Climate Change Vulnerability of Rice Farmers in Vietnam (PDF)

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Climate change and livelihood vulnerability of the rice farmers Central Region of Vietnam: A case study in Nghe An province, Vietnam Phuong T. Tran a, Bien T. Vu a, Son T. Ngo a, Vien D. Tran a, a Faculty of Natural Resources and Environment, Vietnam National b Faculty of Economics and Law, Tien Giang University, Tien a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Nghe An province Vietnam Climate change Livelihood vulnerability index Beta regression 1. Introduction Climate extremes related to climate change signiﬁcantly threatened natural resources, food production, and people’s livelihoods around the world (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2014). In Asia, Vietnam is an emerging country that is extremely aﬀected by negative climatic stresses because of its distinctive topography with a long coast of approximately 3,260 km (Le et al., 2017a; Nguyen and Hens, 2019; Hoang et al., 2020; Nguyen et al., 2021; Nguyen and Leisz, 2021). Since the 1990s, climatic stresses, such as erratic rainfalls, unpredicted ﬂoods, and storms, have adversely aﬀected crop yields and productivity in Vietnam. Lately, increases in temperature, hot waves, prolonged droughts, and cold spells are the other challenges faced by the populations across the country (Le, 2018; Hoang et al., 2020; Leartlam et al., 2021; McKinley et al., 2021; Nguyen et al., 2021). This situation becomes even more severe because of climate change, which then inﬂuences food security and the livelihoods of the whole commu- nities, especially those in the rural areas. Rice is still the main staple food and the main income source of 9 million of farmers in this coun- try. Since rice is highly sensitive to the weather pattern, numerous rice ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (T.D.N. Ho). of agricultural land aﬀected, respectively. In addition, droughts and wa- Accepted 21 January 2022 This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license Environmental Challenges 7 (2022) 100460 solely depended on agriculture for their livelihoods because they lacked adaptive capacity to climate shocks. Shahzad et al. (2021) found that income, livelihood diversiﬁcation, social connection, formal education, and perception on climate change were the major factors inﬂuenc- ing the livelihoods of local people in the Punjab of Pakistan. Accord- ing to He et al. (2021), social support, irrigation rate, gender, mem- bership in a cooperative, education level, labor force, endowments, farm size, and ﬁnancial subsidies signiﬁcantly inﬂuenced the adap- tive capacity to cope with natural hazards in China. Several scientists found that climate events, age, education, gender, property, occupa- tion of the household head, household size, sources of income, ac- cess to credit, remittances, social allowances, land tenure, machine, transport vehicles, social networks, associations, and weather fore- cast information signiﬁcantly impacted household livelihoods in Viet- nam (Nguyen et al., 2021; Arouri et al., 2015; Kuntiyawichai et al., 2015; Huynh and Stringer, 2018). Besides, water supply, communica- tion, training, and other services were the other factors that signiﬁ- cantly inﬂuenced the capacity of farmers to reduce their vulnerability to climate change at the regional level in Greater Mekong Sub-region (Kuntiyawichai et al., 2015). On the other hand, gender has mixed re- sults in the literature, in which the male respondents were found to be vulnerable to climate change, whereas female respondents remained intact (Hanaoka et al., 2018); females were also found to be less vul- nerable than males (Nguyen et al., 2021), or females were found to be more vulnerable than males (Aryal et al., 2020; World Bank Group and Asian Development Bank, 2021). Most of the current literature on the livelihoods of rice households in Vietnam focused on the Mekong River Delta (Tran et al., 2020; Nguyen et al., 2020; Ho et al., 2021) and the Red River Delta (Luu et al., 2020a, 2020b; Casse et al., 2015; McElwee et al., 2017). Even though the NCC is the region most aﬀected by climatic stresses in Vietnam, little no- tice has been given to this region and there have been only a few typical studies (Nguyen and Hens, 2019; Nguyen et al., 