Climate Services (Dec 2021)
Farmers’ barriers to the access and use of climate information in the mountainous regions of Thừa Thiên Huế province, Vietnam
Abstract
Climate change is a major challenge to rural livelihoods in Vietnam, particularly in remote and mountainous areas. Access and use of climate information is considered vital to households’ and communities’ adaptive capacity. This research employed a survey to investigate barriers to the access, and use of, formal climate change information among two groups of farmers (ethnic minority and Kinh) in mountainous areas of Thừa Thiên Huế province, Vietnam. Adopting a logit model, the results show that the main barriers were: 1) farmers’ lack of trust of formal climate-related services; 2) farmers’ lack of perceived risk from climate change; and 3) difficulties in balancing climate adaptation and economic benefits of new interventions. Ethnicity was not a barrier, as all farmers looked for climate information from informal channels (friends, neighbors, market actors) rather than from formal channels (agricultural departments, television, radio), although cultural issues such as language did act as a barrier. This research recommends strengthening the networks and interactions between market actors and government staff with local people, through direct communication and adaptation demonstrations. Formal and informal climate information channels should be integrated to effectively combine local resources and indigenous knowledge with advanced technologies, to support farmers’ sustainable and robust climate adaptation responses. Further, the research found that while farmers have access to devices, such as smart phones, they prefer to use these for entertainment rather than climate information. The implications of the study therefore are that any future network or communication activities should be in local languages and note the limitations of using devices for information dissemination.
