Le Thi Trang, 48, a farmer in Ba Tien1 Village in the Mekong Delta's Tien Giang province, has long dreamt ofthe day her family has a house without a leaky roof.
Her dream is now coming true because she is now the owner of a thriving herd of 11 goats.
"I'll sell one or two male goats when they grow bigger to get money for repairs," she said.
Trang's family has six members. Her husband and son are seasonalbuilders, her daughter is a secondary-school student, and herdaughter-in-law just delivered a baby. The main income comes from herhusband and son.
Last April, Trang’s family was listed amongthe poorest households in the village, so she was given a pregnant goatfrom a programme to ease poverty.
Her goats are worth about 32 million VND (1,400 USD), and the amount rises quickly as the animals get older.
In the last two years, Tran Thi Cuc, a poor householder from northernThai Binh Province's Nam Thinh Commune, has learned how to grow a newtype of rice to adapt to climate change. The productivity of the newtype of rice is about 150 kilos per 360 sq.m, compared to about 50-60kilos for the old types of rice.
The new rice is salt tolerant and better adapts to cold weather.
In the first year, Cuc's family made about five times more than in previous years and quickly escaped from poverty.
Trang and Cuc are among 51,000 people living in coastal communes inthe provinces of Hai Phong, Thai Binh, Nam Dinh, Tra Vinh and TienGiang, who have benefited from a three-year project funded by theAustralian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The overallobjective of the project is to increase the resilience of the mostvulnerable people, especially women, living in coastal communes affectedby climate change by helping to improve their livelihoods.
Theproject, named Partnership for equitable resilience to the impacts ofclimate change of the coastal communities in deltas of Vietnam, was runby Oxfam and the Centre for Marine-life Conservation and CommunityDevelopment since the middle of 2012.
Nguyen Nhu Lien, head ofThai Binh Province's Agricultural Promotion Centre said the province wasseverely hit by climate change, threatening its crown as the "ricegranary of the North".
In 2007, when the average temperatureduring winter-spring temperatures were 2.5 degrees Celsius higher thanthe previous years due to climate change, the total rice yield fell toone tonne per hectare.
In the spring of 2012, prolonged coldweather lasting for 39 days also caused a big loss to the provincialrice yield, he said.
Many local fields are also slowly becoming saline due to rising seas.
After pilot households were so successful with the new types of rice, the province multiplied the model widely, he said.
Le Kim Dung, associate Country Director of Oxfam in Vietnam, said thatit would also continue working hard to support Vietnam coping withclimate change in the future.-VNA
Her dream is now coming true because she is now the owner of a thriving herd of 11 goats.
"I'll sell one or two male goats when they grow bigger to get money for repairs," she said.
Trang's family has six members. Her husband and son are seasonalbuilders, her daughter is a secondary-school student, and herdaughter-in-law just delivered a baby. The main income comes from herhusband and son.
Last April, Trang’s family was listed amongthe poorest households in the village, so she was given a pregnant goatfrom a programme to ease poverty.
Her goats are worth about 32 million VND (1,400 USD), and the amount rises quickly as the animals get older.
In the last two years, Tran Thi Cuc, a poor householder from northernThai Binh Province's Nam Thinh Commune, has learned how to grow a newtype of rice to adapt to climate change. The productivity of the newtype of rice is about 150 kilos per 360 sq.m, compared to about 50-60kilos for the old types of rice.
The new rice is salt tolerant and better adapts to cold weather.
In the first year, Cuc's family made about five times more than in previous years and quickly escaped from poverty.
Trang and Cuc are among 51,000 people living in coastal communes inthe provinces of Hai Phong, Thai Binh, Nam Dinh, Tra Vinh and TienGiang, who have benefited from a three-year project funded by theAustralian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The overallobjective of the project is to increase the resilience of the mostvulnerable people, especially women, living in coastal communes affectedby climate change by helping to improve their livelihoods.
Theproject, named Partnership for equitable resilience to the impacts ofclimate change of the coastal communities in deltas of Vietnam, was runby Oxfam and the Centre for Marine-life Conservation and CommunityDevelopment since the middle of 2012.
Nguyen Nhu Lien, head ofThai Binh Province's Agricultural Promotion Centre said the province wasseverely hit by climate change, threatening its crown as the "ricegranary of the North".
In 2007, when the average temperatureduring winter-spring temperatures were 2.5 degrees Celsius higher thanthe previous years due to climate change, the total rice yield fell toone tonne per hectare.
In the spring of 2012, prolonged coldweather lasting for 39 days also caused a big loss to the provincialrice yield, he said.
Many local fields are also slowly becoming saline due to rising seas.
After pilot households were so successful with the new types of rice, the province multiplied the model widely, he said.
Le Kim Dung, associate Country Director of Oxfam in Vietnam, said thatit would also continue working hard to support Vietnam coping withclimate change in the future.-VNA
