Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture in Vietnam

ZHU Tingju, Mai Van Trinh

International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC,
USA Institute for Agricultural Environment, Hanoi, Vietnam

Abstract:
Vietnam is among the few countries worst affected by the impacts of climate change. This is primarily attributed to the tropical location, long coastal line, mega river deltas, and the economy’s heavy reliance on water and agriculture. This paper analyzes the impacts of climate change on crop yield and production across the eight agro-ecological regions of Vietnam using models that simulate river basin hydrology and irrigation as well as crop growth. Six main food and industrial crops are evaluated for three climate change scenarios that cover a wide range of projected climate change situations in Vietnam. The impacts of sea level rise in major river deltas of great agricultural importance are also assessed based on existing hydrodynamic analyses. The study found that climate change can have severe impacts on crops, and the impacts can vary widely across agro-ecological regions. In particular, temperature increases can cause significant crop yield declines. Taking into account carbon fertilization, the adverse yield impacts can be less severe, but still significant for two of the three climate change scenarios. Being the single most important crop in Vietnam, rice production is expected to be affected by sea level rise in addition to temperature increase and rainfall pattern changes. By 2050, sea level rise may cause a 0.5 million hectare loss of rice production area in the Mekong River Delta (MRD), Vietnam's rice basket, due to increased flood inundation in the wet season and worsened salinity intrusion in the dry season. Combining the two factors can lead to a 14 percent production decline of rice in the MRD. Adaptation options are explored for mitigating the adverse impacts of climate change and enhancing the resilience of Vietnam’s agriculture in the era of climate change.

Keywords: Climate change; impacts; agriculture; Vietnam