2021; Dao et al., 2019; Nguyen et al., 2017; Huynh and Stringer, 2018; Hoang, 2019). Recently, speciﬁc vulnerable communities in the coastal areas have received more attention. However, limited case studies have been quantitatively as- sessing the vulnerability of rice communities to climate change in the coastal area of Nghe An Province (Nguyen et al., 2021; People Commit- tee of Nghe An province, 2020; Do and Tran, 2017). Towards the sus- tainable development of the agricultural sector in Nghe An Province, a thorough understanding of vulnerability assessment and possible mea- sures to cope with climate change are urgently needed, which oﬀers room for this study. Yet, some studies have just focused on assessing one climatic factor separately. For instance, some prior studies have fo- cused on investigating the livelihood vulnerability of communities to droughts (Nguyen et al., 2019; Ray et al., 2018; Muthelo et al., 2019), ﬂoods (IPCC, 2007; Reynaud and Aubert, 2020; Bangalore et al., 2019; Dang, 2012), heat waves (Le, 2018; Chen et al., 2019; Maharjan et al., 2017), and cold spells (Le, 2018; Chen et al., 2019; Hidalgo et al., 2020). The impacts of vulnerability to multiple climatic stresses in Vietnam have not been well examined, creating diﬃculties for policymakers to design proper livelihood strategies in the context of increasing extreme climatic stresses (Le, 2018; Nguyen et al., 2019; Casse et al., 2015; Reynaud and Aubert, 2020; Nghiem, 2019; Smit et al., 1999; United Na- tions Viet Nam, 2014; Nguyen et al., 2018). Thus, the study aims at assessing the vulnerability to climate change of rice households in the coastal area of Nghe An province and the factors aﬀecting the households’ vulnerability to climate change (i.e. drought, ﬂood, heat wave, and cold spell). With respect to the objec- tive, three districts were selected for household surveys of rice farming in the coastal area, namely, Dien Chau, Yen Thanh, and Quynh Luu districts. The outcomes of this study would beneﬁt policymakers in pri- oritizing the top risks factors for climate change adaptation projects to reduce vulnerabilities and promote sustainable development in Nghe An province as well as other provinces in the NCC. The study is also con- sistent with the pressure of local authorities and rice communities in 2 Environmental Challenges 7 (2022) 100460 Fig. 1. Annual temperature recorded from Quynh Luu meteorological station from 1990 to 2019. Source: Vietnam National Center for Hydro- Meteorological Forecasting (2020). 157.4 million USD (Nguyen et al., 2021). In 2020, in the low-lying ar- eas, ﬂoods mainly occurred in Dien Chau, Yen Thanh, Quynh Luu, Hung Nguyen, and Thanh Chuong districts. In 2020, the province suﬀered ex- treme ﬂoods and damages of more than 3,300 houses, 65 million USD, and the livelihoods of 10,000 people. Approximately 2,900 ha of rice were damaged, the estimated loss was 10.6 million USD. About 2,440 ha of maize and vegetables were inundated, of which 957 ha, 126 ha, and 786 ha were in Quynh Luu, Yen Thanh, and Dien Chau, respectively. Submerging also caused the dead of 5,400 poultry, of which 4,700 poul- try of Quynh Luu and 200 poultry of Yen Thanh were dead. About 778 ha of aquaculture ponds and small lakes were damaged, of which 343 ha, 222 ha, and 47 ha were in Dien Chau, Quynh Luu, and Yen Thanh, re- spectively (Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention, Control and Search and Rescue, 2020). The data from Vietnam National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting showed that in 1990, 1997–1998, and 2003–2004, pro- longed droughts happened in Nghe An due to the late coming of the rainy season and the uneven distribution of rainfall (Vietnam National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting, 2020). Rainfalls were ex- tremely high in 1996, 2010, and 2013, causing ﬂoods across many areas (IMHEN and UNDP, 2015). Fig. 1 shows the temperature trend in Nghe An province based on historical data. The result shows that tempera- ture increased by 0.03°C annually on average for 30 years (p < 0.10), which is in line with a study by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE, 2016). 