The changes of rural livelihood: the case of the coastal sandy zone in Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam

Similar to other regions of Vietnam, the Coastal Sandy Zone of Thua Thien Hue province has recently achieved many desired outcomes. However, these regions are still facing numerous problems such as recurring impacts of climate change, increasing frequency of various diseases in many sub-agricultural sectors, considerable fluctuations about market prices, persisting water management issues and challenging stakeholder-collaboration concerns. This study analyses the livelihood changes of rural households and proposes solutions and recommendations for reducing vulnerabilities while strengthening sustainable livelihood strategy. The recommendations of this study are intended for researchers and policy makers who are doing impact assessment studies and development process planning in a multi-level, farm-level approach. Two frameworks of analysis, the original and the advanced Sustainable Livelihood Frameworks (Hao ND, 2009) guided the author in evaluating the livelihood changes through a ten-year time. To view changes in the proportion of households in each block and the income generated from the livelihood strategies, the author divided the households into six categories. A mixed method of Participatory Rapid Appraisal, Focus Group Discussion and household survey were used to identify the reasons for the current livelihood selection, the vulnerability for each specific strategy and the potential strategy adaptation to reduce the vulnerabilities. The driving factors affecting the adaptation of climate change/climate extreme events were assessed by analyzing the indicators and variables of the Livelihood Vulnerability Index with a Multi Logit Regression model. In addition, the author documented the households’ explanations as to why they changed their livelihoods. Findings indicate significant improvements in five types of capital for 2007_2008 to 2017_2018. These include, among others, but not limited to: 1. Households investing more money on increasing their educational level; thus positively changing the occupational structure towards better working conditions, higher salary and more diversified job opportunities; 2. Households experiencing better quality of life because of a well-controlled population growth; 3. Households being exposed to a wider room of credit providers and credit categories; 4. Households improving more of their physical/housing conditions; 5. Households investing more heavily in new machines and technologies resulting in more efficient time and cost of production, lower potential risks from the weather, more time to participate in social and cultural activities and preserve traditional values. 6. Women taking more action in production and marketing aspects, and getting easier access to education, healthcare, information, technology, credit, and land; and 7. Households possessing higher adaptive capacity due to good collaboration among local governments in narrowing the impacts of extreme weather events related to Climate Change. However, of the seven improvements enumerated above, some related concerns also surfaced in this province, namely: 1. The low quality and fragmented land pose an important challenge to increasing the production scale, even with the use of modern technologies and advanced models; 2. The low access to credit despite its increasing outreach because households avoid the exposure to frequently occurring agricultural risks and the threats associated with unpredictable extreme weather impacts (e.g., financial and human losses) and labor shortages in the agricultural sector in the coming years; 3. The many barriers continuing to persist locally, such as managerial capacity, local budgets, and not using updated techniques for estimating and mitigating impacts of extreme events related to climate change. Livelihood Vulnerability and Climate adaptation. Household reduced significantly their vulnerability in almost aspects of human, financial, social and physical capitals while increase exposure in terms of natural hazards. About 27% of the households did not implement any adaptation method; nearly half of them applied a reactive adaptation method and 28% implemented the proactive adaptation method. Livelihood changes. After 10 years, households depended less on agriculture and earned more from migration and off-farm activities. The nominal value of total household income had increased almost 3 times, from 38 million to 97 million. Big changes in the structure of household income were observed. Agriculture remains one of the main livelihood activities of the household economy, with over 30% income increase each for crops and livestock. Agricultural activities related to paddy crops, potatoes, nuts farming did not show many changes. But household income has been largely increased from vegetables and other plants despite the many difficulties in cultivating vegetable. Meanwhile, livestock activities are operating under the impact of market prices as well as diseases. Although the number of households going into livestock breeding is decreasing, the scale of pig and poultry population, in particular, has increased. To reduce the risks in aquaculture, households have adopted the mixed model (shrimp, fish and crab) instead of the mono model (shrimp only) due to water quality issues. This transformation ensures that households can maintain safe operations, but the low net profit results in less contribution from this activity compared to ten years ago. Several modern models, which promise high economic efficiency gain, are in the process of being developed and transferred. Those could be seen as the potential method of aquaculture in the study site. A lot of households have been engaged in migration and, in fact, this strategy has contributed significantly to household reimbursement, supporting family members to find more suitable employment. However, the migration waves have also resulted in some rebound effects, including the labor shortage in the local region. Hence, industrial zones, which have brought many changes in livelihood strategy of the household, were established. With households using new machinery and technology in the agricultural sector, many of the population have found stable jobs with better salaries, balancing the choices of the population structure under the recent impact of migrating waves to the developed cities. More importantly, income from wages also increased significantly, further contributing to the reduction of the urban-rural gap in education as well as in the urbanization process. Lastly, based on the research findings, each livelihood activity still faces pressing difficulties and more vulnerabilities. By comparing the results of empirical studies, along with screening and in-depth assessment of the current state of internal and external aspects related to livelihood and trends, this study strongly proposes a package of recommendations as follows: 1. Strengthening capacity to adapt to Climate extreme events; 2. Mitigating the impacts of climate extreme events; 3. Adopting ecological innovations based on local knowledge under the support of multiple stakeholder levels; 4. Recultivation of aquaculture distribution and restriction of pond extension by issuing a certification of right to participate in this activity; 5. Applying Internet of Things in aquaculture; 6. Promoting the adoption of appropriate land use planning and management system; 7. Applying pest management platform for stored products; 8. Improving labor quality regarding migration strategy; and 9. Incentivizing the application of digital managements on migrants