ABSTRACT
Not all of us really care about climate change until it takes its heavy toll on our
very lives. I was one of those who did not.
Time has passed. I came to realize its real consequences when I witnessed
changing weather patterns bringing harship to the lives of millions of farmers in
my country, tough droughts posing threats to people’s health, catastrophic floods
making the dream of going to schools of poverty – stricken children more
abstract, high temperature seizing the plain pleasure of my grandmother.
Time has passed. I also came to realize that we youth can address the problem
with our bold and collaborative initiatives. Becoming green entrepreneurs is one
of such initiatives, by doing the job of green distributors, running recycling plants
or building clean “traditional shopping mall” for street vendors. In order to support
all these activities, what needed is creating a strong network allowing young
activists to share their knowledge and concerns, to voice their green ideas and
receive support to put them into practice, to encourage people to protect the
environment and to meet like-minded youngsters who are making daily efforts to
contribute to the changes that we all wish to see.
Time is passing. No excuse is therefore available for indecisiveness. Dealing with
climate change is a huge task but with clear objectives and a team attitude, we
will make it achievable.
WHAT TIME HAS SHOWED ME
When I was 10, I read an article about the meltdown of icebergs and glaciers in
the North Pole and thought that the so-called global warming was so distant and
somehow the imaginary product of over-anxious scientists. When I was 13, I saw
on the news the image of a woman in Mozambique giving birth in a treetop
surrounded by raging floodwaters. This image has haunted me since and I knew
that climate change and its consequences were real, however, I thought that it
was something only NGOs and the governments had the responsibilities and
capabilities to cope with. I am now 22, and when I am writing these few
paragraphs, exceptional droughts are reported in the United States, Australia,
Spain and my country Vietnam, among other locations. Time has passed. I came

to realize that the adverse impacts of climate change have become more obvious
and irreversible, sweeping through every single nation. My homeland is no
exception. Time has passed. I also came to realize that there is no person or
organization alone responsible for and able to address the problem. Everyone
has their parts to play in the whole solving process, including me and my peers.
My country has a tropical monsoon climate and floods are part of its normal
weather cycle. For generations, the Vietnamese in vulnerable areas are used to
living with typhoons and floods. However, typhoons have recently increased both
in frequency and intensity, making lives even harder. In November last year, the
worst floods hit Vietnam in 25 years. Heavy rainfalls lasting for two weeks turned
streets into rivers and breached dykes, triggering fatal flooding and making many
homeless. Some of them were still in the recovery process of their first houses.
After the peak flood had passed, what left behind were collapsed buildings,
snapped trees and saline lands which take year to be agriculturally productive
again. What’s worse is that flooding tends to last longer and to enlarge its areas
of destruction. Not only the most traditionally vulnerable region has it effected,
such as Quang Tri in the North but also places which once were natural disaster
– free, like Ben Tre in the South.
Not far away from the tragedies in these two provinces, Ninh Thuan saw its
toughest drought ever. Drought seems to capture the media’s attention much
less than floods although its aftermath is equally painful. The loss of forests,
grassfields and livestock brings hardship to the lives of countless farmers. Sadly
enough, this is just the beginning as the annual average temperature of Vietnam
will increase by about 0.1 degrees centigrade per decade.
Floods and droughts are just two among a number of extreme weather events
due to climate change. My aunt who is a farmer in the less wealthy town of
Quang Ngai in central Vietnam has witnessed the fast changing weather
patterns. The flooding season normally begins in October or so and storms never
arrive as early as April or May. Therefore, during these two months, her husband
often goes fishing offshore. The rest of the time they both do farming and this is

