Climate-resilient agriculture driven by trade

On May 7 in Ha Noi, the Department of Climate Change under the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment, in collaboration with the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), organized a workshop titled “Enhancing Climate Change Adaptation through Trade Policy.” The event brought together scientists, economists, and policymakers.

Pressure on the agricultural sector

Speaking at the workshop, Ms. Mai Kim Lien, Deputy Director General of the Department of Climate Change, stated that the impacts of climate change on trade activities have become increasingly evident in recent years, ranging from disruptions to supply chains and agricultural losses caused by natural disasters to rising transportation, production, and packaging costs.

According to the 2022 World Trade Report by the World Trade Organization (WTO), climate change could disrupt maritime shipping routes, which account for up to 80% of global trade volume. At the same time, it negatively affects agricultural output and export goods from vulnerable economies, increasing costs and risks in international trade.

According to Dr. Nguyen Anh Phong, Deputy Director of the Institute of Strategy and Policy on Agriculture and Environment, Vietnam currently ranks fifth globally in the 2025 Climate Risk Exposure Index.

Extreme weather events such as storms, floods, and droughts not only reduce productivity but also affect the competitiveness of agricultural products in international markets. This, in turn, directly impacts trade turnover and global food security. In the context of increasingly deep international integration, trade policy is reshaping the position and cooperative relations of many countries around the world. Trade can also become an important tool to directly support the implementation of climate change adaptation measures, particularly in the agricultural sector.

“Trade policies, if adjusted appropriately, can create opportunities to access technologies, goods, and services that support climate change adaptation. Adjusting trade measures, including reducing tariffs, simplifying non-tariff barriers, and promoting technology transfer, will help strengthen the adaptive capacity of the agricultural sector, especially in developing countries like Viet Nam,” Ms. Mai Kim Lien emphasized.

Warning that climate change is no longer a distant threat, Prof. Dr. Tran Thuc, Chairman of the Viet Nam Association of Hydro-Meteorological, pointed to a range of clear manifestations, including continuously rising temperatures in recent years, extreme weather events repeatedly surpassing historical records, an increase in the number of storms above Category 12, longer heatwaves across many regions, and a decline in the number of severe cold days in northern Viet Nam.

A convergence point to overcome trade barriers

One of the workshop’s key discussions focused on the two-way relationship between trade and climate adaptation. Although Viet Nam has joined numerous free trade agreements (FTAs) with extensive tariff reduction commitments, non-tariff barriers remain a major bottleneck limiting access to adaptation technologies.

According to Prof. Dr. Tran Thuc, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures, technical barriers to trade (TBT), and new mechanisms such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) are creating significant pressure. Removing trade barriers is considered a fundamental solution for accessing adaptation technologies such as salt-tolerant crop varieties and water-saving irrigation systems. Currently, testing procedures lasting from one to three years are making it difficult for international drought-resistant crop varieties to enter the Vietnamese market.

“The agricultural sector is facing three major ‘transformations’: climate change, market fluctuations, and the shift toward green consumption trends. This requires Viet Nam to comprehensively restructure its agricultural value chains in order to maintain competitiveness in the international market,” said Dr. Nguyen Anh Phong, Deputy Director of the Institute of Strategy and Policy on Agriculture and Environment.

To realize the goal of achieving USD 100 billion in agricultural exports by 2030, Dr. Nguyen Anh Phong proposed developing a National Program on Sustainable Agricultural Trade Promotion while integrating this content into the National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy.

At the workshop, experts recommended that the Government prioritize investment in digital infrastructure and modern monitoring technologies to develop an integrated climate risk database system. In terms of trade policy, they proposed establishing a category of “climate adaptation goods” in order to implement tax exemption roadmaps and simplify administrative procedures for high-tech equipment serving agriculture.

Green trade is not only a challenge but also a key instrument for implementing the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) on climate change. If Viet Nam can take advantage of increasingly stringent environmental standards to upgrade domestic production capacity, the country could transform climate risks into opportunities to take a leading position in global agricultural value chains.

According to Tran Thi Thanh Nga, Head of the Climate Change Adaptation Division under the Department of Climate Change, by 2024 Vietnam had developed 936 climate adaptation models, including Nature-based Solutions (NbS), Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA), and Community-based Adaptation (CbA) models.

These models not only help reduce disaster risks but also significantly improve local livelihoods. For example, high-quality, low-emission rice farming models can help farmers reduce production costs by 8.2-24.2% and increase profits by an additional USD 152-289 per hectare compared to traditional farming methods.

Beyond rice cultivation, models such as FSC-certified large timber forest plantations in Tuyen Quang and agricultural ecotourism initiatives in Quang Ninh and Ha Noi are also demonstrating effective approaches to diversifying incomes and strengthening community resilience.