VietNamNet Bridge - Salt farmers working in a field in the
central coastal region. Scientists say that today’s severe and unpredictable
storms have significantly impeded traditional salt harvests.

A close-up look at losses and damages to shrimp and salt
farmers in Ha Tinh and Ca Mau provinces aims to persuade international donors
for a national program in response to climate change.

Unpredictable storms have been murder on Tran Van Tinh’s
shrimp crop, literally.

“In the last five years, shrimp yields have become about 30
percent lower. In 2007, storms came very late, so most of the shrimp in my pond
died, even though it was almost harvest time,” said the 28-year-old farmer of
Thach Bang Commune in Ha Tinh Province’s Loc Ha District said.

Salt farming [a traditional practice of pumping seawater
into enclosed fields for natural evaporation] has also been hit hard by
changing weather patterns.

Le Thi Van, a salt farmer in Loc Ha, said floods have shortened
the harvest season from around seven months to around four over the past five
years.

She’s spent a lot of money trying to upgrade her salt
fields.

“My family usually repairs and refurbishes the field once
every two to three years,” she told researchers. “Recently, we’ve had to do it
every year due to rapid degradation. This year we spent VND2 million (US$103)
on upgrades alone.”

Tinh and Van are among farmers in the coastal region whose
livelihoods have been affected by the climate change. Vietnam, which
has more than 3,000 kilometers of coastline, is expected to suffer some of the
most severe and immediate economic consequences of those changes.

Last week ActionAid Vietnam— the local chapter of a
South Africa-based non-governmental organization— released a report on the toll
shifting weather patterns are taking on poor Vietnamese communities.

The researchers focused on farmers in Ca Mau Province in the
Mekong Delta and the north-central province
of Ha Tinh.

The study, entitled “Losses and Damages: Research on climate
impacts on poor communities in Vietnam
and their responses,” was co-authored by the Center for Natural Resources and
Environmental Studies at the Vietnam National University-Hanoi.

No farmer interviewed in the report could explain why
excessive and unseasonable rains caused heavy damage to shrimp farming.

The researchers, however, say that the farming is a delicate
balance. According to the report, shrimp thrive in brackish waters – with
salinity levels between 12 percent to 25 percent. Too much or too little fresh
water can throw these ratios off, leading to shock, slow growth or death, the
researchers said.

Many respondents also
complained that unusually severe storms had burst pond banks killing whole
crops. Researchers found that rising sea levels have lead to disastrous
saltwater intrusion in ponds near coastal regions.

Farmers in Ca Mau Province’s Lam Hai Commune have been very
worried about rains in the last few years. “In 2009, for example, rains were
heavier and lasted longer than usual, leading to a decline in output and a
two-third drop in their income,” according to the study.

In troubled waters

Truong Quoc Can, cooking rights coordinator for ActionAid Vietnam, said
that in Ha Tinh’s Loc Ha District heavy and irregular storms cut into salt and
crop yields.

“Losses and damages to salt-producing households in Loc Ha
have forced many people, especially women, to abandon their salt fields and
migrate to other places in search of work,” he told Thanh Nien Weekly via
email. “Climate change has serious consequences for disadvantaged groups,
including the elderly, women, children and poor households because they don’t
have the financial and working capacity to recover and reinvest.”

According to the study, Vietnam’s average temperature,
rainfall and sea levels have all risen over the course of the past five
decades.

The average temperature in Vietnam rose about 0.5 to 0.7
degrees Celsius, and the sea level has risen about 20 centimeters during
1958-2007, the researchers found.

Climate change has increased the severity of seasonal
typhoons, floods and droughts, the team said.

The report authors expressed concern that a rise in sea
level will significantly affect the low-lying Mekong Delta in general and Ca
Mau in particular, which could be almost completely inundated with seawater
during certain parts of the year. According to the report’s authors, Ca Mau
Province has one of the longest coastlines in the country.

The report cited Ca Mau’s Office of Flood Prevention and
Mitigation as saying that the province is addled by dozens of serious erosion
points and that “people and property could slip into the sea or river at any
time.”

According to the World Bank, a one-meter rise in the sea
level would affect ten percent of Vietnam’s
population, while a rise of three meters would affect 25 percent of its
population as well as 12 percent of its land area and 17 percent of its
agriculture, mostly in the Mekong and Red River
deltas.

Who’s responsible?

ActionAid’s Can said the study aims to move the issue of
compensation for losses and damages for climate-affected communities to the
political fore.

“On an international level, ActionAid believes that
countries with developed industry, who cause pollution, are responsible for
offering financial support to developing countries – victims of climate change
– to help them cope with the issue,” he said. “On a national level, the
[Vietnamese] government is responsible for applying related policies and
programs.”

He added that the organization hopes to produce a case study
on the issue and develop a series of adaptive strategies for affected states.

He acknowledged the recent actions that local authorities
have taken to cope with climate change but insisted that a more active,
community-based strategy would be needed to effectively improve people’s
awareness of the issue.

Can further described the majority of the adaptive measures
being taken by rural residents as “passive.”

“[The current strategies] focus more on coping with natural
disasters rather than actively adapting,” he said.

Effective coping methods will require a fundamental shift in
the daily rhythms of affected farmers – like changing the timing of crop
harvests or developing a secondary source of income, he said.

Can suggested that shrimp farmers in Ca Mau’s Nam Can
District may want to consider breeding crabs and planting vegetables to prevent
the possibility of total crop failure in the event of a natural disaster.

Source: Thanh
Nien