how they manage to earn their livelihoods. However, in the last two years, their
town started experiencing storms in April which adversely affected their fisheries.
Their crops were severely damaged either. The rice seedlings died by early
flooding and their fruits harvested in hotter dry spells were so poor in quality that
they had to feed them to the pigs.
My aunt as well as numerous farmers do not know how to react to this
abnormalities of the weather. They have firmly relied on ancient knowledge to
predict the weather and plan their cultivation activities. Traditional weather
forecasting methods, in the form of oral proverbs, have been passed down for
generations. Below is an example:
“con ech keu lam diec tai
Mua thoi sap sua chang sai ti nao”
"When the frog is croaking, rain comes".
Due to intensive farming practices and the exessive use of chemical fertilizers of
farmers in response to the change of weather patterns, the number of frogs have
been reduced remarkably. It appears to us that we are losing a source of weather
forecasting. We used the behaviour of animals like buffalo, birds or insects to get
a sense of what the weather would be like for the coming days, but many of them
have changed character to adapt to the new climate conditions. This has made
weather forecasting difficult. Comparing the current situation with our traditional
knowledge about weather, we are frustratedly aware of a deviation in the weather
patterns.
Unquestionably, climate change has negative impacts on nearly all sectors of the
country’s economy from aquiculture to forestry to fisheries. Nevertheless, it is no
longer just an environmental and economic issue but a humanitarian catastrophe
in terms of its risks to humans’ health. It affects our health directly, through heat
waves and droughts, and indirectly by increasing the occurrences of malaria,
cholera, equine encephalitis,… I am still deeply moved when I think of the
dengue fever outbreaks in 2006 which killed 77800 people. Because the
environment in the majority parts of Vietnam is polluted, it is easier for infectious

diseases to spread.
In many villages women are hit the hardest by natural disasters. They often
cannot swim, have fewer assets to turn to for alternative livelihoods when yields
are poor, and have fewer job opportunities away from home. Apart from women,
children is one of the most vulnerable groups in society. A great number of
children in Vietnam were born and bred in families which survive on less than $2
USD per day. Fundamental necessities of life simply outweigh the need for going
to school. A good education is a thing that they just dream of. Disastrous effects
of climate change even make that dream more abstract since when a major
catastrophe takes its economic toll, naturally these children must leave schools
for work. As far as I know, drop-out rates in the countryside during flood season
is always high. In addition, children going to school by ferries or boats on a
regular basis is hardly a new concept in Vietnam, a country with massive
waterway systems. This means of transport means access to schools very
inconvenient and dangerous, particularly in the rain season when rivers have a
tendency to overflow embankments.
In 2006, in a voluntary campaign, my classmates and I went to Ben Tre to help
children there renovate their school. Little Luyen, an eight-year-old girl told me:
“I can still hear the loud roar that came before the crashing dark waters from the
rivers disrupted our class. When we heard someone shout:
- The water’s running!
we grabbed our books as quickly as we could and rushed for the door. By the
time we reached the nearby hillock, everything had been submerged by
floodwater. I was worried about my family members who might be caught too far
to run to a safe place as I had, but there was nothing I could do. I simply
beseeched God to keep them safe and waited for the storm to end…”
In the early days we spent most of our time scooping water and sweeping
garbage from the classrooms. When I went outside to look up at the sky, it had
turned to a clear one with white clouds. I hardly believe it was the same sky that
only a few hours earlier had spewed out such suffocating terror. It was almost as

