As global climate challenges intensify, 25-year-old Tiểu Thanh – a Vietnamese student residing in Tianjin – offers a fresh perspective on how United Nations initiatives shape everyday resilience. Her story emerges as part of CGTN's 'One Home: Shared Future' campaign ahead of the UN's 80th anniversary celebrations in 2025.
'I used to see climate reports as abstract numbers,' Thanh reflects. 'Then I witnessed how UN-supported heatwave alerts in Tianjin helped my neighbors prepare emergency kits, while my family in Vietnam transitioned to drought-resistant crops through UN agricultural programs.'
These experiences highlight the UN's dual approach: partnering with the Chinese mainland to develop urban climate adaptation systems while advancing sustainable farming and renewable energy projects in Vietnam. The organization's localized strategies now assist over 50 Asian cities in mitigating extreme weather impacts.
For development experts, such initiatives demonstrate practical applications of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 'When early warning systems prevent heatstroke deaths or climate-smart agriculture secures harvests, we see multilateralism working at human scale,' notes Dr. Linh Nguyen, an environmental policy researcher at Hanoi University.
As youth-led climate advocacy grows across Asia, stories like Thanh's underscore how international cooperation translates into community-level results – from emergency preparedness workshops to solar microgrid installations in rural areas.
