Youth-led Adaptation for climate change challenges in Vietnam: social action, inter-generational and inter-cultural learning

Project Description

The Challenge

Rising sea levels and the increased intensity and magnitude of precipitation linked to climate change, place the Red River Catchment in Northern Vietnam on the front line of climate emergency. Whilst intense rains, localised flooding and extended dry periods have always formed an important part of the natural monsoonal seasonality, sinking land in the Red River delta is placing urgent pressure upon those communities to respond to more severe and more frequent flood events. In the upland areas of the basin, increased rainfall variability and intensity is exacerbating soil erosion, landsliding and flash flooding as well as periods of drought. These challenges place the catchment as one of the most “at risk” globally.

With one of the highest population densities in the world (~30 million inhabitants), these risks mean Vietnam’s citizens, government and policymakers are faced with significant challenges concerning flood and climate change mitigation, adaption and resilience. High cost interventions and flood defences to combat such impacts in a low to middle income country like Vietnam are unlikely. Therefore, enabling communities to adapt to their changing climate, including through education, awareness-raising and capacity development amongst its citizens is an essential step in building community-led climate action and resilience.

Aims and approach: The YACC project was funded as part of the British Academy's Youth Futures programme (supported under the UK Government's Global Challenges Research Fund). The project focused on developing youth-focused and youth-led perspectives and climate action on the sustainable development challenges facing the diverse RRC. The project utilised four core principles which were:

• The centrality of youth for sustainable climate action
• The utilisation of participatory action research
• The importance of intergenerational and intercultural learning through community-based dialogue
• The role of creativity and innovation in building climate action and community resilience

This was a transdisciplinary project. It involved scaffolding social science research skills and education, alongside scientific ‘knowledge’ on climate change to support youth to capture and analyse diverse, local knowledge and build social capacity for a more sustainable future.

Working with youth across three locations in the RRC, the project supported research capacity development which enabled youth to research ‘at risk’ local communities and investigate and capturing both the challenges faced as well as localised knowledge of, responses to and resilience against these challenges. Following the approach outlined here, youth were supported to innovate and create arts-based outputs from their findings as a means to support localised knowledge exchange and enhance community resilience. The role of emotion, as both an inhibitor (fear, hopelessness, disempowerment) and as a facilitator (empathy, hope and a sense of efficacy) of climate action was also central to this work, shaping both our adoption of creative methods and the production of creative and arts-based knowledge-exchange outputs.

In practice, bringing all of these things together looked as follows:
• The youth participated in workshops (in-person/online) and individual online training focused on developing their knowledge on climate change and how to become a researcher (including learning about ethics, interviewing, focus groups etc.)

• The youth then had an opportunity to put this into practice during a visit to Xuân Thủy National Park where they observed the impacts of climate change and practised their research skills by speaking to local residents about their experiences of living with climate change.

• The youth then went back into their own socially and culturally diverse communities to conduct research about how climate change was impacting on the lives of its residents and importantly, to identify stories focused on how people were learning to live with climate change.

• The youth were then supported by the research team (via workshops) to turn some of the stories they had found into creative outputs of their choice. This was as a way to share intergenerational and diverse social and cultural ways of adapting to and living with climate change to support wider community resilience building.

• These creative outputs have since been added to a digital storybook (see outputs on website). The stories collected by the youth also inspired the development of an original water puppetry performance with this and the storymap shared with an audience of policymakers and practitioners at the showcase event in Hanoi in December 2022 (see outputs for film showing full water puppetry performance).

Outcomes and Impact

In December 2022, a showcase event was held in Hanoi at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology where a range of stakeholders including governmental and NGO policymakers and practitioners, educators, artists and the public were invited to hear about the project and celebrate youth’s achievements. The successful event launched the creative outputs developed by the youth and also premiered the original water puppetry performance co-created between the youth, the research team, the Institute for Cultural Studies and the Đồng Ngư Water Puppetry Troupe.
We know already that the YACC project has had a number of successes. For instance, we know that:

• The youth involved in the project are now more aware of climate change and feel more confident and energised to engage with climate and environmental action in their communities. involvement has also prompted independent social action between youth and community members and this is ongoing.

• Most members of the communities we worked in welcomed the opportunity to share their experiences and the knowledge they have on how they are adapting to living with climate change. It provided an important opportunity for communities to come together, across the generations and to feel listened to.

• Using the arts and creativity was an important vehicle for community engagement around climate change and policymakers and practitioners took note of this. For example, the water puppetry performance impressed policymakers from the Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) so much so that they have now adopted using this within their disaster preparedness programmes. The Vietnam Museum of Ethnology have committed to engage with the water puppetry performance as an educational resource to teach about environmental change and the role of traditional art forms to raise awareness and care for the environment.

• The water puppetry troupe, having always performed ‘traditional’ stories, have witnessed the role they can have in protecting the environment and ensuring communities are informed about the environmental challenges and opportunities for action by engaging with research and researchers. They have already re-performed the show to new audiences and are keen to do more. They are also keen to continue working with our and other research teams for future work linked to other dimensions of environmental protection.

Outputs

You can find all the creative and academic outputs from the project on the Younity4action website You can also find all of the creative outputs from the project on Younity4Action’s YouTube channel. Included are:

• The digital storybook created from and containing all of the youth-led creative outputs
• The River of Hope animation detailing the project
• A short film about the project
• A film focused on the showcase event including the full original water puppetry performance
• An info-animation created to respond to community needs to understand the role of the electro dams including their benefits and potential challenges resulting from climate change and you can also view this to see how the project uses creativity to support community resilience building.