though the typhoon had never happened but I knew from the wet and rubbish-
filled classrooms and the frightened faces of the pupils that it had indeed been
quite real. The peaceful river they travel every day now becomes a horrifying
beast which may take away from them anything. The pleasant weather they are
familiar to living with, since their ancestors’ time, now has become hard to
predict. Everyday is a struggle with the anger of Mother Nature who used to live
in harmony with us for thousands of years. Definitely, climate change has
effected our lives physically and mentally.
I myself suffered from this. My hometown is the land of cherry trees thank for its
temperate climate. To make a living, my grandmother grows cherry trees which
are probably her most precious property after family. Every year, when the cherry
trees come alive in their explosion of pink, we all know it is time for us to
celebrate our Lunar New Year, or Tet as we usually call, which often falls some
time between the end of January and the middle of February. Flourishing cherry
blossoms not only earn money for growers since each family will buy one cherry
tree to decorate their houses during Tet, but also bring joy to every mind. For the
Vietnamese, so much of the Tet could be missed without cherry blossoms.
However, last year, the cherry trees blossomed early, around two weeks prior to
Tet. When Tet officially came we saw only lonely stalks standing quietly in our
garden. The reason was that the temperature was so high that pushed the cherry
blossoms to be at their astonishing best in early January. This spring, it was even
hotter and we saw cherry blossoms everywhere one month before Tet arrived.
My grandmother was effected economically as people had to buy artificial flowers
instead, however, more importantly, this fact hurted her badly. Her life is side by
side with cherry tree which is one of many things in the natural world that helped
her notice the arrival of each season. Today there are no such signs. When I try
to compare my childhood memories with the present climate in my hometown, I
admit that things have changed, gradually but steadily.
Social indicators have improved in recent years as an effort of Vietnam to meet
its Millennium Development Goals, however, millions of poor people may be

dragged back into poverty. They may neither know what the term El Niño/La Niña
is about nor how the green house effect works but they do know that climate
change of various magnitudes are having impacts on their very lives. Never have
they gone shopping for a luxurious car whose exhausts contain a range of toxic
substances but they have to bear the brunt of the imminent dangers caused by
their more affluent social beings. I sadly realize that it is the underprevileged that
are hit most by climate change, especially rural dwellers as their economies are
linked closely with climate-sensitive resources.
This is a very true picture of my country today, a developing one with nearly half
or its population living under the poverty line and on the front line of climate
change. This picture is very different from that of 50 years ago when floods were
not so frequent, the summer was not so hot and the northern delta had four
distinctive seasons. Likewise, if things stay the way they are now, this picture will
change dramatically 50 years from now, certainly in a negative manner. Sea
levels are expected to rise by 33 cm by 2050, which would affect the low-lying
two biggest rice producing regions of the country the worst. Then Vietnam, the
world second largest rice exporter will lose its position on the market.
Additionally, the coastal plains will sink by nearly a meter, including many major
cities. Even this year Ho Chi Minh City was flooded during high tides. That
sounds like a nightmare to me, imagining that our cities could become islands in
the future.
Whether this future is real or not primarily depends on the youth of today.
Because we young people are the now and the future so our opinions matter
most. To deal with this kind of issue, youth have their bold and collaborative
initiatives, say to cut greenhouse gas emissions include phasing out coal plants,
developing efficient public transport systems; to encourage people taking action
in their homes; to promote vegetarianism; a few just to mention. The rapidly
growing ‘green economy’ is one such initiative which not only helps the
producers to cut costs and build brand name and goodwill among their
customers but it is also a step towards creating a sustainable environment for

happy living.
To socialize the use of wind – mills, solar panels, bio-diesel in Vietnam seems to
be a hard task due to the lack of capital and experts. In the future, with the
economic surge and the investment from the First World, these fields will take off.
However, until that period, there is no time to waste. Vietnam is a developing
country and it would be impossible to halt or delay economic development but in
the meantime, we can protect the environment in the resources available. Hence
in intermediate and short term, there are many things that young people can do
to lessen the tension. The opportunities for them to become green entrepreneurs
are around every corner.
First of all, they can choose to become green distributors. Two stories told me
that my country needs these professionals badly.
The first story is about rice husks which, after bagasse, are probably the largest
source of biomass generated by farming activities. There are no efforts in the
collection of this biomass for use as an energy source. They are sometimes
transported by junks, boats or barges to be poured into rivers or the ocean,
leaving a disposal problem.
Taking advantage of the lower cost of this widely available bio-fuel resource, a
small process company started using it as a fuel in their steam boilers. It saves
90% more energy than using oil fired steam boilers and 60% in comparision with
charcoal ones. Rice husks are totally burned so the ashes are negligible, around
3% of the input of energy. This, on the one hand, led to the sustainable use of
rice husks, which was once a disposal problem, and on the other, enabled the
process industries to meet their energy needs in a more cost-effective manner. In
some provinces of the Mekong Delta, existing oil-fired process steam boilers
have been replaced with rice husk-based process steam boilers. How about
hundreds of factories around the country who have no idea of this
environmentally friendly products or are aware of its existence but have difficulty
accessing the supply?
The second story is about ethnic minorities in Vietnam who consume wood for

