The Second International Workshop on PISVinh City, December 18

Socio-economic and spatially assessment of the impact climate-induced disasters

Olivier Rubin, rubin@ruc.dk Department of Society and Globalisation,

Roskilde University

Publications

• Rubin, O. (2015). The Burden of Excessive “Linking Social Capital”: Evidence from Four Vietnamese Provinces. Asian Journal of Social Science, 43(6), 760-785.

• Bruun, O. & Rubin, O. (2015). Introduction - The Social Dimensions of Disasters. Asian Journal of Social Science, 43(6), 671-683.

• Rubin, O. (2014). Social vulnerability to climate-induced natural disasters: cross-provincial evidence from Vietnam. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 55(1), 67-80.

Vulnerability

• Disasters=hazard*exposure*vulnerability

• Understanding social vulnerability as a function of various socio-economic factors is not to deny the importance of physical vulnerability.

• The article introduces a model where the number of people killed by natural disasters (output vulnerability) is dependent on various socio-economic indicators.

Vulnerability

• District-level data. Tried to capture the disaggregated variations that are normally obscured by national statistics.

• Such variations are particularly important with respect natural disasters that often primarily have local consequences.

Vulnerability

Vulnerability

1. ln(disaster fatalities/10,000)

(N=60)

2. . ln(disaster fatalities/10,000)

(Reduced form, N=57)

3. . ln(economic losses/capita)

(Reduced form, N=60)

Variable B SE B Β B SE B Β B SE B Β

Ln(house damage/capita) .49 .08 .59* .47 .07 .58* .47 .08 .47*

Inequality ratio .35 .17 .19** .32 .15 .19**

Ln(income/capita) -2.5 .49 -.49* -2.53 .84 -.51* .-5.19 .82 -.73*

Infant mortality/capita .05 .03 .25***

Urban share .03 .01 .29** .05 .01 .37*

Simple house -.11 .02 -.49*

River dummy 1.47 0.47 .31*

R2 .54 .64 .70

Vulnerability

• The analysis suggests socio-economic indicators matter in explaining variations in provincial natural disaster fatalities per capita.

• The different models account for between 50-60 percent of natural disaster variability across provinces even without accounting for the exposure to natural hazards.

Vulnerability

• Vulnerability to climate-induced disasters should extend beyond increases in natural hazards from climate change (or environmental degradation) to encompass changes in Vietnam’s socio-economic fabric.

• One should not only consider DRM in terms of geophysical problems of increased physical vulnerability.

• Policies that address more deep-rooted development issues such as poverty, inequality and access to quality housing are thus likely to substantially lower vulnerability to climate-induced disasters – irrespectively of the variation (both temporal and spatial) of natural hazards.

• Flooding was the dominant natural hazard stress factor for vulnerable households in the provinces.

• Only 1% of the households surveyed declared that floods had no adverse impacts on their livelihoods, while 80% categorized themselves as being highly vulnerable to floods.

• The interviewed households complained that traditional coping strategies, such as elevated in-house storage facilities and conduits to protect against saturation, were no longer sufficient protection against floods that they considered to be more severe, faster (flash floods) and out of sync with the usual weather patterns

Vulnerability to flooding

Social dimension of vulnerability

• Bonding social capital describes close connections within a homogenous group of people that are often based on kinship and reciprocity. Social cooperation within a group produces synergies that exceed what members of the group could have achieved on their own.

• Bridging social capital describes more distant connections between people who are dissimilar in terms of their socio-economic status.

• Linking social capital is commonly defined along the lines of personal institutionalized relationships that connect agents across unequal positions of power and authority

Respondents rating of possible sources of disaster relief (1= irrelevant; 5=very important)

Social dimension of vulnerability

• An impressive rate of 93% of respondents reported receiving support from the local authorities during years when flooding struck.

• 95% of households answered that their membership of formal associations were useful.

• While more than 80% of respondents rated aid from relatives and neighbors as irrelevant during disasters, only 30% found aid from local authorities to be irrelevant.

Social dimension of vulnerability

• Strong local authorities foster a high degree of interaction with communities in disaster settings (e.g., a high stock of linking social capital).

• This is good - but the interactions should also be conducive to community participation, synergetic cooperation and risk sharing at the local level

• Authorities should be better at activating bonding social capital. It appears underutilized.

Social dimension of vulnerability

• According to the World Value Survey 2014 more than half of the surveyed Vietnamese expressed the view that most people can be trusted.

• In other East Asia countries (Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia) the average is only one-third.

• 88 percent of people disagreed with the statement that "people here look out mainly for the welfare of their own families and they are not much concerned with community welfare” => high degree of bonding capital

• Authorities need to activate this bonding social capital better.• One important venue is through the Disaster and Participatory

Information System.

Social dimension of vulnerability