Population vulnerability to drought and other extreme weather events in the context of climate change – a case study in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam

Drought is a natural phenomenon caused by a lack of precipitation over a
long period in a specific area. It happens throughout the world, affecting large
areas and causing significant human and economic losses. Recently, climate
change has become more visible worldwide. In Vietnam, a visible consequence
of climate change is an increase in frequency and severity of drought. Recently,
severe drought occured in the Central Highlands of Vietnam due to the continuing
El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomena, causing varying degrees of
damage to agriculture and residents' livelihoods in 2014, 2015, and 2016.
The Central Highland of VietNam is an important agricultural area of
Vietnam. It holds the Srepok River basin that plays a significant role in the
Central Highland and where this study was located. This study examines regional
socio-natural climate vulnerability and adaptive response capacities of local
people to drought in the Srepok River basin region of Central Highland. As a
mean of population vulnerability reduction, a monitoring system for the forecast
of primary agriculture products such as coffee crops is proposed.
The findings of this study indicated that water (sensitivity) and livelihood
strategies (adaptive capacity) are two major causes of high vulnerability to
drought for all districts and surveyed communities. The study also found that
there is a significant difference in climate change perceptions and observations
of climate change-related extreme events, depending on different socio-economic
and demographic household characteristics: in particular, education, preferred
media sources and income sources have significant effects on local people’s
perceptions regarding drought. Besides, this study is the first to develop and
assess a coffee yield forecasting method at the regional scale for Dak Lak
province, in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, by using the Crop Growth
Monitoring System Statistical Tool (CGMSstatTool – CST) software and
vegetation biophysical variables (NDVI, LAI, and FAPAR) derived from satellite
remote sensing (SPOT-VEGETATION and PROBA-V).
These results might help assess the needs in terms of actions and designing
site-specific intervention strategies to reduce the vulnerability of agriculture
smallholders to climate change.