central Committee, and the World Bank with the theme: “Climate Change”.
RSS