Viet Nam: Laying down the first steps for disaster management
In the mountainous highlands of Vietnam, ACTED and our partner CECI (Center for International Studies and Cooperation) are working with ethnic communities to increase their understanding of disasters through identifying hazards and mapping high risk areas through a process known as vulnerability and capacity assessments.
A beneficiary in Quy Hop district, indicates how high the river water rose during floods in SeptemberIt’s another beautiful day in the peaceful and idyllic highland areas of North-Central Vietnam; quiet farming villages nestle between soaring limestone mountains and thick jungle in Quy Hop district of Nghe An province. Farmers are very poor but work hard on their land to produce rice and sugar cane to make the most of the small resources available to them. However, come the monsoon and typhoon seasons from June to October, these villages inevitably experience natural disasters in the form of floods, flash floods, landslides, land erosion and typhoons. These disasters lead to loss of homes, livestock and food stock; damage to vital roads and bridges linking these remote villages to the wider world; and destruction of crops and farming land. The latter perhaps being the most harmful as each family has only a small plot on which to farm and upon which their livelihood depends.
Inexistent response to emergencies
A hazard map, drawn in Kon Ray district is discussed with CECI staffDespite the destruction brought by these disasters each year, communities take the damage as given, out of their control and are poorly coordinated in their response to emergencies. Recognizing that much more can be achieved by communities in both preparedness and mitigation to the disasters, and to support the National Disaster Risk Management Programme, ACTED in partnership with CECI and with the support of the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid Department, are carrying out a third phase of the Building Community Resistance to Disasters project in this area with the aim of strengthening disaster risk reduction. Local trainers have been selected from the various government departments and mass mobilization organizations in the area, including the agriculture department, women’s union and youth association, to facilitate various events at the village level in order to build the understanding and skill of villagers and officials to better prepare for and respond to disasters. Local trainers in all 33 villages in the three selected communes of Quy Hop district, are provided with intensive training in areas such as conducting vulnerability and capacity assessments (VCAs) as well as community based disaster risk management, first aid, search and rescue, etc.
The vulnerability and capacity assessments (VCAs) are an important first step in mobilizing farmers around the concept of disasters, which for most of them, although they live with disasters year in and year out, remains an abstract idea which is difficult to grapple with. The idea is to identify the high risk areas of the village and the threats facing them and to choose the collected data to draft disaster risk reduction (DRR) mechanisms to be included into development plans.
Gaining a better understanding of natural disasters
A young beneficiary stands in front of a communication tool used during the VCA processThe local trainers, many of whom are also members of the district emergency response unit but had never received prior training, gained valuable skills not only in DRR, but also in communicating with villagers and facilitating discussions. Says Mr. Ha, a forestry graduate and 25 year old agriculture worker and local trainer, “despite the difficulties of communication [as not all ethnic minority people speak Vietnamese] and the low knowledge among farmers on disasters, I am confident that the 30 villagers who participated in the VCA process gained a better understanding of the disasters which take place here. I certainly intend to continue applying the skills I received through the project training in my future work as an agriculture worker”. The consensus among farmers is that as a result of the VCA, they have a clear idea about dangerous areas of their villages and the risks they face each year, while officials who took part in the training are already thinking of ideas on how to mainstream DRR into local development plans.
While the VCA is a necessary and extremely useful process, it is certainly only a first step. With a better understanding of disasters and an increased feeling of control over their fate, villagers are now ready to embrace further trainings which will build their technical skills in preparing for and responding to the next disaster, which is inevitably only a few months away.