(Vientiane Times) The Water Resource and Environment Administration (WREA) published its Strategy on Climate Change earlier this year, aiming to increase the capacity of Lao environmental staff to implement policy to reduce the impacts of climate change in Laos.

The publication details Laos's National Adaptation Plan of Action (NAPA), the topic of discussion at a five day workshop in Vientiane last week to raise climate change awareness, seek ways to address immediate needs, and present environmental data to more than 50 representatives from the UN's list of least developed countries.

Released last May, Laos's NAPA paper contains 45 priority projects totalling US$85 million within the four key sectors for local climate change impacts: agriculture, forestry, water resources and health.

Laos aims to engage with other countries and organisations both in the region and globally to build a strong partnership for promoting action that addresses climate change impacts.

A key purpose of the newly published strategy is to outline the government's approach to mainstreaming climate change as a core element in the 7th National Socio-Economic Development Plan from 2011-15.

In the plan, among projects at all levels of government and in business and community level activities, an overriding priority will be to promote cleaner production and build adaptation or mitigation synergy while generating environmental and socio-economic benefits.

The publication states clearly that Laos is recognised as being highly vulnerable to climate change due to its dependence on climate sensitive resources and low adaptive capacity.

The agriculture sector is given as a key example, as it is directly dependent on cultivable land and water resources that are likely to come under threat in the coming decades.

The industrial sector is also largely resource-dependent, with mining, agricultural processing, hydropower and wood processing as its main subsectors, some of which will contribute to the difficulties Laos faces in future.

Poor rural communities rely on biodiversity and natural resources for 90 percent of their diets, including non-timber forestry products in remote rural areas, so climate change poses a real and formidable threat to the economy and society at large.

A recent study on climate mapping for Southeast Asia, sponsored by the Economy and Environment Programme for South East Asia, ranked Laos as one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change in the region.

In the face of this threat, the government is determined to take early precautions and has identified a series of priority actions on mitigation to ensure low carbon emissions, the establishment of a national early warning system and environmentally sustainable transport system, improvements to sustainable energy efficiency, forestry management and conservation systems and development of detailed national research.