household cooking. The practice of cutting trees for firewood is a long-term
liability for the country as a whole. Meanwhile the dependent agrarian population
living in less remote areas use coal. Such practices are harmful as the firewood
or charcoal are the worst climate offenders.
The clue for their problems lies in biogas, a renewable power source relying on
nothing more than dung for its operation. In order to utilize manure from their
cattle to make biogas, farmers need to build biodigesters which are tanks that
process the muck to produce biogas. Once biogas units are installed, farmers
can obtain a free power supply, produce enough power without using a single
piece of wood.
A large number of farmers in Ha Tay, Phu Tho and Ho Chi Minh city have
installed biogas units on their farms. Its development, nonetheless, work in
isolation, poor systems being used, poor maintenance of equipment and bad
project choice, only a small proportion of the total alternative energy units
installed functioned properly. How can the circumstance be improved?
As a matter of fact, Vietnam has enough eco-products, many of them have been
imported while others, chiefly user-friendly ones, have been invented by the
Vietnamese themselves. The supply is pretty profuse indeed. The only barrier is
that such goods cannot reach a large proportion of the population. How can you
buy a product without knowing of it? So the role of green distributors is to make
sure that green brands are visible, accessible and relevant to targeted
consumer segments. Once the distribution channels of these products are
extended, cleaner energy solutions may come in sizes that every province could
afford because the problem is really not localized.
In concrete, we will buy rice husks of farmers and sell to plants whick work in the
process industries, like food processing, paper manufacturing, cattle – feed
producing, etc. Similarly, we will distribute used sand to make block bricks;
compact fluorescent bulbs and other eco-products. At the same time, we will
offer marketing support to help producers penetrate new markets as well as raise
market shares. We also give them feed-back from consumers so that they can

enhance the quality of their products. In the case of biogas, in order to improve
the success rate of these units, we will co-ordinating their development on a
national level, setting up demonstration units to help spread information about
them, restoring abandoned units and training users to operate and maintain
them.
The prize is enormous. First of all, it will results in a reduction in emissions of
pollutants associated with the use of fossil fuels, thereby improving local
environmental conditions. Secondly, it will generate employments for local labors.
We need local staff to give us the market intelligence, to distribute goods, to
transport rice husks. One bonus of using a biogas unit is that women and
children, freed from the daily drudgery of fuel collection, the cleaning of smoke-
blackened utensils and the disposal of animal waste, have gained more time to
spend on various income generating activities.
Green distributing can help rural areas solve their issue of energy requirements
and waste management. How about cities? Here I came up with the second
initiative – develop recycling villages.
Being enormous consumers of energy, metropolitan areas are also immense
producers of rubbish. Every morning, outside my house stands a mountain of
garbage bags. It is astonishing to see how much we use and throw away over a
24 hour cycle. I think how great it is if we can recycle all these refuse to create
something new and wonderful. There is a plus to this thought from a business
sense. Nevertheless, recycle still sounds unfamiliar to most Vietnamese and
recycling programs have been carried out only in a handful of pilot dormitories.
We will purchase material from shops in cities and pay them a little more than
they would get if recycling for scrap. Then we transport them to villages and have
our items hand-made. Vietnam has a lot of traditional craft villages where
craftmen produce goods from their skillful hands. Now they can make gifts items
from papers or PET bottles; bookshelves or drawers from bamboo crates, for
instance. With the skills of the craftmen and wild creativity of young people, I do
believe that they will come up with great ideas for their handicraft products’

