Farmers’ Perceptions of and Adaptations to Climate Change in Southeast Asia: The Case Study from Thailand and Vietnam

The perceptions of climate change and adaptation choices made by farmers are important considerations in the design of adaptation strategies by policy makers and agricultural extension services. This paper seeks to determine these perceptions and choices by farmers in already poor environmental regions of Thailand and Vietnam especially vulnerable to climate change. Overall findings were that farmers do perceive climate change, but describe it in quite distinct ways and that location influences how farmers recognize climate change. Our 2007 and 2013 surveys show that farmers are adapting, but it is difficult to determine if specific practices are “climate smart”. Further, adaptation measures are informed by perception and, at least in the case of Vietnam, perceptions are shaped by the respondent’s characteristics, location variables and recent climate related shocks. Finally, the three climate variables of rainfall, temperature, and wind are the most important factors in explaining specific adaptation measures chosen by farmers. Farmer participation is an essential part of public actions designed to allow adaptation to climate change. Our research can also contribute to understanding farmer constraints and tailoring good overall strategies to the local heterogeneity of vulnerable locations

Self-employment and its influence on the vulnerability to poverty of households in rural Vietnam - A panel data Analysis

The following paper analyses whether becoming self-employed can help to reduce the vulnerability to poverty of rural households. We use data collected during four survey waves in three rural provinces in Vietnam to calculate region-specific logistic panel regressions. The results show that becoming self-employed increases the likelihood of poor households escaping poverty, but only if they are located in a regional economic environment characterized by an advanced stage of structural change, good infrastructural conditions, and proximity to markets. In less well-developed regions, becoming self-employed is not sufficient to increase the probability of poor households escaping poverty. What matters more is that self-employment is driven by opportunity and not by necessity. However, even opportunity-driven self-employment does not guarantee a reduction of vulnerability to poverty in all regional settings and for all household types. Especially, regional overspecialization in cash-crop production and inequality in access to assets have to be taken into account. In times of declining commodity prices, self employment entails a risk of business failure in regions that are overspecialized in cash crop production. For households whose initial investment is high and whose endowment with social and educational assets is low, this can result in increased vulnerability to poverty