Evaluating capacity for climate change adaptation in the health and water sectors in Vietnam: constraints and opportunities

Abstract

The capacity to anticipate and respond to climate change can critically shape vulnerability, influencing whether a country experiences harm from exposure to stresses or is able to cope, adapt and realize sustainable outcomes. This paper presents the results of a study that evaluates capacity in relation to the health and water sectors in Vietnam. The study presents informants' views on the adequacy of financial resources, understanding of vulnerability and adaptation, training needs, information requirements and levels of cooperation as well as their priorities to address adaptation. The perceptions of respondents on challenges and obstacles faced in developing adaptation strategies are also examined. Training on vulnerability and increasing funds for adaptation were reported as the top priorities, indicating that the inadequacy of human and financial resources is the most significant challenge to effective adaptation in the study context. Difficult and weak cooperation was also widely considered to be a barrier. The paper concludes that there are significant interconnected constraints on adaptive capacity in Vietnam that are further exacerbated by governance issues, such as inadequate cooperation and transparency in sharing information and data. This paper identifies priorities for action to address the challenge of climate change adaptation.

The Three Dialectics of Adaptation Finance in Vietnam

“…These actions can be classified in the "stand-alone adaptation", "adaptation plus development" in Ayers and Dodman's categories [48]. This finding is consistent with other adaptation studies in Vietnam that highlight the limited attention paid to soft measures, especially at the provincial and lower levels [56], and to improve the local adaptive capacities [63]. Mc Elwee [36] argues that, in Vietnam, those capacities are closely linked to the access to social capital, collective action, common lands, institutional support, and government safety nets.…”

Climate Change Vulnerability and Key Adaptation Trajectory of the Regional Economic System

“…Regional water demand is also sensitive to climate change [26][27][28]. It is generally suggested that climate change will trigger more water demand [7,9,10]. rough reviewing the related literature [24,25], the paper assumes that the effect of temperature rise on water demand is defined as Wate t � 1 + 0.05T + 0.01T 2 Wate t , (27) where Wate t represents the regional water demand in period t, T represents this period's climate anomaly, and Wate t denotes the regional water in period t in the absence of climate warming.…”

“…ese climate change impact and risk may also restrict human life in many aspects [7]. Climate change adaptation aims to reduce or manage the impact of climate change on people's lives, which is bound to increase regional demand for electricity [8], water [9,10], and health services [11,12].…”

Enabling local public health adaptation to climate change

“…Adaptive capacity is context specific, meaning there is no single set of indicators of adaptive capacity applicable to every setting, and indicators must be tailored to each case [20,24]. A plethora of adaptive capacity indicators have been proposed, including: economic resources, technology, information and skills, infrastructure, institutions, equity, priorities, kinship networks and political influence [16,23,[25][26][27]. Drawing on this literature, we selected dimensions of adaptive capacity over which upper-level governments could have some influence, and that were most applicable to the context of local public health authorities (as opposed to, for example, countries, communities or individuals).…”