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Farmer Perceptions of Climate Impacts Revealed by Photovoice

My first impression from going through the photographs and testimony of farmers in relation to climate impacts in Ky Son was that landslides and erosion more generally seemed to be the main complaint. A more thorough check of the data confirms that to be the case, almost matched however by problems of dry spells and high temperatures. 

Although erosion and landslides are obviously strongly linked to flooding, I've kept them separate in the pie chart - flooding here typically refers to shorter-term impacts such as loss of crops (similar to a how a dry, hot period may impact crops intra-seasonally), whereas landslides are typically irreversible. There were several farmers who pointed to complete loss of formerly productive land due to hillside and riverbank erosion and landslide:

Rough translation of caption for this image from Mr Nguyễn Văn Nhàn: Formerly a hill of acacia production, farming. But three years ago, due to the impact of rain and storms so the whole land was landslide and erosion. Now, nothing can be farmed on this land. This loss area is about 0.5 hectares of a household in the village.

On the positive side, preventive measures were also mentioned. Bamboo was cited by several people as a suitable tree for riverbank stabilisation, while methods of controlling hillside erosion and subsequent land loss were also mentioned. These include planting (elephant) grass on contour, more careful and well-planned acacia plantation management and harvest, and switching to perennial tree crops (orange and mandarin, for example) on hillsides.

Bamboo has been a traditional tree for maintaing river banks and has the co-benefit of providing material for handicrafts, as pointed out by Ms Le Thi Than:

Rough translation of Vietnamese caption: '... previously this land was used to grow peanuts. When (affected by) landslide, the family also studied with many people ahead of planting bamboo trees to prevent landslide and this is also one of the current solutions of the family. If using sandbags, it will not be effective and not economical due to the wide area of the landslide... Bamboo is used to prevent erosion, it is also used to create handicraft products such as basket weaving'