Hydrometeorology is a borderless issue, so to minimise natural disaster-related losses and risks, close cooperation among countries around the world is needed, head of the Vietnamese hydro-meteorological administration has said.

General Director of the Vietnam Meteorological and Hydrological Administration
Tran Hong Thai speaks at the conference in Hanoi on September 18
(Photo: dangcongsan.vn)

At a conference in Hanoi on September 18, General Director of the Vietnam Meteorological and Hydrological Administration Tran Hong Thai said over the last five years, cooperation between his administration and development partners has been growing, generating positive outcomes.

He underlined the need to enhance hydro-meteorological cooperation among countries around the world through building capacity, transferring technology, and sharing forecasts, statistics and climate change knowledge.

Expanding cooperation in hydrometeorology is essential for development, Thai said.

Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Le Cong Thanh said one of the biggest challenges to Vietnam’s hydro-meteorological sector is climate change. Therefore, it is necessary to build a concrete development strategy for it until 2030, with a vision to 2050.

Besides, development partners’ role in its targets and development strategies need to maximise resources and prevent wastefulness. It is also important for the sector to have open dialogues with State agencies, private companies that use hydro-meteorological services and development partners to enhance private parties’ engagement in this field.

He also highlighted the necessity to utilise bilateral and multilateral relations to modernise the country’s hydro-meteorological sector.

According to Thai, under the sector’s development strategy until 2020, a system with 10 modern radars and a lightning detection network with 18 stations nationwide have been installed. Data integration and supercomputer systems are also hoped to become operational soon.

However, the sector still needs more investment for the next 10-20 years to meet requirements relevant to disaster prevention and mitigation, socio-economic development, defence-security ensuring, reasonable natural resource exploitation and environmental protection.

The conference was attended by representatives of the World Bank, the Italian and Finnish embassies, development partners, and domestic and foreign private companies. They learned about the Vietnamese sector’s development demand for 2020-2030 and pinpointed potential sponsors to help the sector realise its goals.