An online Indigenous Knowledge Database on Climate Change Adaptation of Farmers in the Vietnam Mekong Delta
Article information
Abstract
Background and objective
For countries vulnerable to climate change as Vietnam, indigenous knowledge (IK) might assist in revealing the values of local people’s adaptations to environmental stresses and potentially support decision-making. Despite IK can provide the adaptive capacity of local people’s activities within environmental contexts, but it is rapidly vanishing. This study aimed to describe the documentation of IK associated with climate change adaptation of farmers in the Vietnam Mekong Delta (VMD).
Methods
We focused on collecting and establishing online access to IK documents through collaboration between IK holders, public sector, collecting institutions, and researchers in the five agro-ecological zones of the VMD. An online IK database for storing IK documents has been designed and implemented based on the web application schema.
Results
Through interviews, we gathered IK from farming practices that are well-adapted to climate risks such as floods, droughts, and saltwater intrusions as well as traditional knowledge being used to forecast weather, flood, and saltwater intrusion. The database for storing IK documents has been successfully deployed using free and open-source software. The database currently contains more than 260 IK documents, with their location on agro-ecological zones displayed on a web-based map.
Conclusion
We have captured and provided an online access to IK on climate change adaptation of the farmers in the VMD. This research is expected as an initial strategy for long-term sustainable development of the agriculture system in this region.
Introduction
Vietnam is one of the few countries in the world that has been seriously influenced by climate change due to its topography and reliance on agriculture (McElwee et al., 2010). Climate change has become a major source of concern for Vietnam’s smallholder farmers, who rely mostly on agricultural production (Le et al., 2018; McElwee et al., 2010). The VMD plays a critical role in contributing to food security and socio-economic sectors (Dinh et al., 2012). However, the Delta is strongly influenced by climate change (Dang et al., 2014). Drought, saltwater intrusion, and flooding are becoming more frequent and severe, negatively affecting crop yields and aquaculture in this region (Nguyen et al., 2019). To mitigate the effects of extreme weather events, local people have implemented adaptation strategies based on traditional knowledge such as changing their agriculture practices and lifestyles by often conducting comprehensive observations of their surroundings, sharing their experiences, and collaborating on their plans (Hosen et al., 2019, 2020).
According to the literature, local knowledge, traditional knowledge, and IK are frequently used interchangeably. IK refers to the knowledge of a given community. It serves as the basis for local decision-making in various domains such as agriculture, aquaculture, weather forecast, resource utilization, among others (Warren, 1991). According to the study of Berks et al. (2000), IK is understood as the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples that is transmitted orally from one generation to the next and resides primarily in the minds of native people. Moreover, IK is an adaptation knowledge system gathered through generations of social-ecological connections in a certain location, including knowledge, practices, abilities, and creativity relating to various domains (Reyes-Garcia, 2015).
Recent studies have demonstrated successes utilizing IK on climate change adaptation from Vietnam (Ho et al., 2019; Ho and Kingsbury, 2020; Huynh et al., 2020; Nguyen et al., 2019; Tran et al., 2014), and other parts of the world (Mabula and Abdeta, 2020; Hosen et al., 2020; Kangalawe et al., 2011; Kupika et al., 2019; McNamara and Westoby, 2011; Nursey-Bray et al., 2019). For instance, the study of Ho et al. (2019) conducted in central Vietnam in which the Xo Dang ethnic group was acutely aware of the threats from climate change to its livelihoods and has modified its present adaptation practices. The major adaptation strategies included using plant and animal indicators for weather forecasts, indigenous varieties, crop calendar modification, irrigation practices, and the utilization of inter-cropping systems. In Botswana, IK and adaptation practices have been determined by research as the best solutions for dealing with growing issues of climate change (Mabula and Abdeta, 2020). Indeed, the study of Hosen et al. (2020) in Malaysian Borneo found that local knowledge assists households in responding more effectively to climate threats and encourages resilience in social and natural systems.
