* overview of poverty in Vietnam and how it plays into inequality
* generally, poverty decreased (dramatically) in Vietnam (90s-2010)
* but factors still relatively similar:
* low education and skills,
* dependency on subsistence agriculture,
* physical and social isolation
* specific disadvantages linked to ethnic identity
* exposure to natural disasters and risks
* "future growth in agricultural livelihoods is also threatened by risks and vulnerabilities such as [...] natural disasters, climate change, and environmental degradation" [180]
* poor households remain in precarious situation to economy-wide shocks (e.g. effects of climate change on rainfall and temperatures)
* but also many households remain vulnerable to *falling* into poverty through these exogenous shock events
* (reactionary) mitigation efforts towards these shocks: reduced healthcare spending, selling of land/livestock assets, taking children out of school often in turn lead to longer term adverse consequences
* looking at adaptation through gendered dimensions
* differentiated rights/responsibilities male/female leading to unequal opportunities
* females increased immobility, thus increased vulnerability to climate impacts and reduced capacity to adapt
* at same time, farming livelihoods become increasingly feminized (due to urbanization and devaluation of farming)
* the gender dimension is harder to counteract through usual technical solutions, may lead to exacerbation of both within-group/between-group inequalities
* historically, tying flood resilience of river deltas to institutional/infrastructural interventions, runs danger of unforeseen consequences ('ripple effects'):
* biodiversity and accelerated land subsidence [collapse]
* endangering fertile characteristics that made them interesting locations in the first place
* resilience measures thus at risk of amploifying unequal power relations
* potentially have differential effects on people's mobility under flood conditions
* some groups better protected than others (water accumulation in specific areas)
* driven by existing power structures, thus necessary to as if they exacerbate existing power inequalities
* analyze adaptation by ethnic minorities (Tay, Dao, Hmong) in Northern Mountainous Region (NMR):
* poorest area of Vietnam
* gender, age, ethnicity, poverty, location often provided considerable barriers to adaptation
* locally-employed coping strategies conditional on strength and foresight of institutions and policies on loca, regional, central levels (i.e. especially preventative measures)
* local knowledge and social capital can ease pressures but policy failures more typically led to mal-adaptation and welfare dependence
* necessary to increase quality, focus of and access to government resources to enhance community adaptation possibilities
* risks:
* drought - (rice) yield losses between 50% and 100% depending on proximity of fields to water sources
* impact also depends on access to non-farm incomes sources
* effects poverty and hunger/malnutrition (especially among children)
* taking children out of school to help family survival (financial & food)
* flood
* directly/indirectly (land slides) damage to residential structures
* even more important than property damage was livelihood disruption
* crop destruction, landslide cause, rice field inundation, overflowing fish ponds
* additionally social problems like health risks through water contamination and malnutrition (crop failure)
* cold snaps
* loss of livestock
* impact depending on biophysical location (higher altitudes hit more intensely)
* ethnicity and farming practices (free-range grazing hit more heavily)
* government should shift from crisis management to risk management, focus on building more adaptive capacity
* social inequalities lead to flood resilience inequalities across social groups
* analyzes self-stated flood recovery responses in Central Vietnam (Thua Thien-Hue province), mainly in gender dimension:
* set of relevant variables similar across genders: age, social capital, internal and external support after flood, perceived severity of previous flood impacts, perception of stress-resilience
* women generally more heavily affected by flooding with longer recovery times
* psychological variables can influence recovery rates more than adverse flood impacts (thus should be considered in post-flood support programs)
* farmers' lack of trust of formal climate-related services
* farmers' lack of perceived risk from climate change
* difficulties in balancing climate adaptation and economic benefits of new interventions
* ethnicity itself not a barrier since all farmers look for climate information through informal channels (friends, neighbors, market actors) instead of formal channels (agricultural departments, television, radio)
* but cultural issues such as language *were* barrier
