SOCIAL CAPITAL, LIVELIHOOD DIVERSIFICATION AND HOUSEHOLD RESILIENCE TO ANNUAL FLOOD EVENTS IN THE VIETNAMESE MEKONG RIVER DELTA

[...]... households in different geographically flood- prone regions of the MRD? 2 To what extent is there a relationship between livelihood diversification or specialization and household resilience to floods in the MRD? 3 To what extent is there a relationship between different forms of individual levels of social capital and household resilience to floods in the MRD? 1.4 The Mekong River Delta and Flooding The Vietnamese. .. qualitative data Securing houses, food and income, and interest in learning new ways of adapting to floods were mostly perceived as the most important indicators of adaptation to living with floods In other words, households that can secure food, income and their homes and are interested in learning new flood- based livelihoods are more resilient to flooding Items were checked and pre-tested before the real survey... as part of the ecologicalsocial system since most people benefit from fishing and the fertile sediment left by the floods In particular, farmers can develop flood- based livelihoods to maintain household income during the flood season However annual flooding can also be seen as an “external shock”, if the flood is either too big or too small and so exceeds the coping capacity of households and communities... capital is linking or networking social capital, which is important to link bonding social capital and state or public institutions in order to facilitate collective action to adapt to climate change (Adger 2003; Mathbor 2007) Whether social capital is classified into bonding, bridging, linking or vertical and horizontal, it can be grouped into formal and informal social networks The term social network... To investigate the relationship between livelihood adaptation (diversification or specialization) and household resilience to floods in the MRD 3 To examine the relationship between different forms of individual levels of social capital and household resilience to floods in the MRD 1.3 Research Questions The research will seek to answer three key questions in order to advance our understanding of the. .. study is to advance our understanding of the resilience of different social groups, and its relationship with different forms of social capital and livelihood adaptation in the context of living with flooding in the MRD The report will explore three sub-objectives to support the key aim 1 To examine the impacts of three levels of flooding on different households’ livelihood activities and assets in the. .. different social groups about the impacts of floods on household livelihoods, livelihood strategies for coping with floods, social capital, and resilience indicators in living with floods 3.5.2 Quantitative analysis Factor analysis was used in this report for combining related variables into “composite” variables for constructing indexes of household resilience and neighbourhood attachment social capital... measure the stress-coping capacity of individuals The scales include 25 items with five-point scales, which were validated in Chinese societies (Yu and Zhang 2007) As rural households in the MRD have experienced the impacts of annual flooding for years, the ability of households to live with, adapt to, and benefit from floods reflects their resilience to floods Recognizing the advantages of Marshall and. .. approach in measuring the social resilience of resource users to policy changes, this report attempts to adapt and modify this approach in order to measure household resilience to floods in a Vietnamese context If households have high levels of well-being, they are expected to be highly resilient to floods Nine attitudinal statements, which reflect the expected well-being of rural households in flood- prone... et al treated the neighbourhood attachment of individuals, social supportive networks and civic engagement as informal and formal social capital and assessed their effects on job attainment in the UK The findings of this study provide insights into developing adaptive non-structural measures for coping with and adapting to future flood events in the MRD 1.2 Research Objectives The main objective of . develop resilience theory and conceptualize the resilience concept in the context of living with flooding in the Vietnamese Mekong River Delta. Livelihood adaptation is the key to resilience. Livelihood. for examining the relationship between social capital, livelihood adaptation and household resilience to floods in the MRD 12 Figure 5. Location of the Mekong River Delta and the study. develop flood- based livelihoods to maintain household income during the flood season. However annual flooding can also be seen as an “external shock”, if the flood is either too big or too small and