PM attends UN climate ambition summit, pandemic preparedness meeting

In his speech at the Climate Ambition Summit, PM Chinh stated that climate change remains the most significant global challenge directly impacting and taking a heavy toll on economic development, social security, as well as people’s safety and health.

A global and universal approach with breakthrough, general, comprehensive, and innovative solutions is therefore required for coping with climate change, he outlined, calling for faster, stronger, and more responsible actions in a bid to minimise the global temperature rise.

PM Chinh went on to propose a new vision, a new mindset, fresh determination, and drastic actions to be made to secure green development and net zero emissions, while energy transition should be accelerated with people put at the centre, thereby serving as the main stakeholder to ensure no one is left behind.

He also asked that developed countries and international organizations assist developing and underdeveloped ones with green technology, green finance, green management, training of green human resources, and development of the renewable energy industry and smart grid networks.

The Government leader suggested building new-generation partnerships and stepping up the mobilization of green climate finance via the public - private partnership format.

He assessed that developed countries and international partners should double finance for adaptation activities by 2025, put the Loss and Damage Fund into operation at the coming 28th UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) in line with commitments to help developing and underdeveloped countries settle climate change consequences. This should be done alongside continuing to make comprehensive reforms of the global financial system in order to boost the green finance supplying capacity and help the world to better respond to major climate challenges.

Vietnam is one of 30 countries who submitted the nationally determined contributions (NDC) plans and also one of the three first developing nations joining the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP). It is also working alongside international partners to draft a resource mobilisation plan which will be announced at COP28 in the hope of turning the partnership into a model helping to promote just energy transition worldwide, PM Chinh went on.

He affirmed that the country is determined to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and, through adequate support offered by the international community, reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by 43.5% by 2030 and raise the rate of renewable energy to over 70% by 2050.

Speaking at the UN High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response, PM Chinh pointed out the highly-serious consequences of the pandemic, appealing to the international community to take actions to ensure that future generations will not suffer from the scourge of pandemics.

He said that international co-operation and solidarity in both bilateral and multilateral terms play the decisive role in improving epidemic prevention and response capacity, particularly in developing countries.

He asked for the timely and equal access to vaccines to be made a priority, along with treatment capacity, public awareness, technology transfer, vaccine and medicine production capacity, and effective financial support for developing and underdeveloped nations.

It can be viewed as imperative to focus on improving the capacity of grassroots and preventive health care, considering this to be an urgent task of each country and international co-operation, as well as promoting multilateralism, global solidarity, universal solidarity, and all countries’ efforts in epidemic prevention, the PM remarked.
         
Hailing Vietnamese efforts in uniting with the international community in order to share information and experience in a timely and effective manner to cope with epidemics, the Government leader stressed Vietnamese support for appealing to the international community to list global health security as a priority. This is being done so as to swiftly prevent, prepare for, and effectively respond to potential epidemics.

He also underlined the need to be caring and protecting people’s health to achieve sustainable development and leave no one behind, with this being given the top priority.

On this occasion, PM Chinh greatly valued and thanked countries and international organisations, including the World Health Organisation, for their effective co-operation and assistance offered to Vietnam, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The meeting approved by consensus a political declaration on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. It decided to hold another UN high-level meeting on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response in 2026 to comprehensively review the declaration implementation.

The convening of this meeting was an initiative of the nation in co-ordination with several other key countries. It was proposed and approved by the UN General Assembly in September, 2022, with a view to devising effective solutions to national, regional, and global-level shortcomings in preparing for, preventing, detecting, and responding to health emergencies.

Vietnam proposed the selection of December 27 as the International Day of Epidemic Preparedness, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2020.