Climate Change Adaptation and Gender Inequality: Insights from Rural Vietnam

Abstract

Vietnam is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change impacts, especially from extreme weather events such as storms and floods. Thus, climate change adaptation is crucial, especially for natural resource-dependent farmers. Based on a qualitative research approach using a feminist political ecology lens, this article investigates gendered patterns of rural agrarian livelihoods and climate adaptation in the province of Thái Bình. In doing so, we identify differentiated rights and responsibilities between female and male farmers, leading to unequal opportunities and immobility for females, making them more vulnerable to climate impacts and threatening to reduce their capacity to adapt. This research also shows that demands on farmers to contribute to perpetual increases in agricultural output by the state poses a challenge, since farming livelihoods in Vietnam are increasingly becoming feminised, as a result of urbanisation and devaluation of farming. Past and present national strategies and provincial implementation plans linked to climate change do not consider the burden affecting rural female farmers, instead the focus lies on addressing technical solutions to adaptation. With little attention being paid to an increasingly female workforce, existing gender inequalities may be exacerbated, threatening the future existence of rural livelihoods and the viability of Vietnam’s expansion into global markets.

A systems approach toward climate resilient livelihoods: A case study in Thai Nguyen province, Vietnam

“…A leader of Vo Nhai department of agriculture stated similar situation of limited budget from the government that could only meet 30-40% of the needs and required tasks in agriculture and rural development in general, including CCA and response. The results were consistent with Ylipaa et al (2019) who found that lack of government budget is the main issue that hampers the implementation of CCA efforts at the provincial and district levels. These authors also suggested that CCA efforts should not only rely on economic instruments and technical solutions from the government.…”

Impacts of Climate Change on Outdoor Workers and Their Safety: Some Research Priorities

“…Outdoor women worker’s health is another problem that has drawn attention recently; in particular, during pregnancy as it creates additional heat stress problems. Respiratory and cardiovascular disease, secondary to exposure to poor air quality, has been found to have a larger impact on women because of their greater propensity for higher deposition of particulate matter in lung tissue [17,33,59]. In general, outdoor workers are faced with elevated risks of heat-related illnesses (HRI).…”

“…In general, outdoor workers are faced with elevated risks of heat-related illnesses (HRI). However, pregnant women exposed to extreme heat are faced with additional health risks, including poor pregnancy health and birth outcomes, as highlighted in earlier reports [17,26,33,34,59]. This calls for empowering women through provision of education and awareness as a means of improving mitigation and mitigation policy intervention.…”

“…Seven categories of climate-related hazards—increased ambient temperature, air pollution, ultraviolet exposure, extreme weather, vector-borne diseases and expanded habitats, industrial transitions and emerging industries and changes in the built environment at work—have been the subject of climate change assessments on the health of outdoor workers in several studies [4,8,9,10,11,12]. There has been an increasing concern around the impact of extreme heat on both indoors and outdoors workers health and safety due to increased heat and climate change [14,15,16,17]. As pointed out by St. Louis and Hess [18] the health impact of climate change will not be distributed uniformly, but rather it is expected that the distribution patterns of health burdens will be increased around the globe.…”

Are women neglected in the EU agriculture? Evidence from Lithuanian young farmers

“…This serves as a reason for abandoning the farming ( Pattnaik et al, 2018 ). The deprivation of women of agricultural production factors complemented by power relations, habitual to agricultural activities make female farmers more vulnerable to consequences of the climate change ( Ylipaa et al, 2019 ). Conversely, empowered women show high adaptive capacity to deal with climate change issues ( Jost et al, 2016 ) and productivity levels about or above average ( de la O Campos et al, 2016 ).…”