The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) has approved a project worth US$3.74 million to upgrade infrastructure for climate change adaptation in northern mountainous provinces.

Of this, $3.4 million comes from nonrefundable ODA of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) through the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The project, implemented in 15 northern mountainous provinces, aims to extend effective applications in adapting to climate change, and support the building of appropriate policy frameworks to enhance the sustainable development in the localities.

Its main activities focus on sharing experiences in climate change adaptation, defining the demand of personnel training to improve the adaptation capacity of climate change in the investment in rural infrastructure and planning at district and provincial levels, as well as building infrastructure models with low cost and based on the localities’ available resources to reduce impacts of climate change.

The project is scheduled to complete by 2015.