INTRODUCTION
Scope of study
Subcomponent 3.5 of NMPRP-II– Safeguarding assets of communities and households aims to build the communities’ knowledge of and capacity to understand and mitigate disaster risks and to improve efforts to address risks in investment and subproject design and implementation. Through this subcomponent the project seeks to develop natural disaster mitigation plans and implement readiness exercises on annual basis for at least 60% of villages and communes covered under the project. This goal will need to be achieved by the fifth year of the project implementation in 2015.As part of the project, the study Resilient Livelihoods: Increasing the ability of communities to prevent, mitigate, and cope with extreme weather events contributes to the project’s analysis of communes’ vulnerability and enables the development of livelihood-resilience models to be introduced in project communes within the project framework. The study seeks to address the following objectives:
- Assess risks and vulnerability to natural disasters and climate change of communes targeted under the NMPRP-II and determine the specific impacts on key livelihoods in target communes;
- Analyze the existing ability of commune officials, commune facilitators of the NMPRP-I, and village staff in reducing vulnerability to climate risks;
- Develop appropriate livelihood-resilience models which increase income as well as livelihood resilience. A community handbook to guide communes to identify risks, and facilitate measures to reduce the risks to livelihoods will be developed and used for the training of commune officials, NMPRP-II commune facilitators and village staff;
- Develop a training program which can help improve capacity of all 2,366 villages in 230 target communes to ensure at least 60% of villages and communes have natural disaster mitigation plan and implement readiness exercises on annual basis.
Report
The report is comprised of 6 chapters. The first chapter provides background information including the national framework on climate change and natural disaster risk management as well as gives an overview of project area. Chapter 2 presents the methodology of the report including the construction of the Aggregate Risk Index, the procedures and content of the customized surveys and field study. Chapter 3 describes the risk assessment of project communes by looking at different aspects: identification of major climate-related hazards, vulnerability of project communes, and the aggregate risk index for all provinces under the project. Identifying the most vulnerable areas and livelihood activities, Chapter 4 develops appropriate adaptive models for project communes. The development of these models is built on an analysis of major livelihoods models in the area, and a review of good practice on adaptation and mitigation in Vietnam and countries with similar conditions. Chapter 5 describes the handbook to guide communes to identify risks and reduce the risks to their livelihoods. The handbook can be used for the training of commune officials, project facilitators and village staffs. This chapter also presents a training program and roadmap to 2015 to improve the capacity of targeted villages and communes and roll out the identified appropriate models of adaptive livelihoods. Finally, the last section summarizes the main findings of this study and proposes recommendations for future project interventions and policies to lessen the project communes’ vulnerability and improve their resilience to extreme weather events caused by disasters and climate change.
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