Sustainable Urban cooling in Viet Nam Cities

The project will support the 3 pilot cities of Hanoi, Can Tho and Tam Ky, selected to represent the range of municipal administrations in Viet Nam, to adopt Urban Cooling Action Plans (UCAPs), finance pilot projects and unlock stable municipal budgets for intervention on extreme heat and urban cooling. Interventions will include improved urban design, nature-based solutions, passive cooling measures, municipal incentives, district cooling and public procurement. Five learning cities will follow this work to ensure long-term scale-up (including Dong Hoi). In parallel, to unlock increased finance for UCAP implementation, a national cooling fund will be established under the existing Environmental Protection Fund and contributions sought from public budgets and international donors. Viet Nam has committed to link this proposed project into enhanced NDC implementation and its results into future iterations of its NDC (see Letter 1 in Annex). Viet Nam has included cooling and extreme heat in its enhanced NDC following consultations with Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Viet Nam (MoNRE) by UNEP/GGGI in preparation for this proposal.The rapid growth in urbanization in Vietnam and the accompanying development of new buildings across major cities in Vietnam present an immense opportunity to future-proof investments while also meeting the energy and building related emission target of the NDC. Understanding urban cooling mitigation potential in Viet Nam, UNEP and GGGI develop ideas to support the Government of Viet Nam to increase cooling ambition contributing to the overall energy and building targets of NDC. The idea contributes to Vietnam’s Plan for Implementation of the Paris Agreement and the NDC implementation programme under preparation, which includes the revision of sub-national climate action plans. UNEP and GGGI will showcase and develop a process to capture local action in NDC implementation.