Despite its importance and adaptability, IK is rapidly vanishing due to some causes, including a lack of IK conservation regulations (Hernández-Morcillo et al., 2014), a shortage of multigenerational transference as well as a process strengthened by culture transmission (Tang and Gavin, 2016). Preservation of IK is crucial because it guarantees the knowledge of communities is passed along to future generations. If IK is not documented and conserved, it will be lost when elderly and traditional elders in communities die, rendering it inaccessible to younger people and other groups. IK might be documented in various forms, ranging from unreported documents, photos, and videos to academic works including journal articles, books, and databases. Once IK has been documented, it is essential to implement access mechanisms. Given its significance, several international studies on aiming to collect and preserve IK have been conducted in a database, including indigenous biocultural knowledge (Pert et al., 2015), weather and climate IK (Chambers et al., 2017), agricultural IK (Okello-Obura, 2018). These databases stored IK in various data types such as text, graphic, audio, video, and geographic data. In Vietnam, IK on climate change adaptation has attracted researchers to discover, investigate and preserve it in several forms. However, according to our knowledge, there has never been an online IK database on climate change adaptation in the VMD. In this research, we aimed to establish an online IK database on adapting climate change through the collaborative collection and documentation of farmers’ adaptation practices in the Delta.
Research Methods
Study site selection
The VMD is Vietnam’s largest agricultural region, covering a region of over 40,500 square kilometers. This Delta has a population of more than 17.2 million people (General Statistics Office, 2020a). The majority of residents in the VMD rely on agricultural and aquacultural productions as their primary source of livelihoods. The VMD was chosen as the study area because it has been regarded as one of the regions’ climate change vulnerabilities in Southeast Asia (Yusuf and Francisco, 2009). Weather extremes and probable changes in the storm-current regime have a significant impact on the VMD (Adger, 1999). An Giang and Kien Giang that are two provinces in the VMD (Fig. 1) were selected as study sites because of their importance in agricultural production and aquaculture of the Delta (General Statistics Office, 2020b).
Location of the study and its natural features.
Based on physical geographic features and water sources, the VMD can be classified into distinct agro-ecological zones such as four major agro-ecological zones (Vo et al., 2018), into six agro-ecological zones (Le et al., 2005) and nice agro-ecological zones (Nguyen et al., 2012). According to Nguyen et al. (2012), the water sources in the VMD are mainly the basic characteristic of the nine agro-ecological zones. This study attempted to investigate and document IK on climate change adaptation from farmers in communities in five of the nine agro-ecological zones, including the low mountain zone, the riverside plain zone, the open flooding zone, the low coastal plain zone, and the low-lying coastal plain zone. In these five agro-ecological zones, we have selected seven districts, in which four districts (Tinh Bien, Tri Ton, An Phu and Cho Moi) of the An Giang province and three districts (Hon Dat, Go Quao and An Minh) belonged to the Kien Giang province. These districts were selected as sites (Fig. 1) to collect IK due to their primary agro-ecological characteristics of the VMD.
IK collection and documentation
IK can be documented, preserved, and made accessible to future generations in local communities by using information technology. However, IK practices are continually regenerated because they are dynamic. As a result, any effort to organize, transmit, or preserve this knowledge, therefore, necessitates continued cooperation involving IK holders, gathering institutes, and academics. To recover and transmit IK, investigators need to explore the most effective approaches to recognize and capture IK in collaboration with the knowledge’s owners while keeping its characteristics. Therefore, we organized a cooperative project comprising scholars, archivist colleagues from the university, and public sectors to conduct collecting and documenting IK. We applied a combination of methods including secondary data, semi-structured interview, focus group discussion (FGD), structured interview, and documentation (Fig. 2).
The research design for collecting and documenting IK.
We have collected secondary data, including various statistical and annual reports on natural disaster damages, floods, saltwater intrusions, weather (temperature, droughts, and rainfall), and socio-economic development from 2015 to 2019 in the An Giang and Kien Giang provinces. Field trips were carried out from August to September 2020. Each field trip included semi-structured interviews with officials from the district’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and the People’s Committee of communes. The content of the interview is related to natural conditions, farming models, the history of extreme weather events, vulnerable regions due to their impacts, the abilities and adaptation of farmers to deal with climate change. This information enabled us to develop research ideas, such as selecting communes and farming models to discover IK.
