Living with floods and drought in Vietnam
January 30, 2018
Project size: Around 60 households in the central Vietnamese provinces of Ha Tinh and Quang Binh
Project goal: Assisting those in the poorest villages to adapt to climate change through, among other things, education about the origins and consequences of global warming; helping villagers find alternative incomes and afforestation
Project timeframe: 2014 to 2018
Project financing: €4 million ($5 million) from the German Environment Ministry's International Climate Initiative (IKI)
Nguyen Duc Quang has lived in Hoa Binh village in Vietnam his whole life. Along with fellow villagers, he mainly lives off fishing and rice cultivation. The sense of community in Hao Binh is strong and they help each other out, he says. But, like people all over Vietnam, the villagers are facing increasing hardship as a result of extreme weather: typhoons, droughts and floods have become the norm.
The German development agency GIZ is working with local authorities to help Vietnamese people adapt to the new reality by reducing dependence on rice cultivation, which is water-intensive, and fishing — and promoting other ways to earn a living. They're also working with villagers on planting trees to protect against strong winds, for instance. Two model villages are leading the way.
A film by Kerstin Schweizer