Vietnam Contending with Climate Change[Vietnam frente al cambio climático]

On November 10th 2025, the next conference of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30) will open at Belém (Brazil). Ten years after the ambitious Paris Accords, which seemed to have marked a turn in international cooperation on climate issues, the air has gone out of the balloon: Donald Trump's USA, the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has backpedalled on the subject, reversing its commitment, and though the EU is sticking to its objectives, many of its member states (France included) are facing intense pressure to relax, if not indeed renounce the ecological transition measures put in place. In these conditions, it may appear tricky to demand that the entire international community set rigorous decarbonization targets for themselves—particularly, developing countries which mostly (China excepted) have very low emissions by comparison with the so-called developed countries. However, if it does prove possible to keep to the transition goal at this next COP, the example of Vietnam might turn out to be very instructive for many rapidly growing countries, as is shown in this article by Hervé Conan, Patrick Criqui and Anaïs Delbosc. After reminding us of ‘the Vietnamese economic miracle' and its significant consequences in terms of energy consumption and emissions, they lay out the strategy adopted by the country's government (as part of its ‘new era' of development) to incorporate the decarbonization issue (mitigation and adaptation along lines previously negotiated at COPs) into its economic policies. They lay out the instruments envisaged, the possible economic mechanisms, the funding model and, in particular, the choice of a system for trading carbon quotas and credits that is seen as a driver of competitiveness and a way of encouraging the private sector to invest in green growth.