Five Key Lessons From Viet Nam’s National Adaptation Plan Mid-Term Evaluation

Viet Nam is extremely susceptible to the impacts of climate change. Increasing climate hazards—including sea level rise, saltwater intrusion, typhoons, and landslides—are threatening its extensive coastline, low-lying delta regions (notably the Mekong Delta in the southwest), and mountainous terrain.  

In 2025 alone, Viet Nam recorded 415 deaths or missing persons, 728 people injured, and more than 330,000 homes damaged or destroyed. The total estimated damage is over VND 91.016 trillion (USD 3,452 billion). These events threaten up to 70% of the population and an estimated economic loss of 1%–1.5% of GDP. 

To take action to reduce climate change vulnerabilities and protect Viet Nam’s people, livelihoods, and economy, the country has strategically positioned climate change adaptation (adaptation) at the core of its national development agenda. Viet Nam’s national adaptation plan (NAP) for the period 2021–2030, with a vision to 2050 constitutes the primary national framework for enhancing systemic resilience and integrating adaptation into the national strategies and plans. 

As the initial phase of the NAP concluded in 2024, a mid-term evaluation was conducted to inform the recalibration of strategic priorities for the subsequent implementation period. It also offered key insights and recommended actions for enhancing the effectiveness and equity of Viet Nam’s NAP. 

The mandatory mid-term evaluation served several critical, multifaceted functions: 

• performance stocktaking: To comprehensively review the execution status and tangible adaptation outcomes achieved during the 2021–2025 period; 
• gap analysis and course correction: To identify operational deficiencies in implementation, diagnose root causes, and formulate evidence-based corrective actions to strengthen the NAP’s effectiveness toward 2030; 
• policy alignment: To generate critical inputs for the nation’s process of reviewing and updating its nationally determined contribution (NDC), ensuring coherence between domestic adaptation policy and international climate obligations. 

Five Principal Lessons Learned 

The evaluation yielded several pivotal insights that are fundamental to the adaptive management and refinement of the NAP’s execution plan. 

1. Importance of high-level political and managerial commitment: Successful implementation of adaptation policies is directly proportional to the sustained attention and decisive commitment from government, coupled with enhanced awareness among senior managers, the private sector, and the citizenry. The lesson emphasizes the need for continuous fidelity to the government’s guidance on sustainable development to effectively mainstream these principles into the NAP’s operationalization. For example, adaptation goals were mainstreamed into the sectoral–related plan and subnational strategies, which demonstrates a high-level, strategic commitment by setting long-term goals and tasks for adaptation.  
2. Inefficiency of intersectoral governance and coordination: The multidimensional nature of adaptation necessitates robust intersectoral coordination and formalized linkages across governmental tiers (ministries, sectors, and subnational localities). Current limitations in policy harmonization and ineffective coordination structures are demonstrably contributing to sub-optimal implementation efficiency. For example, a big challenge identified is that coordination between sublocal departments in implementing monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is not truly effective, which reduces the overall unity and effectiveness of the system execution. 
3. Criticality of a functioning M&E system for adaptive management: A reliable M&E framework is indispensable for accurate progress tracking and timely policy adjustments for long-term adaptation goals. The evaluation highlighted the urgent necessity to address deficiencies in reporting and data-collection mechanisms to enhance state-level management of adaptation interventions. For example, the evaluation highlighted the need to overcome limitations in reporting and collecting information on implementation activities and in assessing the effectiveness of adaptation solutions to make appropriate and timely adjustments. 
4. The institutionalization gap in gender equality and social inclusion (GESI): While GESI considerations are affirmed as a guiding principle, practices often lack standardized, enforceable mechanisms for their effective integration. The key lesson is the transition required from aspirational commitment to the establishment of clear institutional mandates and standardized protocols to ensure tangible GESI outcomes. For example, not many national target programs, strategies, and plans issued since 2020 have successfully mainstreamed content for both climate change and GESI.  
5. Requirement for dedicated and systematic financial allocation: Despite significant governmental attention and the allocation of considerable domestic resources toward climate change adaptation, the rapidly increasing speed and intensity of climate change impacts have created a severe funding shortfall. Bridging this gap requires immediate access to and sustained support from specialized financial mechanisms, including the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. 

Strategic Focus on Gender Equality and Social Inclusion 

The evaluation of the NAP’s progress was executed through a systematic analytical framework, ensuring objective assessment against established policy and performance benchmarks. This process was conducted using five evaluation criteria: relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, and GESI.  

