Adaptation for whom? Understanding the impacts of dyke policies on small-scale farmers in Ca Mau Province of Vietnam

ABSTRACT Low-lying deltas worldwide are extremely vulnerable to sea-level rise. As the risks of climate-induced flooding become increasingly clear, the thirst for infrastructure-driven adaptation increases. This highlights a patent need to understand the impacts of engineering adaptation solutions, especially those targeting built structures such as dykes and sluices, on farmers from a bottom-up, farmer-centred perspective. The study addresses this call by examining cases where dyke policies, while successful in some dimensions, have undermined small-scale farmer livelihoods in Ca Mau – Vietnam’s southernmost rural province. It identifies areas in need of attention and adds empirical data related to this group of farmers. This emphasis, therefore, contributes inputs towards mitigating unexpected impacts of dyke building or other concrete-intensive adaptation solutions which can be found in many disaster-prone countries. A mixed methodology combining qualitative and quantitative data sources, including Wilcoxon signed-rank tests and case examples, was applied. The findings show a distorted livelihood capitals pentagon of the surveyed small-scale farmers after the construction of dykes and sluices in the province, exacerbating small-scale farmers’ climate vulnerabilities. Dyke policies were found to facilitate and exacerbate the impacts of climate change and liberal capitalist expansion in rural areas. The paper, thus, marks a contribution to understanding as to how the wider environment, i.e. adaptation policies and power relations, structure and influence farmers’ livelihoods by broadening or hampering their access to livelihood capitals and their adaptation options. Our results suggest that environmental sustainability and cross-farmer class equity should be mainstreamed in policy implementation and post-implementation plans. Key policy insights National pro-infrastructure adaptation policies that neglect the complexity and integrated nature of local ecology and farmer livelihoods likely result in maladaptation; As livelihood assets vary among farmers, different farmer groups experience the impact of dyke systems differently and disproportionately; Climate-adaptive infrastructure development inadvertently facilitates liberal capitalist expansion and exacerbates power inequalities whereby small-scale poor farmers are not able to cope with the rich, capitalist farmer class and market actors in a rural economy; National policy-makers may need to incorporate and mainstream sustainable livelihood perspectives and local voices in national adaptation policy-making and assessment.