Vietnam: What are the regulation on implementing 07 overall measures of national natural disasters management by 2025?

Main Content

• Complete law, mechanisms and policies on disaster management
• Communicate information, disseminate laws and increase skills and awareness of disaster management.
• Increase capacity and quality of disaster forecasting and warning.
• Carry out baseline surveys of disaster management; develop disaster management planning and plan
• Science and technology
• International cooperation
• Investment in disaster management infrastructure

On March 15, 2022, the Vietnam Prime Minister issued Decision 342/QD-TTg in 2022 on the National Disaster Maganament Plan to 2025 under the request of the Vietnam Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, including the content and overall measures for natural disaster management in Section III of this Decision as follows:

Complete law, mechanisms and policies on disaster management

+ Review and complete legislative documents on disaster management and other laws related to disaster management such as hydrometeorology, water resources, irrigation, land, forestry and bidding in order to ensure the consistency in legal system, mobilize resources, especially off-state budget resources for disaster management, including prevention and control of riverbank and coastal erosion for the purposes of soil retention and restoration of mangrove forests in the Mekong Delta.

+ Perfect national standards, national technical regulations and regulations so as to comply with disaster management requirements and control disaster risks, thereby proactively adapting to disasters in the context of climate change, especially standard on flood prevention and control, urban drainage, storm preparedness and protection of infrastructure, public works and people's houses from landslides.

+ Review and perfect mechanisms and policies to facilitate mobilization of off-budget resources for disaster management; attract enterprises, organizations and individuals to invest in scientific research, apply and transfer technologies, provide services and invest in construction of works serving disaster management; assist people in relocating from areas prone to frequent inundation and at high risk of flash floods and landslides; study special mechanisms and occupational incentives offered to forces directly engaged in disaster management in accordance with the Communist Party's guidelines and the State's laws.

Communicate information, disseminate laws and increase skills and awareness of disaster management.

+ Disseminate laws, mechanisms and policies on disaster management, disaster risks and climate change adaptation to increase the people’s awareness through Vietnam Television, Voice of Vietnam and other mass media adopting appropriate methods.

+ Spread knowledge and skills in disaster management and adaptation to climate change, especially the skill in response to major and complicated disasters to local governments, people and enterprises in order for them to proactively take measures for disaster management and damage minimization.

+ Incorporate knowledge about disaster management into training programs and extra-curricular activities of some general education levels; integrate disaster management contents into communication activities aimed at increasing awareness and capacity in communities and at village- and commune-level cultural events.

+ Promote effective implementation of the Scheme for community awareness raising and community-based disaster risk management. To be specific:

- Building a system for providing information and broadcasting news on disaster warnings from commune-level centers to villages and people.

- Providing professional training in disaster response and search and rescue (SAR) to internal disaster management forces, volunteers and guides.

- Enable residential communities to participate in assessing disaster risks, create disaster risk zoning maps at commune level, and develop a disaster management plan and skills in integrating disaster management activities into the communal socio-economic development plan.

- Spread knowledge and provide training to increase communities’ awareness of and skills in disaster management.

- Organize drills in response to types of disasters within communal communities.

Increase capacity and quality of disaster forecasting and warning.

+ Build and review disaster risk zoning, create maps of warnings of risks of disasters, especially floods, inundation, flash floods, landslides, droughts and saltwater intrusion.

+ Upgrade and modernize technology for disaster forecasting and warning in the national hydrometeorological forecasting and warning system, especially in mountainous and coastal areas of the central region and the Mekong Delta to meet the requirements for climate change adaptation; build systems for impact-based forecasting and risk-based warning of hydrometeorological hazards and disasters.

+ Continue to build the climate change and sea level rise monitoring systems; disaster warning and information system in response to climate change; apply modern technologies to climate forecasting; survey and assess hydrometeorological resources and monitor climate change.

+ Modernize the hydrometeorological monitoring system in an automated manner, especially the system of rain gauge stations; upgrade the transmission infrastructure serving collection of hydrometeorological data.

+ Develop digital forecasting and rainfall forecasting technologies; flood forecasting technology serving reservoir operation.

Carry out baseline surveys of disaster management; develop disaster management planning and plan

+ Regarding baseline surveys: focus on surveying and evaluating baseline information and data in service of studying and formulation of strategic orientations and planning for disaster management:

- Survey the current prevention of flash floods and landslides in areas prone to frequent flash floods and landslides in the Northern Highlands, central region and Central Highlands, and riverbank and coastal erosion in the central region and Mekong Delta.

- Survey and evaluate flow, silt and sediment in some major river systems, especially the Red River, Thai Binh river and Mekong river system.

