A statistic shows that if natural disasters in 2024 cause damage of about 0.4% of GDP, in 2025, the estimated damage is about 2% of GDP.
The damage is not related to the increase in the number of deaths due to natural disasters, or the figure of 85,000 billion VND recently released by the Department of Dyke Management and Natural Disaster Prevention and Control, but also the story of accumulating resources for reconstruction after natural disasters, leading to the risk of slow growth.
According to the World Bank, each dong invested in early warning can help reduce 4 to 10 dong of economic damage. Investing in a national early warning system, from flash flood zoning maps, automatic warning stations, real-time data, to infrastructure for communication to people, it is certainly not enough to cover the GDP of an entire province.
International experts have warned: Due to increasingly complex natural disasters, Vietnam's economy could suffer losses of up to 5% of GDP by 2030. Therefore, it is not a matter of "should I do it or not", but must be done immediately, done quickly, seriously and resolutely.
Early warning of natural disasters needs to be understood in its true sense: Not only meteorological forecasting but comprehensive disaster risk management. These are the detailed risk map preparation to the commune and village levels; strict control of the construction and leveling of steep slopes; arrange and relocate residents from flash flood areas; invest in dykes, reservoirs, and automatic rain gauge stations; upgrade the multi-channel information system for people to receive warnings within a few minutes.
Conclusion 213-KL/TW requires increased investment in basic research on types of natural disasters, building scientific facilities and advanced forecast models; modernizing multi-layered monitoring and monitoring systems, promoting the application of remote technology, satellite images, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), artificial intelligence (AI) models and computer science to analyze big data in forecasting, warning, monitoring, monitoring, and risk management of natural disasters.
This is a timely direction, both timely and long-term. Investing in an early warning system is not an expense, but a mandatory savings for the future. Every day of delay is a day we accept that the next floods and storms will overthrow economic recovery efforts and break down families struggling to rebuild.
The important thing is not to let the number of deaths and damage caused by natural disasters increase after each storm and each flood as what has happened.
