Strategic Mainstreaming of Ecosystem-based Adaptation in Vietnam: Vulnerability Assessment for Ecosystem-based Adaptation – Overall Approach: Vulnerability Assessment for Socio-Ecological Systems

The GIZ project “Strategic Mainstreaming of EbA in Vietnam” is working to promote EbA approaches in Climate Change Adaptation planning across government policy and planning systems. Institutional considerations are thus important. While much of CCA policy is produced at the national level, practical planning for CCA is primarily the responsibility of the Provincial Peoples’ Committees. Thus, as part of its portfolio of activities the project has selected two provinces – Quang Binh and Ha Tinh to demonstrate EbA vulnerability assessments and identify EbA interventions

The EbA vulnerability assessments are to be conducted in two main stages, first at the province-wide level, and then subsequently at the community level or local-scale in selected areas. The province-wide VA is intended to enable a province to get a comprehensive overview of climate change issues and identify priorities for action. The province-level VA is “top down”, and uses existing information on the province’s ecological, social and economic assets; its history of climate-related hazards; as well as development trends and down-scaled climate change projections to identify priority climate change adaptation issues and general province-wide EbA solutions. The province-wide assessment also provides the basis for identifying a short-list of specific sites for selection of the local level VA. The local level VA then focuses on a selected area and repeats the analysis of ecological, social and economic factors at the local level, applying more conventional bottom-up methods of field work, local data collection and stakeholder participation, to better understand locally important climate change issues and identify specific, implementable EbA solutions. The results and analysis from both assessments will be made available as a stand-alone Provincial Vulnerability Assessment Report; and one or more stand-alone Community Vulnerability Assessment Reports for each province. Together they will provide clear sets of recommendations for both provincial and local levels.