„Strong roots, strong women“ – Community based risk management in Vietnam
Project duration: January 2025 - December 2028
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From 2021 to 2023, we funded the innovative ‘Strong roots, strong women’ project as a RISK Award winner and developed it further as a project partner. With a focus on capacity building for women, five coastal communities in Hue Province were made more resilient towards natural hazards. At the same time, a mangrove tree nursery was established that creates jobs and makes a direct local contribution to stabilising the regional ecosystem. Together with our project partners, we applied for an EU call for proposals under the EU Viet Nam Women-led Green Partnership Programme in 2023. After an intensive review process, we were able to secure a funding commitment from the EU of around €650,000 in mid-2024. With these additional funds, we can now significantly scale up the RISK Award pilot project and further develop its content. We are incredibly happy and proud to be able to take the project partnership with CSRD and the University of Potsdam to a new level. Project start: 1 January 2025.
The Thua Thien Hue province in central Vietnam is severely affected by climate-related hazards that are projected to intensify due to climate change. Storms, heavy rain and flooding, among others, severely affect traditional livelihood options. In addition to the chronic stress and major shocks caused by frequent hazards and resulting coastal erosion, a range of societal factors undermine the resilience of already vulnerable groups of society, such as the poor and women. These groups have little human, social, and financial capital to resist external shocks, to quickly recover, and to proactively prepare for future events.
The city of Hue (Vietnam) is frequently hit by floods.
A large proportion of Hue’s coastal population has unstable livelihoods and lack financial savings to handle shocks or disruptions. In the future, the resilience of coastal communities is expected to further deteriorate due to the projected effects of climate change, if no additional, more sustainable, and equitable disaster risk management and adaptation approaches are adopted. Ecosystem-based resilience strategies can be one tool to address these developments. Especially women play an important role in ecosystem-based adaptation. They are responsible for household livelihood activities, e.g. when their husbands must work away from home. Popular livelihoods for residents of the province are agriculture, aquaculture, forestry and even eco-tourism. All these livelihoods depend on natural resources. Women need to transform their current livelihoods to become more sustainable and create stable income.
With the actions of this project, we aim to empower local women to make themselves, their families and ultimately their communities more resilient to natural hazards while ensuring their income sources. Focusing on sustainable alternative livelihoods makes them more resilient to external shocks and less prone to poverty risks. At the same time, their increased capacities in disaster risk management will give them a greater voice in local political decision-making processes related to community risk prevention.
Volunteers and staff of mangrove nursery prepare a new batch of mangrove seedlings.
Impact
Against this background, the desired impact of this action is to contribute to improved resilience of vulnerable communities, especially local women, improved biodiversity and quality of the ecosystem, especially in the wetland protected area and the Huong River basin.
To achieve that impact, we will work in three areas:
We will invest in further developing the capacities of CSRD and vulnerable communities, especially women on nature-based solutions, eco-based adaptation and disaster risk management. For that we will use a set of tools and innovative educational formats. Community members will be trained in storytelling and communication techniques, such as theatre, filming, and photography. Topics can be climate change, water management in river basin (from source to sea), mangrove potentials, or circular economy.The best community-produced content will be showcased at provincial festivals and exhibitions, and online platforms will be used to disseminate the materials, empowering local women to share their messages and promoting EbA and nature-based solutions (NbS).
Further we will support local communities with a focus on women to sustainably diversify their livelihood opportunities especially in “green” job markets. By connecting communities and leveraging ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) and nature-based solutions (NbS), the goal is to create 20 innovative solutions for alternative livelihood opportunities. Participants will receive training on design thinking approaches, and with the help of young volunteers, four outstanding ideas will be selected to receive financial and technical support for implementation. The results will be shared through a film showcasing women and livelihoods in the Huong River Basin.
The third area focuses on our already existing Mangrove nursery. We will support the team in optimising cultivation processes, diversifying the types of plants and putting sales strategies for seedlings on a more stable, sustainable footing. The aim is to achieve a constant result of around 5,000 seedlings per year. During the project, four planting cycles will produce around 60,000 seedlings for reforestation. Local communities and the core team will be trained in wetland and mangrove conservation. Approximately 10,000 seedlings will be planted in the four districts around Tam Giang lagoon, while 50,000 seedlings will be sold to other ecosystem restoration projects in Vietnam. In each district, a planting team will be established, consisting mainly of women. They will be empowered to organize the plantations themselves.
With the EU funding, we can not only further develop the activities of the pilot project in terms of content and time but also scale them up. So far, we have been active in five local communities near Hue City. The new EU project will cover 20 municipalities in 6 districts in the extended province of Hue.