3. Materials and methods 3.1. Study area Nghe An province is positioned between 18°33′–20°01′ N and 103°52′–105°48′ E (Nguyen et al., 2020) (Fig. 2). The rainy season is from May to October, and the dry season is from November to April. The average monthly temperature is 27°C in the rainy season and 19°C in the dry season. The highest temperature can reach 42–43°C and the lowest temperature may fall to nearly 0°C. Approximately 80% of the annual rainfalls are distributed in the rainy season and the average rainfall ranges from 1200 mm/year to 2000 mm/year (Pham, 2020; People Committee of Nghe An province, 2020; Nghe An’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, 2021). The total area of agricul- tural and forestry land is approximately 1.24 million ha, of which 186,000 ha is covered with paddy rice (about 75%). In 2016, Yen Thanh, Dien Chau, and Quynh Luu districts were the three biggest rice- producing areas, with a total area of 58,000 ha. In 2020, the average 3 Environmental Challenges 7 (2022) 100460 Dien Chau, Quynh Luu, and Yen Thanh districts in Nghe An province. Source: Adapted from Le et al. (2017). Table 1 Sample size by district. Districts Population Proportionate sampling Actual sample size - 8.6 tons/ha Yen Thanh 100,978 (100,978/236,234) ∗ 400 = 171 151 Quynh Luu 53,505 (53,505/236,234) ∗ 400 = 91 122 Dien Chau 81,751 (70,500/236,234) ∗ 400 = 138 123 Total 236,234 400 396 Source: Nghe An’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, 2021. An’s tricts. The secondary data of the total number of rice households in the three districts were 236,234 (Nghe An’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, 2021). Adapting Yamane (1967), the sample size of this study was calculated as follows: (People Com- 𝑁 236, 234 𝑛= = = 399.3 ≈ 400, 1 + 𝑁 𝑒2 1 + 236, 234 × (0.05)2 leading where n indicates the study’s sample size, N indicates the total number of rice households in the three districts, and e indicates the margin of error at 5%. The sample size by the district for the study is shown in Table 1. Primary data collection was conducted through a household survey from July to August in 2020. The questionnaire was built and pre-tested with 30 rice households in Dien Chau district to limit the ambiguities, based on the literature. Dien Chau district was chosen for pre-testing because of the high concentration of rice households. After the pre-test, more instructions were included in the questionnaire to help farmers more easily understand all of the questions. Before the interviews, sev- eral meetings were organized with the local authority and village leaders to take permission for the survey. On the decided schedules, face-to-face interviews between farmers and the interviewers were performed in the Vietnamese language with the support of local staﬀ. It took approxi- mately 60–90 min to complete the questionnaire for each household. Following Hahn et al. (2009) and other studies (Sujakhu et al., 2019; Adu et al., 2018; Ho et al., 2021; Suryanto and Rahman, 2019; Ahmad and Ma, 2020), the questionnaire was constructed by using seven major components, including the socio-demographic, livelihood strategy, and water supply components. Respondents were asked several questions associated with households’ livelihoods in 2020 (the time of interview) to investigate their adaptive capacity. Besides, to investigate 4 Environmental Challenges 7 (2022) 100460 Next, to compute the value of each major component, Eq. (2) was used as follows: ∑𝑛 𝑗=1 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑥𝑆𝑖𝑗 𝑀𝑖 = , (2) 𝑛 where 𝑀𝑖 implies the value of a speciﬁc major component of household i, 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑥𝑆𝑖𝑗 implies the value of speciﬁc sub-component 𝑗 𝑡ℎ , and n implies the number of sub-components under each major component. For example, the raw value of “crop diversity” was calculated by us- ing the formula [1/(number of crops + 1)]. A household that cultivated four crops (e.g., rice, maize, sesame, and soybean) would have a “crop diversity” index of 1/ (4 + 1) = 0.20. Crop diversiﬁcations adopted by households would reduce their vulnerability to climate stresses. Given diﬀerent responses of crops to the same climatic shock, this strategy was considered as a solution to reduce the risk of crop loss (DFID, 1999; Ho et al., 2021; Venus et al., 2021). Finally, Eq. (3) was used to calculate the LVI of each household as follows: e ∑7 𝑘=1 𝑤𝑀𝑘 𝑀𝑗𝑘 of respon- 𝐿𝑉 𝐼𝑗 = ∑7 , (3) 𝑘=1 𝑤𝑀𝑘 where 𝐿𝑉 𝐼𝑗 implies the value of the LVI of household j, 𝑤𝑀𝑘 implies the number of sub-components under each major component k, and 𝑀𝑗𝑘 implies the value of major component k of household j. Adapting FANRPAN, 2011), the value of the calculated LVI was clas- siﬁed from 0.00 to 1.00 as follows: policies to 0.00 - 0.30 as “not vulnerable”: Farmers do not recognize their vul- nerability yet. Hence, policy interventions need to improve their awareness and resilience to climate shocks. 