Totalling US$223.87 million, the Secondary Green Cities Development Project will support environmentally sustainable and inclusive development in the provincial capital cities of Ha Giang, Vinh Yen and Hue in order to enhance their economic competitiveness.
According to Eric Sidgwick, ADB Country Director for Vietnam, the ADB will help the cities to integrate green features into their urban infrastructure, such an energy efficient street lighting and nature-based embankments.
Building on ADB’s support in preparing Green City Action Plans for the three cities, it will demonstrate how the right mix of integrated urban planning and blended financing can improve liveability, resilience and economic opportunities in cities, Sidgwick added.
Aimed at promoting the development of secondary cities to contribute to the country’s socio-economic growth, the Vietnamese Government and ADB jointly selected Ha Giang, Vinh Yen and Hue as demonstration cities as they represent different socio-economic characteristics, developments constraints, and geographic locations.
While demonstrating green city development, the project, supported by grant financed technical assistance, will also help to formulate a regulatory framework for sustainable and resilient cities that will be scaled up for nationwide secondary green city development in Vietnam and pilot test disaster risk financing for Hue, Sidgwick informed.
Expected to be completed in December 2023, the project will help the three cities to improve their green and resilient urban infrastructure services and scale up climate adaptation that will benefit approximately 116,000 households, including roughly 6,100 poor and near-poor households. For all sub-projects, the Provincial People’s Committees—the executing agencies—will strengthen their institutional capacity for urban development management.
The total project investment includes US$3 million in grant financing from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and US$3 million from the Urban Climate Change Resilience Trust Fund (UCCRTF), which is supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Governments of Switzerland and the UK. In addition, the technical assistance accompanying the project is US$12.8 million, of which US$10.8 million will be financed by the GEF and US$2 million by the UCCRTF.
