How can ecosystem services increase the resilience of communities vulnerable to climate change?

March 24th, 2014

James Boyle, Development Planning Unit, University College London, United Kingdom

The Mekong Delta is uniquely vulnerable to the effects of climate change as it is affected by rising sea levels, a reduction in river flow, and an increase in the severity of seasonal floods and drought. Adaptation to climate risks is often dominated by expensive engineered infrastructure options as policy makers and engineers tend to opt for fixed hard solutions.

There are, however, alternatives to these strategies including adoption of an Ecosystem based Adaptation (EbA) approach. Supported by the United Nations Convention on Bio-Diversity, the EbA approach ensures that ecosystems, and the essential services they provide, are resilient to the climatic and non-climatic strains put upon them. As such, ecosystems can themselves be utilised to support adaptation, in turn increasing human resilience and their ability to absorb, recover and move forward from any adverse effects of climate change.

It will be the rural and peri-urban poor who are most vulnerable to climate change, particularly because their livelihoods are so heavily reliant on natural resources, such as fishing, agriculture, and other forms of land or marine management. An EbA approach can, therefore, increase resilience in two ways. Firstly, it can restore the regulation services of the wetlands, protecting against hydro-meteorological hazards and climate risk. Secondly, an EbA approach to community stewardship, placing the ecosystem service at the centre of community adaptation, will prove beneficial to livelihoods and developmental needs.

The Mekong Delta is one of the most productive regions in South East Asia and the rice basket for Vietnam, much of which has been made possible through an extensive range of dykes and canals transforming the Mekong Delta’s wetlands into rice paddies.1 This drains the water away quickly, ensuring that it irrigates but does not saturate or flood the land. This is considered to be one of the world’s most drastic man-made land transformations and has contributed to Vietnam being the 5th largest producer and 2nd largest exporter of rice globally.2 In 2010 it exported 22 million tonnes of rice, 90% of which was grown in the irrigated paddies of the delta. It is also one of the most productive deltas in the world with 30% of Vietnam’s GDP being derived from food based goods and the agriculture sector providing a living to 85% of a local population of over 17 million.3

Rewards and vulnerabilities

The recent regional developmental achievements of the previous decades are primarily a result of agriculture and aquaculture. The vast majority of land use in the delta is multiple irrigation, also known as multiple cropping; where crops are harvested more than once a year (see Figure 1).

There is evidence, however, that draining the wetland has degraded water quality, depleted ground water levels, and aided the intrusion of salt water in the dry season. These issues have often been blamed on climate change, although in reality it is down to poor understanding of complex ecological systems and poor central planning.1 The reduction in river flow reduces the pressure put upon sea water, allowing for its intrusion.

There are thousands of wetlands along the Mekong that store water in the wet season and feed the river in the dry season. With precipitation rates in the rainy season expected to increase somewhere between 1% – 5.2% (low emissions scenario) or 1.8% – 10.1% (high emissions scenario)3, an increase in water entering the Mekong looks inevitable. As such, the importance of the water regulation service provided by wetlands in the Mekong is likely to increase in future.

However, the draining and fragmentation of many of the wetlands by the irrigation network has severely diminished their service as a water regulator and not all wetlands are capable of water storage due to already high saturation rate. As a result, it is predicted that the exhaustive current of the river will decrease, causing water shortages, exacerbated by long droughts in the dry season, with flood currents increasing in the wet season.3

Fighting back through adaption

The opening of dykes and channels so that water can flow and flood more freely across the delta, albeit in a managed way, would reduce the capacity for damage by flood waters at their peak. It would also increase the peak flow of water in the dry season, combating sea water intrusion and increasing water security, as well as replenishing underground aquifers. However, even if the floods are managed, and water regulation achieved, this will disrupt the current livelihoods of those living on the wetlands, meaning that an EbA approach to community involvement in land management is key.

Recognising the importance of such wetlands, in 1999 The Tram Chim Reserve was demarcated as a national park of 7,740 ha on the grounds of conservation. 3 While its effect on regulating the flow of the various branches of the Mekong in the delta will be minimal, in hydrological terms it is functional.4 The communities surrounding the park purchase licences to harvest fish and grasses, and so continue to derive a living from it without cultivating rice.