0.31 - 0.46 as “slightly vulnerable”: Farmers are vulnerable to cli- mate shocks, but they have capacities to cope with those shocks and recover. Hence, policy interventions need to strengthen their capac- ities to cope with shocks. 0.47 - 0.51 as “moderately vulnerable”: Farmers are temporarily vul- nerable at the time the shock happens. Hence, policy interventions need to provide external support to help them recover after shocks. 0.52 - 0.60 as “highly vulnerable”: Farmers are facing hardship due to the frequency of severe climate shocks. Hence, policy interven- tions need to urgently and continuously provide external support to help them recover after shocks. 0.61 - 1.00 as “extremely vulnerable”: Farmers are facing high risks at an emergency level. Hence, policy interventions need to urgently provide thorough supports from experts. has been 3.3.2. Factors aﬀecting households’ vulnerability to climatic stresses in Nghe An province In this study, the beta regression was employed to investigate the eﬀects of socioeconomic, institutional, and environmental factors on households’ vulnerability to climatic stresses (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2014; Nguyen et al., 2018). The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) assumes a normal distribution and the homoscedas- ticity of all values which are focused on the middle range. Instead, rate, proportion, or percentage tend to be skewed distribution in the lower and upper limits. Moreover, beta regression can be used for continuous dependent variables, ranging from zero to one, excluding the endpoints zero and one. Compared with the OLS, the beta regression is more appro- priate to measure the LVI of each household in this study, which ranges from 0.19 to 0.62 (Ho et al., 2021; Cribari-Neto and Ferrari, 2004; Cribari-Neto and Zeileis, 2010). In the regression, the outcome is the LVI (1) of each household and a total of 24 explanatory variables were used, including the climatic stresses. Some new factors (i.e. transportation, agricultural mechanization, and irrigation) were also included in the implies the maximum value. regression, which was expected to reduce the LVI (Table 2). 5 Environmental Challenges 7 (2022) 100460 Measurement Expected sign Related research LVI ∈ [0, 1] N/A N/A Years +/- (Nghe An’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, 2021; Adu et al., 2018; Ho et al., 2021; Bangalore et al., 2019) + (Adu et al., 2018; Ho et al., 2021; Bangalore et al., 2019) – (Adu et al., 2018; Shahzad et al., 2021; Ho et al., 2021) 1 if Male; 0 if Female – (Hoang et al., 2020; People Committee of Nghe An province, 2020; Ho et al., 2021; Casse et al., 2015) Years – (Leartlam et al., 2021; Adu et al., 2018; Ho et al., 2021) +/- (Hoang et al., 2020; Leartlam et al., 2021; Adu et al., 2018; Ho et al., 2021) + (Hoang et al., 2020; Leartlam et al., 2021; Ho et al., 2021) Number – (Nguyen and Hens, 2019; Nguyen et al., 2019; People Committee of Nghe An province, 2020; Ho et al., 2021) 1000 USD – (People Committee of Nghe An province, 2020; Sujakhu et al., 2019; Ho et al., 2021; Bangalore et al., 2019) 1000 USD – (Leartlam et al., 2021; Dao et al., 2019; Ho et al., 2021) Binary: – (Leartlam et al., 2021; People Committee of Nghe An province, 2020; 1 if yes; Bangalore et al., 2019) 0 if otherwise Binary: – (Leartlam et al., 2021; People Committee of Nghe An province, 2020; 1 if yes; Sujakhu et al., 2019; Nghe An Farmer’s Association, 2020) 0 if otherwise – (Leartlam et al., 2021; Ho et al., 2021; Bangalore et al., 2019) – (Hoang et al., 2020; Nghe An’s Department of Agriculture and Rural 1 if yes; Development, 2021; Sujakhu et al., 2019) 0 if otherwise Binary: – (Ho et al., 2021) 1 if yes; 0 if otherwise - (Sujakhu et al., 2019; Bangalore et al., 2019) 1 if yes; 0 if otherwise - (Ho et al., 2021) 1 if yes; 0 if otherwise Times + (Sa-adthien et al., 2020; Reynaud and Nguyen, 2016; Nguyen et al., 2020) + (Nguyen et al., 2019; Ray et al., 2018; Vietnam National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting, 2020) + (MONRE, 2016; Reynaud and Nguyen, 2016; Maharjan et al., 2017) 1 if yes; 0 if otherwise + (Le, 2018; Reynaud and Nguyen, 2016; He et al., 2021) 1 if yes; 0 if otherwise Binary: – (Shahzad et al., 2021; Ho et al., 2021; Bangalore et al., 2019) 1 if yes; 0 if otherwise Binary: +/- N/A 1 if yes; 0 if otherwise +/- N/A 1 if yes; 0 if otherwise 6 Environmental Challenges 7 (2022) 100460 tions of all variables that appeared in beta regression are presented in Table 2. 