Residents commute on the flooded streets of Hoang Mai District in Hanoi during historic floods last year

Vietnam ranked third among countries worst hit by extreme weather events last year, according to a climate change study released Tuesday.

Vietnam was also one of the four countries bearing the brunt of natural catastrophes from 1990 to 2008, the study said. Bangladesh, Myanmar and Honduras were the three hardest-hit, it added.

All of the ten most affected countries in this period were developing countries in the low-income or lower-middle income country group, it said. In total, 600,000 people died as a direct consequence of more than 11,000 extreme weather events with losses put at US$1.7 trillion, it added.

The so-called Global Climate Risk Index aims to gauge a country’s vulnerability to violent weather events stoked by global warming.

It is derived from a basket of factors, namely the total number of deaths from storms, floods, and other weather extremes; deaths per 100,000; losses in absolute dollar terms; and the loss in terms of a percentage of a country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Now or never

The ongoing United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009 (COP15), will not succeed if sufficient funds and technologies are not transferred to developing countries like Vietnam, which are least responsible for climate change but suffer the worst from it, experts concurred.

“Vietnam stands to lose a lot if international consensus and cooperation is not agreed upon and implemented quickly at COP15,” said Jesper Morch, the UN Resident Coordinator in Vietnam.

“It is important that Vietnam plays a very active role in international climate diplomacy, in order to ensure a just and effective agreement is reached,” he told Thanh Nien Weekly.

François Gemenne, a researcher at the Paris-based Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations, acknowledged that Vietnam should hope that sufficient funding is pledged and transferred to the most vulnerable countries.

But how this money will be managed, and how it will be allocated are also important issues, he said.

“For now, there are no clear vulnerability criteria: hopefully there will be an agreement in the conference as well on the way the money should be allocated, to make sure that commitments are not empty pledges.”

Morch said that that although an agreement reached in Copenhagen might only be a framework, the agreement could establish clarity on a number of points.

“These include emission-reduction targets for industrialized countries; an adaptation framework, with actions mainly in developing countries; financing for adaptation and greenhouse gas mitigation; and the governance structure needed under the new convention.”

Both Morch and Gemenne concurred that industrialized countries bear most of the responsibility for this, and thus should be the main providers of the financial support to the developing world that suffers many of the consequences.

“A major part of the new and additional finance that is expected to be agreed in Copenhagen must be for adaptation to climate change effects. The funds will come from developed countries and adaptation actions will mainly be in countries that are particularly vulnerable to climate change,” Morch said.

Reported by An Dien