design and ranges. These products have a great story, a sustainable supply and
multiple uses so they will be easily developped into a series.
The third simple choice for youngsters in Vietnam to step into the green business
is building clean “traditional shopping malls” for street vendors who are adversely
affecting urban environment. For years they are familiar with the routine of selling
on the streets, no tax paying, having customers easily and comfortably dropping
plastic bags, papers, dirty water, leftover food everywhere.
A ban on the dumping of wastes on roads will not work as to these citizens, a
clean environment is not a priority. They need a decent income to survive in
cities. Here businesses can play a role by recruiting these vendors, then moving
them to a separate “traditional shopping mall” equipped with refuse bins, a
treatment system, connected with proper landfills and incineration plants. Not
only would this make the city a better place to live, it would also attract tourists as
traditional street vendors is somehow a feature of Vietnamsed culture. As a
result, the living standards of these street vendors can be improved.
Young green entrepreneurs can help the planet and still make a profit as they are
entering an industry that is cutting edge. Today, people are turning their eyes
toward environmental issues. More and more companies are focusing on going
Green. In the future when the concept has moved on from “nice to have” to “must
have” in Vietnam, as customers are becoming more aware and government is
imposing rules and regulations to make companies more eco-conscious, green
entrepreneurship will even more thrive.
To engage students from all walks of life to help us spread the foregoing
initiatives, what need to be done is building a strong network of young activists.
We provide ideas and resources to help students run projects and promote
practical solutions to climate change in their own communities. We will eract a
Green Exchange Center in each province which is a platform for young people to
share their knowledge and voice their concerns. I truly believe in the power of
information sharing. This is also a place where individuals and companies can list
items they do not use anymore, from clothes and scraps to chemicals to recycled

building materials. The best part is, the centre also allows youth to spark their
green ideas, and then they can contact like-minded peers to put their ideas into
practice.
The network is also responsible for educating people on environmental issues as
the consciousness of the Vietnamese is very poor. A classical case is taking care
of the trees. We did plant millions of trees in public places, namely intersections,
schools, stadiums and parks. Singapore did the same thing and it has become
the greenest city in Asia. Only a small number of our trees has survived by
contrast. The others simply did not have a chance to grow up. People climb
trees, tread on grass, pluck flowers, steal saplings , put bicycles or motorbikes in
trees and make them fall.
We realize that planting trees is not enough, we should create action teams to
improve the health of trees. We do not fullfill this task by ourselves only but
persuade everyone to involve in by increasing their awareness towards the
protection of nature. To ensure the sustainability of these solutions, we will start
with children as I believe that the children, similar to the youth, have the power to
make a change and deserve the opportunity to do so.
The first step is giving one interactive educational session per week to enrich
their knowledge of the environment. Nowadays kids know more about
cyberspace than the real surrounding world, then a field trip per month can
provide them with hands-on education of the great outdoors. Once they know
how a tree grows or how birds build their nests, I feel certain that they will fall in
love with these natural marvels. Additionally, an Environment Week per year will
be the opportunity for chidren to join eco-friendly activities like planting trees,
picking up trash, or participate in contests at schools. The children will realize
that what they are doing, maybe tiny, does matter. Through this project I expect
that with this knowledge comes love, and with love comes the incentive, children
will defend nature against the growing trend of destruction. Furthermore, from a
child, community awareness messages will pass to his or her parents.
Climate change is a problem indeed but not one without solution. As young

people, the next generation, we feel that we have the most at stake yet a power
to make changes. The task is huge but with clear objectives and a team attitude,
we will make it achievable.
Now I am 22. Time is passing. When I am 70 or so, there will be a lot of greenery
in front of my house. There will be shade for children to play in, fresh air for
people to breathe, pedestrian areas with green exchange centres, streets
crossing one another with public transport. Cherry blossoms will bloom
beautifully in gentle spring winds. The journey to that bright future is ahead. It is a
journey of thousand miles which begins by a single step. I realize it is important
that we take this step now.