4. Results and discussion + 𝛽8 Farm_size + Agricultural_cooperative + 4.1. Descriptive statistics of rice households in Nghe An province Tables 3 provides an overview of the basic characteristics of the sur- veyed households in Nghe An province. Table 3 reveals that the mean age was 55 years old, implying a high proportion of older farmers in (4) the study area. Most household heads were male (79%), the average number of family laborers was three. Households reported that wage laborer wase a big issue during the peak time of the cropping season, especially for those households who lacked family laborers. A vast ma- jority (98.7%) of the sampled respondents had participated in formal education, thereby enhancing their ability to maintain their livelihoods. In this area, farm size had a small value, which ranged from 0.02 ha to 2.35 ha. Households realized that livelihood diversiﬁcation signiﬁcantly improved their incomes, such as oﬀ-farm work with an average income of 1,370 USD. Values of households’ properties ranged from 40 USD to 66,420 USD, implying a big gap between the poor and the rich people. More than half of the respondents participated in farmers’ associ- ations (53%) and an agricultural cooperative (71%) to gain access to formal credit, climate information, and market information. Farmers’ associations in Nghe An province oﬀered consulting activities, funds, input support programs, extension visits, and training classes to achieve the National Target Program on building new countryside since 2010 (Nghe An Farmer’s Association, 2020). Most households had access to transportation (98%), agricultural mechanization (86%), and irrigation (73%). Therefore, many households had suﬃcient resources for agricul- tural production. More than 50% of the surveyed households reported that they had not received any training courses, which might impede their capacity to cope with the impacts of climatic stresses and improve the total productivity. The results show that more than 75% of respon- dents in the study area suﬀered from abnormal temperature ﬂuctua- tions (either heat waves or cold spells). They experienced 5 ﬂoods and 3 droughts, on average. In general, climatic stresses frequently happened in Nghe An province, causing crop failures as well as destroying house- holds’ assets (IMHEN and UNDP, 2015; People Committee of Nghe An province, 2020; Nghe An’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Devel- opment, 2021). et al., 4.2. Assessing households’ vulnerability to climatic stresses 2018, be- Following FANRPAN, 2011, Table 4 shows that 76% of the sam- pled households in the study area were slightly vulnerable to climatic stresses, which caused income losses for households in the coastal area (Nguyen et al., 2019; Dao et al., 2019; Ho et al., 2021). Yen Thanh was less vulnerable to climatic stresses than the other districts because of its topography (Dao et al., 2019). In general, households in the study area were vulnerable because of the frequency and intensity of unpredicted climate shocks. Hot waves and cold spells often occurred in the study area, which hampered the growth of both plants and animals (Le, 2018; Chen et al., 2019; Kolawole et al., 2016). Yet, respondents had the ca- pacity to cope with climate-induced stresses in the study area. Many households received government supports for disaster relief (i.e. foods and ﬁnancial support) and agricultural subsidies such as climatic stress- tolerant rice varieties, funds, and technical training for sustainable de- velopment of agriculture. In the ﬂood-prone areas of Nghe An province, farmers were encouraged to grow rice varieties with a growth period of less than 100 days such as VT-NA2, VT-NA6, Thien Uu 