Bilateral meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister of Viet Nam – H.E. Tran Hong Da

New York – FAO Director-General QU Dongyu met His Excellency Tran Hong Da, Deputy Prime Minister of Viet Nam, on 23 March in New York on the sidelines of the UN 2023 Water Conference.

The Deputy Prime Minister welcomed the opportunity to meet with FAO's leadership, noting the close collaboration between Viet Nam and FAO across a wide array of areas contributing to Viet Nam's agricultural development efforts. The Deputy Prime Minister noted the meeting was a timely occasion to discuss issues pertinent to water given that responding to water scarcity and ensuring the sustainable use of water resources are top priorities for Viet Nam. He added that Viet Nam is facing the impacts from a global climate crisis, including water scarcity, with the agriculture and livestock production sectors particularly affected, in addition to facing challenges around food insecurity, sustainable water resource management and energy transitions. In this respect, the Deputy Prime Minister spoke of these areas of work representing potential new pathways for collaboration with FAO as part of the Organization's work on the water-food-energy nexus.

The Director-General welcomed these new areas of potential collaboration and conveyed appreciation for Viet Nam's active participation in areas pertaining to key agricultural and sustainability issues. The Director-General further encouraged Viet Nam to increase engagement in South-South Cooperation, considering the country's experience in water management and use for rice production. The Director-General also touched on Viet Nam's potential to expand its production capacities to access new markets, including by leveraging innovative practices and technologies to help lead the country's agricultural development, as well as through Blue Transformation given Viet Nam's shrimp industry.

The Deputy Prime Minister further recognized the growing scope of FAO's line of work on the climate crisis, one that moves beyond agriculture alone and sees the transformation of agrifood systems as climate solutions. He noted how a systems-wide approach is indeed necessary to tackle the current sustainability, environmental and natural resource management emerging issues all of which have water scarcity as a common challenge that must be addressed across sectors and disciplines.

In closing, the Director-General highlighted recent FAO efforts and important platforms, such as the World Food Forum, extending an invitation to Viet Nam to participate in the upcoming forum in October this year as an opportunity to present proposals for agrifood systems transformations and outline investment opportunities and share best practices.