- Survey and collect data on population and infrastructural constructions in river terraces, river banks, and assess downstream flood drainage capacity of some river basins and large reservoirs in the central region, Central Highlands, and Southeast Region which are often flooded upon heavy rain occurrence and flood discharge reservoir to form a basis for proposing solutions for facilitating flood drainage and runoff.

+ Regarding planning:

- Focus on formulating national sector planning for disaster management and in relation to disaster management, including disaster management and irrigation planning; planning for fishing ports and storm shelters for fishing vessels; national forestry planning; planning for network of national hydrometeorological stations; national water resources planning. Formulate disaster management plans, flood control system development plans and provincial planning.

- Review and adjust detailed and technical planning for disaster management and in relation to disaster management, including planning for flooding control of rivers section with dikes; flood control system planning; irrigation planning.

+ Develop disaster management plans at all levels; plan for implementation of the National Disaster Management Strategy by 2030 with a vision towards 2050 and Control to 2030 with a vision to 2050; update plans to respond to some types of disasters that frequently occur in the areas, especially storms, floods, flash floods, landslides, droughts, saltwater intrusion, riverbank and coastal erosion according to regulations of the Law on Natural Disaster Management.

Science and technology

- Consider transforming production structure and adjusting seasons, plant varieties and animal breeds to proactively take precautionary measures against disasters and adapt to climate change.

- Conduct scientific research and apply technologies to disaster management, especially to disaster monitoring, forecasting and warning; manage and operate disaster management works; manage and operate reservoirs in order to effectively exploit water resources; monitor changes in riverbank and coast.

- Build database and software for disaster management and flood and inundation simulation; study and assess the impact of increased risks of disasters, especially floods in the Central region and Central Highlands regions, and impacts of upstream development on downstream disasters.

- Consider perfecting models of houses and buildings that are safe to adapt to disasters hitting each region, especially in areas prone to frequent storms and floods; models of safe schools, cultural houses and community houses serve both their intended purposes and evacuation purposes in favor of disaster management; dyke works, irrigation works and other works related to disaster management.

- Consider applying new materials to construction, consolidation, upgrading, maintenance and urgent response to dikes of dyke works and disaster management.

- Undertake scientific research and apply high technology to hydrometeorological monitoring; forecast and warn disasters and monitor climate change; assess disaster risks and carry out disaster risk zoning, create disaster warning maps and process hydrometeorological data.

International cooperation

- Promote international cooperation and exchange information in order to improve quality of disaster forecasting and warning, disaster management and search and rescue.

- Participate in disaster response drills, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief together with countries in the region; exchange information, provide training and participate in disaster response drills together with ASEAN countries.

- Proactively participate in mechanisms for cooperation in disaster management, give priority to cooperation mechanisms: ACDM, Mekong River Commission, Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, ARF, ASEM, Lancang-Mekong Cooperation, etc.

- Fully and responsibly implement treaties, agreements and cooperation agreements to which Vietnam is a signatory; maintain cooperation, share information and database; cooperate in SAR operations.

Investment in disaster management infrastructure

- Tropical depression, storm, strong typhoon and super typhoon preparedness: Focus on building, fortifying and upgrading storm shelters for ships in combination with fisheries logistics services according to the planning. Continue to plant coastal protection forests; repair, fortify and upgrade sea dikes and embankments; build and fortify houses which serve both their intended purposes and evacuation purposes upon powerful storm and major flood occurrence people; build and strengthen the multi-target disaster warning system.

- Flood and inundation prevention and control: Execute projects to repair and upgrade dikes serving flood prevention and control, and enhance flood drainage capacity; plant headwater protection forests; prevent flooding in big cities; build residential clusters and dykes and houses in flooded areas of the Mekong Delta.

- Flash flood and landslide prevention and control: build flash flood and landslide monitoring and early warning systems; works serving flash flood and landslide prevention and control. Proactively relocate people and arrange settlements in areas at high risk of flash floods and landslides to safe places, and at the same time build muster facilities to shelter relocated people (for areas where it is impossible to provide available settlements and it is required to provide concentration areas).

- Riverbank and coastal erosion prevention and control: execute projects to build embankments to prevent riverbank and coastal erosion; restore coastal mangrove forests, especially in the provinces of the Mekong Delta and the Central Coast according to the riverbank and coastal erosion prevention scheme.

- Drought and saltwater intrusion prevention and control: execute projects to build and upgrade water reservoirs; build works serving salinity prevention; repair and upgrade irrigation works in service of supply of water for drought prevention; control and improve the efficiency in use of water resources, storage and supply of water to areas prone to frequent droughts.

- Invest in building and upgrading infrastructure to facilitate the disaster management monitoring, supervision, direction and operation. Build a national disaster management operation center; build and upgrade database serving disaster management and climate change adaptation.