8, Khang Dan 18, HT1, and BT09 for the summer-autumn crop. This crop was sown early to ﬁnish the harvest at the end of August, before the rainy sea- son came. Direct seeding in the early summer-autumn crop was limited, farmers used transplants right after harvesting summer-autumn rice to avoid ﬂooding. Due to low rainfall, several farmers switched from rice 7 Environmental Challenges 7 (2022) 100460 (n = 396). Frequency % Mean S.D. Min. Max. – – 55.24 10.70 28 79 314 79.29 0.79 0.41 0 1 – – 2.73 1.60 0 8 – – 8.18 2.62 0 16 – – 3.48 0.85 2 7 – – 3.50 7.94 0.04 66.42 – – 1.37 1.75 0.00 10.44 – – 0.24 0.19 0.02 2.35 210 53.03 0.53 0.50 0 1 280 70.71 0.71 0.46 0 1 – – 0.19 0.45 0 2 232 58.59 0.59 0.49 0 1 388 97.98 0.98 0.14 0 1 339 85.61 0.86 0.35 0 1 289 72.98 0.73 0.44 0 1 272 68.69 0.69 0.46 0 1 304 76.77 5.00 3.64 0 20 302 76.26 3.47 2.76 0 15 – – 5.18 3.73 0 15 – – 3.28 3.25 0 10 study area. Quynh Luu Yen Thanh Combined Frequency % Frequency % Frequency % 0.0 4 3.3 2 1.3 6 1.5 74.0 92 75.4 118 78.1 301 76.0 18.7 22 18.0 26 17.2 71 17.9 6.5 4 3.3 5 3.3 17 4.3 0.8 0 0.0 0 0.0 1 0.3 0.30 as “not vulnerable”, 0.31 to 0.46 as “slightly vulnerable”, 0.47 to 0.51 as “moderately and 0.61 to 1.00 as “extremely vulnerable”, according to FANRPAN, 2011. size had non-linear eﬀects on household’ s vulnerability to climate stresses. The result implied that aging farmers were more vulnerable than young farmers because they were less likely to engage in livelihood di- versiﬁcation. Land use change and all farming activities require labor force, investment budget, and time for conversion, especially for horti- culture and forestry. Aging farmers are facing health problems and have less opportunities to seek additional incomes. Even when they engage in agricultural diversiﬁcation, their production costs are also higher than those of the youth due to higher labor costs. On the other hand, young farmers are more enthusiastic about learning advanced farm- to climatic ing techniques for climate change adaptation solutions (Leartlam et al., 2021; Huynh and Stringer, 2018; Ho et al., 2021; Muthelo et al., 2019; Kolawole et al., 2016; Vu et al., 2020; Rigg et al., 2019(Mabuku et al., 2019)). Gender positively inﬂuenced a household’s vulnerability to climatic stresses, indicating that a male-headed household was more vulnerable to climatic stresses than the counterpart. This ﬁnding may be because in the rural area, male members perform more heavy works on farms, and they are responsible for earning the main household income. Female members play an important role in taking care of children and doing housework. Moreover, many women were supported by the local au- thority and Women Union to participate in both on-farm and oﬀ-farm works for ﬁnancial independence (i.e. raising animals, making hand- icrafts, food processing, and doing small businesses). Given diﬀerent roles between male and female members in a family, the females were less vulnerable than the males in this situation (Shahzad et al., 2021; ; Balikoowa et al., 2019(Owusu et al., 2021). and farm 8 Environmental Challenges 7 (2022) 100460 for them ((Hoang et al., 2020; Sileshi et al., 2019); ). Nghe An province has a large labor force, creating a lot of pressure on job creation. Al- though the People Committee of Nghe An province has implemented Level of signiﬁcance many solutions such as developing handicraft villages, industrial parks, and creating jobs for laborers but it has not yet met the requirements of 0.01 0.01 the society. On the other hand, many laborers have quitted or lost their 0.01 jobs in the urban area due to the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic since 0.01 early 2020. Labor unemployment has led to a waste of human resources, – aﬀecting the livelihoods of many households and the socioeconomic de- – velopment in this province (Hoang et al., 2020; People Committee of – 0.05 Nghe An province, 2020; Casse et al., 2015). – Education strengthened households’ capacities to reduce the vulner- 0.01 ability and enhance their livelihoods, an additional year of farmers’ ed- – ucation would decrease the LVI by −0.21% point. Previous studies re- 0.01 0.01 vealed that higher educated people had a higher probability of adopt- 0.01 ing new techniques and engaging in employment (Hoang et al., 2020; – Leartlam et al., 2021; Le et al., 2017a; Tjoe, 2016; (Balikoowa et al., – 2019). As stated by Kuchimanchi et al. (2021), a high level of education – would beneﬁt farmers in Telangana, India by building their capacity – – in farm management, seeking additional income, and coping with any 0.01 shocks caused by climate stresses or other extremes. 