World Bank approves $90 mln credit for Vietnam’s climate change agenda A file photo shows a flooded street after a heavy rain in the northern province of Quang Ninh. Photo: Pham Hai Sam/Thanh Nien The World Bank has approved a loan of $90 million to Vietnam, helping it strengthen its climate change and green growth agenda, according to the bank’s statement released Friday. This is the first in a series of three credits that will support climate change and green growth policy actions under the Vietnamese government’s Support Program to Respond to Climate Change, led by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. The credit will fund the implementation of policies to improve integrated coastal zone planning and management, public investments related to climate change and green growth, protection of water resources and greater water use efficiency, as well as coastal forest development. It also supports policies in transportation and industrial production that will improve air quality, and in energy efficiency and renewables that will mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. “Fostering climate change adaptation and mitigation and enhancing resilience is important to Vietnam and the sustainability of its development,” says Achim Fock, Acting Country Director for the World Bank in Vietnam. “Supporting this agenda in Vietnam is part of our global effort to respond to climate change, a priority at the World Bank.” Such policy actions will help Vietnam prepare to implement commitments made ahead of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference organized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Funding for the operation comes from the International Development Association of the World Bank, which lends money on concessional terms for the world’s poorest countries. By Ngan Anh, Thanh Nien News