Impacts of Climate Change on Land Use Change in the Red River Delta and its Community Livelihood Change

project summary

In a context where Vietnam is considered as one of the most potentially affected by climate change, our project aims to understand the relation between climate change and its impacts to livelihood change of rural community in the Red River Delta (RRD) in Vietnam. The project identifies three pilot sites for research: one in coastal zone in Thai Binh and Nam Dinh provinces, one in Hanoi and its urban fringe, and one in the border with hilly zone of Vinh Phu Province. These three sites will formulate a trans-deltaic sectional profile which would be representative both for bio-physic and socio-economic contexts of the whole RRD. The sites are characterized by such phenomena as the increase of landless household number in the urban fringe and the increasingly migration from villages towards the city and the fragile economic situation in the coastal zone of RRD. VNU will organize a team of specialists from Earth sciences, socio-economic and political sciences for implementation of the project. Student involvement in the project is a part of human resources of our project. The involvement of local authorities is the bridge linking our research to local needs in sustainable development and especially in optimizing community livelihood change in the context of climate change. Remote sensing and GIS will be used as the major tool for modelling spatial data of interdisciplinary nature in our research and to support the development planning in the pilot sites in our project.