0.01 Income sources reduced households’ vulnerability to climatic – stresses. Households with an additional income source had a probability 0.01 – of decreasing the LVI by −0.79% point. Many studies have conﬁrmed this ﬁnding. Several households have modiﬁed the crop patterns and animals in accordance with the changes in weather pattern (Le et al., 2017b; Nguyen and Hens, 2019; Leartlam et al., 2021; Nguyen et al., 2019; Dao et al., 2019). In recent years, due to low rainfall, several farmers have switched from rice farming to up-land crops (i.e. maize, sugar cane, onion, livestock grass, and vegetables), generating about 7 to 10 times higher economic eﬃciency than rice farming. Moreover, farmers have modiﬁed their planting schedule by cultivating early win- ter crops and using short-term crops to avoid storms and ﬂoods. Besides, of factors inﬂuencing households’ vulnerability to climatic events (n = 396). Coef. S.E Marginal eﬀect p-value −0.0151 0.0075 −0.0037 0.045 ∗∗ ∗ 0.0001 0.0001 0.0000 0.095 ∗∗∗ 0.1404 0.0247 0.0341 0.000 ∗∗∗ 0.0257 0.0065 0.0063 0.000 ∗∗ −0.0086 0.0039 −0.0021 0.026 ∗∗∗ −0.0322 0.0121 −0.0079 0.008 ∗ 0.0020 0.0012 0.0005 0.095 ∗∗∗ −0.3347 0.1058 −0.0818 0.002 0.1361 0.0559 0.0333 0.015 ∗∗ ∗∗∗ 0.0273 0.0062 0.0067 0.000 −0.0326 0.0231 −0.0080 0.158 ∗∗∗ −0.1720 0.0302 −0.0422 0.000 −0.0264 0.0260 −0.0064 0.310 ∗∗∗ 0.0818 0.0216 0.0200 0.000 −0.0494 0.0720 −0.0121 0.494 0.0141 0.0347 0.0034 0.686 ∗∗∗ 0.1406 0.0343 0.0342 0.000 0.0027 0.0052 0.0007 0.609 ∗∗∗ −0.0186 0.0062 −0.0045 0.003 ∗∗∗ 0.0140 0.0054 0.0034 0.010 ∗∗∗ 0.0304 0.0053 0.0074 0.000 −0.0239 0.0290 −0.0059 0.410 ∗∗ 0.0521 0.0230 0.0128 0.024 −0.0131 0.0242 −0.0032 0.588 0.1069 0.2143 4.8577 0.0708 396 222.81 (0.000) 681.6777 show statistical signiﬁcance at 1%, 5%, and 10% levels, respectively. 9 Environmental Challenges 7 (2022) 100460 ago, thereby, being seriously degraded. For example, Bara dam in Do Luong district of Nghe An was completely collapsed in 2020, resulting in a shortage of 50–70% of the water ﬂows into the main canal of the North irrigation system of Nghe An (Raber et al., 2017; Sujakhu et al., 2019; Nghe An’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, 2021; ; ). During the driest periods from February to April, temperature increases, and severe drought events leads to water shortage for agricul- ture, forestry, and household use (Nghe An’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, 2021). Regarding the climatic stresses, ﬂoods and droughts that frequently happened in this province, either water deﬁciency or water abundance harmed households’ livelihoods since they reduced crop production and induced food insecurity (MONRE, 2016; Pham, 2020; Reynaud and Nguyen, 2016; People Committee of Nghe An province, 2020). Floods damaged infrastructure and properties while causing injury or death for people, especially during the monsoon period (Reynaud and Nguyen, 2016; Casse et al., 2015). In terms of the agricultural sec- tor, severe ﬂoods reduced land fertility and damaged crops on a large scale (Le, 2018; Sa-adthien et al., 2020). The prolonged drought may induce water shortage, which aﬀects crops’ growth and reduces agricul- tural output. Despite the eﬀorts of creating the varieties of crops that can survive during prolonged droughts or inundations, such severe cli- matic stresses may cause food scarcity and negatively aﬀect households’ livelihoods and the development of the national economy (Le, 2018; Ray et al., 2018; Reynaud and Aubert, 2020; Nghiem, 2019). House- holds who engage in agricultural business often confront many diﬃcul- ties due to the impacts of all those shocks. Several respondents lost their agricultural land, crops, and animals (Shahzad et al., 2021). It was interesting that cold spells reduced households’ vulnerabil- ity to climatic stresses. This may be because cold spells occurred only in winter and many farmers had practiced several measures to reduce losses caused by cold spells, such as changing plant schedules and prac- ticing plastic cover for crops. Therefore, limited