The integration of GESI as a distinct and non-negotiable evaluation criterion was a fundamental element of the NAP evaluation. It specifically aimed to ascertain the degree to which the NAP was meeting the diverse needs of the most vulnerable people and ecosystems. While the government has demonstrated policy intent—evidenced by the initial inclusion of three gender-related indicators within the national M&E system—the evaluation noted that the translation of this policy aspiration into consistent, institutionalized, and adequately resourced implementation across all sectors remains a significant area for enhancement. 

The GESI focus stems from the fact that climate impacts are mediated and often amplified by pre-existing structural inequalities. Marginalized populations—including women, ethnic minorities, and low-income communities—typically possess limited access to information, resources, and decision-making platforms, rendering them disproportionately vulnerable to climatic hazards. Consequently, adaptation efforts that fail to address these systemic drivers of vulnerability risk are incomplete and inequitable, thereby undermining the national goal of “leaving no one behind.” 

To bridge these gaps, Viet Nam’s NAP is inherently guided by the principle that effective and equitable adaptation must address the differential vulnerabilities experienced by various social groups. However, key findings from this evaluation showed that vulnerable groups—including women, low-income communities, and ethnic minorities—are more exposed to climate risks but don’t have enough information to access adaptation resources in their communities.

Approach for the NAP Evaluation 

 The methodology encompassed the following sequential stages: 

1. Data collection: This involved the compilation of both primary and secondary data. A key source was the annual implementation reports submitted by ministries and provincial authorities to the Department of Climate Change, and the data extracted from the online adaptation M&E platform. New data collection was sourced through targeted, in-depth interviews and consultation workshops with key implementing and oversight stakeholders, especially on GESI and M&E. 
2. Data analysis: The collected data was systematically aggregated and analyzed across the six core axes of Viet Nam’s national M&E system for the NAP, ranging from state management of climate change to resource investment and communication. Progress was assessed against the five evaluations. The analysis also tracked the implementation status of all 142 priority adaptation tasks from the NAP document and the 72 indicators specified in the national-level M&E system. 
3. Identification of gaps and causes: The analysis identified the outcomes, systematic gaps in implementation, and the causes hindering the timely and effective execution of the NAP. 
4. Formulation of recommendations: Concrete, practical, and strategic recommendations to enhance the efficacy of the NAP’s process were developed, ensuring alignment with national governance structures and Viet Nam’s international climate commitments. 

Top Three Recommended Actions for NAP Enhancement 

Based on the systemic gaps and lessons learned, the evaluation proposes three priority actions to materially enhance the effectiveness and equity of the NAP for the period 2025–2030:

1. Formally institutionalizing GESI through binding indicators and policies: The most critical action is to mandate GESI integration by developing binding policy instruments and strengthening the national M&E system to include enforceable social and gender indicators. This requires embedding accountability systems to ensure that adaptation planning and expenditure consistently address differential vulnerability and reach the most marginalized populations. 
2. Updating the M&E system to ensure effective implementation and alignment with global frameworks: A rigorous, thorough review of current national indicators will be conducted to incorporate feedback, identify difficulties, and obstacles reported by ministries, sectors, and localities during the evaluation. The core objective is to identify and adjust indicators to accurately capture the progress and effectiveness of adaptation activities across Viet Nam’s unique and evolving context. The M&E system indicators will also be reviewed and aligned with global frameworks, including the recently established global Bélem Adaptation Indicators, set by countries under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—this synchronization is essential to ensure Viet Nam’s national reporting capabilities align with its requirements. Following the formal approval of the revised M&E System by the Prime Minister, the corresponding Manual for the National M&E System Implementation will be updated, and trainings will be conducted at the central and local administrative levels. 
3. Reinforcement of interministerial and interprovincial coordination mechanisms: Structural deficiencies in coordination must be remedied by formally strengthening intersectoral governance and policy synergy across ministerial and subnational levels. This structural improvement is paramount to ensuring resource efficiency, eliminating redundancies, and guaranteeing that sectoral adaptation actions are coherent and mutually reinforcing across the entirety of the national territory. It is necessary to strengthen coordination mechanisms, complete the shared database, and build interconnected processing procedures between ministries and localities to ensure prompt support in the implementation of the adaptation activities. 

Read the full report here.