Climate Change and Development in Vietnam: Agriculture and Adaptation for the Mekong Delta Region.
With its 3,260 km coastline and highly varied geography, Vietnam will be greatly affected by climate change in the coming decades. Research has shown that poverty and lack of capacity to address climate change and variability will increase the risk of disaster to the Vietnamese population. This vulnerability will affect a wide range of sectors and regions in the country. Many of the measures currently undertaken to prepare communities for climate-related disasters will enhance Vietnam’s adaptive capacity to climate change. This paper provides a brief overview of the development of Vietnam’s agriculture sector in the Mekong Regions. It also examines past responses to climate and policy changes pre-1950, from 1950 to the present, and how climate change will affect agriculture in the next 20-25 years. It will examine some of the possible adaptation options and the benefits, costs, and tradeoffs involved with each option. The paper should be used as a point of discussion, and will hopefully spark further analysis on adaptation to climate change for Vietnam’s agriculture sector.
With its 3,260 km coastline and highly varied geography, Vietnam will be greatly affected by climate change in the coming decades. Research has shown that poverty and lack of capacity to address climate change and variability will increase the risk of disaster to the Vietnamese population. This vulnerability will affect a wide range of sectors and regions in the country. Many of the measures currently undertaken to prepare communities for climate-related disasters will enhance Vietnam’s adaptive capacity to climate change. This paper provides a brief overview of the development of Vietnam’s agriculture sector in the Mekong Regions. It also examines past responses to climate and policy changes pre-1950, from 1950 to the present, and how climate change will affect agriculture in the next 20-25 years. It will examine some of the possible adaptation options and the benefits, costs, and tradeoffs involved with each option. The paper should be used as a point of discussion, and will hopefully spark further analysis on adaptation to climate change for Vietnam’s agriculture sector.