households reported their loss caused by this event. Instead, farmers observed that they could generate extra incomes in the winter (He et al., 2021; Nghiem, 2019). In the study area, the winter-spring rice crop lasts from January to May, the summer-autumn rice crop lasts from May to September. The autumn- winter crop starts from September, many farmers grow up-land crops to enhance their livelihoods (i.e. cucumbers, gourds, squash, corn, vegeta- bles, kohlrabi, sweet potatoes, and potato). Farmers were also engaged in Acacia plantation, transporting, selling ﬁrewood, or working in wood processing factories to mitigate impacts of climate change (Vu et al., 2020). Lastly, Dien Chau increased households’ vulnerability to climatic stresses. Compared with Yen Thanh district, Dien Chau district was more exposed to climatic stresses because of its geographical varia- tion of risks by being located in a low area and often aﬀected by ty- phoons and coastal erosion (Nguyen and Hens, 2019; Le et al., 2017a; MONRE, 2016; Aryal et al., 2020; Alam et al., 2017). During the last 10 years, ﬂoods and droughts signiﬁcantly impacted many communes in Dien Chau because of the increases in temperature and the abnor- mal rainfalls as compared to the past (People Committee of Nghe An province, 2020). 5. Conclusions in the sup- This study aimed at evaluating the livelihoods of rice farming house- holds in Nghe An province of Vietnam. The study employed the LVI to assess the extent of households’ vulnerability to climatic stresses in the study area. The results showed that rice households were slightly vul- nerable to climatic stresses, such as ﬂoods and droughts. Along with climatic hazards, the COVID-19 pandemic also impeded the livelihoods and social networks between farmers and other stakeholders (e.g. lo- cal authorities, scientists, and enterprises). Before the pandemic, many households had already implemented several adaptation strategies such as land use change or crop diversiﬁcation to reduce their vulnerabil- 10 Environmental Challenges 7 (2022) 100460 of poor households, further research should be performed in diﬀerent rural areas in Vietnam. fac- Declaration of Competing Interests shap- The authors declare that they have no known competing ﬁnancial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to inﬂuence the work reported in this paper. and ﬁnancial Acknowledgments and con- This paper was presented in a virtual conference titled “Environmen- tal Challenges and Agricultural Sustainability in Asia: Interlinkages and Future Implications,” organized by Asian Development Bank Institute on 8–10 December 2021. The authors are thankful for the suggestions made by the conference participants and session discussant Dr. Madhus- mita Dash. We thank Dr Dil Rahut, Dr. Aryal and the two anonymous referees of the journal for their valuable suggestions. The views, infor- mation, or opinions expressed in the paper are those of the authors, and the usual disclaimer applies. We acknowledge the ﬁnancial assis- tance from the World Bank Group for the project of “Agricultural land use and management to adapt climate change serving the goal of agri- culture reconstruction in North Central Coast of Vietnam - Project No: ĐTKHCN.WB.02/20” in the program of “Strengthening scientiﬁc and technological capacity and training human resources for agricultural restructuring and new rural construction”. The authors also thank re- spondents of Nghe An province who participated in this survey and Dr. Nophea Sasaki for his valuable contribution to the paper. through co- Supplementary materials needs to be pro- Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.envc.2022.100460. favorable References wet and Adu, D.T., Kuwornu, J.K.M., Anim-Somuah, H., Sasaki, N., 2018. Application of livelihood vulnerability index in assessing smallholder maize farming households’ vulnerability . to climate change in Brong-Ahafo region of Ghana. Kasetsart J. Soc. Sci. 39 (1), 22–32. doi:10.1016/j.kjss.2017.06.009. Ahmad, M.I., Ma, H., 2020. Climate change and livelihood vulnerability in mixed crop– livestock areas: the case of province Punjab, Pakistan. Sustainability 12 (2), 586. doi:10.3390/su12020586. Ahsan, N., Warner, J., 2014. The socio-economic vulnerability index: a pragmatic ap-

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