Climate change is impacting on rural areas of Vietnam and some solutions

Update: 19/07/2013
Climate change causes the change of the environment, sea level rise and hurricanes. Due to sea level rise and coastal currents have changed, the erosion occurs.

Sea level rise reduces the drainage of water to the sea, which makes water level in local rivers rise. Sea level rise makes the drainage of water difficult especially at high tide, which causes flooding in many areas. In 2010, rain, flood, and the storm No 9 damaged about 155,700 m3 of canals, 50,000 m3 of dikes, more than 322 large and small irrigation projects of all kinds.

Some solutions to cope with the impact of climate change on agriculture, rural areas of Vietnam

The response to the impact of climate change on agriculture and the rural sector is of decisive importance in the strategies to cope with climate change in Vietnam. To carry out the adaptation and mitigation in an effective way, we should do  the following solutions:

1.Develop programs to cope with the impact of climate change on agriculture, rural areas
Firstly, the agricultural sector needs to: Research and make plans for agricultural land, especially rice in the context of climate change. + Restructure crops, crop structure and seedling structure. + Research, select and put into production to create crop varieties and animal adaptation. + Make plans for applying advanced technology to process organic waste as fertilizer, pesticides, water use savings . Conserve and preserve local seedling varieties, establish seedling banks.

Secondly, the fishery sector should:  Research to improve raising technologies, new species and the exploitation technologies in accordance with the climate change. + Research incentive policies, develop and ensure fisheries in climate change conditions. + Build infrastructure, parking, boat mooring with  taking into account of  sea level rise and increasing temperature. + Build systems to prevent storms along the coast as well as on the islands.

Thirdly, as for irrigation, rural infrastructure, we should: + improve capacity and knowledge of science and technology in terms of planning, design and construction of irrigation works to limit the damages caused by natural disasters and climate change  + plan, upgrade and  construct  the anti-salinity, water supply and drainage. + Integrate climate change issues into plans of building  irrigation systems and building rural roads.

2. Prevention, mitigation and recovery of disaster risks

The responses to the negative impacts of climate change should be linked to: Support the development of stable settlements to move people out of the areas where are most at risk due to  sea level rise. Develop a set of criteria to identify the beneficiaries of extraordinary support of natural disasters in general and sea leve rise in particular . Establish support emergency relief funds in the communes, wards,villages, hamlets and local residents to actively cope with the risks.

3. Improving capacity to cope with climate change

Enhancing communication work in order to provide sufficient information for the people and the grassroots level of risk that may occur in the long term in areas affected by sea level rise, information on policies of the State to which the people can actively approach, prevent and recover risks due to the impact of sea level rise.

Source: Monre