Examining Disaster and Climate Change Studies Using the Funnel of Multiple Capital Deployment (FMAD) Framework: A Review of Vietnamese literature

Abstract

Based on a revised multiple capital framework called the Funnel of Multiple Capital Deployment (FMAD), this article provides a critical reflection on how local communities in Vietnam respond to disasters and climate change. This framework depicts communities' dispositions to mobilize and allocate various community capitals to relevant collective actions in order to successfully adapt to external threats such as disaster risks and climate change. The deployment of this capital is heavily influenced by the state's institutional capacity for disaster risk management and climate change adaptation. This article demonstrates this framework by reviewing recent research on disaster risk management and climate change adaptation in Vietnamese scholarship. The article demonstrates that local practices of using various capital in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation are informed by a wealth of evidence from the current literature, even though the reviewed studies did not use the multiple capital framework in their research. The center-focused control and command system in Vietnam has often discouraged disaster-affected communities' participation in local disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation as well as in active preparation for upcoming disasters and climate change. It was clear that some local communities had become overly reliant on government assistance and had lost their creativity and ability to deal with adversity. It has been argued that the government should delegate more power to local governments and grassroot movements so that local communities can actively design and implement their own disaster risk management and climate change adaptation planning, response, mitigation, and recovery activities.