Implementing regional scale appropriate EbA strategies

On a regional scale, EbA strategies must incorporate the continued cultivation of the land. The soil and water of the delta is also suitable for aquaculture and fruit tree planting as well as rice.5 Poly-culture farming such as Fish-Rice could prove very beneficial; both in yield and diversity.6 The technique involves surrounding a paddy field with a fish pond. The fish then act as pest control, reducing the need for harmful pesticides, which are known to pollute the water, and also increase the fertility of the soil, reducing costs spent on expensive agrochemical fertilisers.6 Fresh water fish provide a further income stream as their wild populations have fallen significantly in previous years due to unsustainable fishing in the Mekong River. They also can be harvested throughout the year and will go some way to dealing with the deficit left in both income and nutrition and food security due to the inability to multi-crop. The waters of the ponds also provide a source of irrigation for the paddy in times of drought.5,6 A similar technique can be implemented in areas of high salinity with sea grass and shrimp or crab farming.

As a result, not being able to multi-crop rice does not have to be a detriment to the farmers or the delta’s productivity. Diversifying techniques and crops to incorporate poly-culture and increasing biodiversity can be more productive as well as increasing resilience to long term effects of climate change.

Adaption and conservation strategies such as those employed at Tram Chim, work against classic economic models and impede localised development. This is very problematic as community participation, is key to the success of any development project, particularly when building the resilience of those same communities. These communities may access the land, and utilise the resources sustainably, but foraging and harvesting techniques in this setting do not allow for full utilisation of resources. It is also this kind of tactic that will tarnish EbA as ‘Green Colonialism’, when in fact the aim of EbA is to respect a community’s close reliance on their natural capital and their vulnerability without it.

The two pronged EbA strategy of flooding the wetlands of the Mekong and encouraging a change in farming techniques puts the ecological systems at the centre of an adaptation strategy. The hydrological system already exists and so it is cost effective and can be implemented quickly. It only needs a change in attitude from multi-cropping, mono-culture cultivation to integrated farming techniques and government involvement in reengineering the vast irrigation network to work with the hydrological system, rather than against it.

Climate change is going to drastically affect the landscape of the delta and opportunities for land use, whether it be through shock events such as floods or droughts or more gradually through sea water intrusion. EbA provides an approach to tackling climate change as an opportunity to renegotiate the relationship between communities and the way they engage with natural resources and the ecosystems services they rely upon.

References:

International Union for the Conservation of Nature (2010). ‘Mekong Region Water Dialogues Water and Wetlands, the Mekong’s Blood and Heart’. Available online at: http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/mrwd_nwg_regional_meeting_december_2009_final_1.pdf. International Rice Research Institute (2014). ‘Vietnam’. Available online at: http://www.irri.org Institute of Strategy and Policy on Natural Resources and Environment (2009). ‘Viet Nam Assessment Report on Climate Change (VARCC). Available online at: http://www.unep.org/pdf/dtie/VTN_ASS_REP_CC.pdf. Ni, D.V. (2005). ‘Living with Water & Building with Nature: Solutions for the Mekong River and Vietnam Coastal Areas’. Cantho University, Vietnam. Available online at: Berg, H. (2002). ‘Rice monoculture and integrated rice-fish farming in the Mekong Delta, Vietnameconomic and ecological considerations’, Ecological Economics 41: 95-107. Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (2014). ‘The Annotated Ramsar List: Viet Nam’. Available online at: http://www.ramsar.org/cda/en/ramsar-documents-list-anno-vietnam/main/ramsar/1-31-218%5E15775_4000_0__.

James Boyle has managed community development, micro finance and livelihoods projects in in Sierra Leone, Malawi and northern Thailand. He has an interest in innovative ways to address social justice issues having developed a range of social enterprises in the UK homeless and housing sector. Having recently completed an MSc in Environment and Development from the Development Planning Unit, UCL he is currently researching approaches to climate change adaptation and community level DRR.