Next, we organized two focus group discussions (FGD) in each agro-ecological zone. Each FGD was conducted with 7 to 10 knowledgeable people, aged from 40 to 70, both male and female. The participants are farmers with long-term farming experiences such as hamlet heads and elders. In the FGDs, we used tools including historical events, seasonal calendar, and different types of questions to clarify data collected by previous sources (secondary data and semi-structured interview) and acquire information on multiple issues relevant to climate change in crop cultivation, aquaculture, climate threats and their effects. After collecting and classifying information from FGDs, the structured interview was designed for collecting IK among farmers. The content of the interview was focused on the activities of farmers, the use of indigenous knowledge on climate change adaptation in agricultural practices. The language used in interviews was Vietnamese. Some of the Khmer spoke Vietnamese well. If the Khmer interviewee did not speak Vietnamese, the head of villages assisted to translate. To document IK from the structured interviews, we focused on storing, transmitting knowledge using web technologies to make it findable and accessible by designing and creating an online database.
Spatial data layers
Indigenous communities have utilized GIS technology to create maps of their historical farm usage and farm borders to generate land boundaries and improve connections between knowledge and ecosystems (Hunter, 2005). In addition, the internet and the GIS technology assisted to collect information that could encourage local communities and academics to work together to preserve and sustain indigenous biological and cultural knowledge (Pert et al., 2015). Furthermore, the IK database on weather in the Pacific (Chambers et al., 2017) and traditional agro-ecological knowledge (Calvet-Mir et al., 2018) have been illustrated on web-based maps with geographical search and mapping functions.
In this study, we have used multiple spatial data players in which two main players are location and agro-ecological zones layers. The location layer describes the primary location of IK. The agro-ecological zones layer reflects the interaction between physical factors (soil and water), farming models, and anthropological influences (land use planning and socio-economic development), leading to a complex process of land use changes. User-friendly interfaces for web-based maps have been designed and implemented to allow website and mobile users to access the location datasets represented on the map of agro-ecological zones.
Results and Discussion
Platform
The IK database was implemented with the following goals in mind: open-source, independent platform, reliability, simplicity of use, and the capacity to be handled properly with minimum technical competence. Fig. 3 illustrates the schema model of our online IK database, which has functions for adding, updating, and validating IK documents. Knowledge can be validated by academics or community members with similar knowledge. The IK database was designed to be independent of any computer system that may operate the selected free database server and web application server. We have used Laravel - the PHP framework, as well as other programming languages to build the web application served by the Apache server (web server). The mobile application was written in Dart, a general-purpose programming language, and Flutter toolkit. Dart and Flutter are open-source and developed by Google (Amadeo, 2017).
The schema model of the IK database including a web server running Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) and an OpenStreetMap (OSM) server.
We have chosen a relational database management system to store IK documents because it allows to maintain and search information through a user interface. This has been accomplished by utilizing the open-source database management system MySQL (MySQL, 2021), including the OpenGIS Geometry Model for storing, and analyzing geographic features such as locations and polygons. The VMD’s agro-ecological zones layer has been digitized in the QGIS platform then imported into the OpenGIS Geometry Model. Moreover, we also utilized OpenStreetMap (OSM) to represent more geographic information (OMS, 2021).
Content of the IK database
The IK database is created to store IK documents from the interviews. Each IK document contains the details of the interview (who delivered IK, when and where it was recorded and what media types were used), the IK restriction, interview information, including household resources, farming model, and IK on climate change adaptation. The IK including agricultural and aquacultural practices, forecasting weather, saltwater intrusion, and flood are handled in local languages and stored in various formats such as text, graphic, audio, or video files. The users of the IK database such as interviewers, researchers, farmers, IK holders, public sectors can add new IK documents, search, view, or update IK documents, depending on their permission status. Fig. 4 shows the extract of the survey form for adding a new IK document to the IK database.
An extract from the survey form to add a new IK document to the database.
In total, there are already 267 IK documents on https://mekongdelta.vn, demonstrating a large number of published IK documents gathered by numerous researchers in collaboration with IK holders across An Giang and Kien Giang provinces. Table 1 shows the summary of the IK database contents which are categorized by agro-ecological zones.
Summary of IK database contents
Website and mobile application of the IK database
The website of the IK database on climate change adaptation has been deployed at https://mekongdelta.vn (Fig. 5). Beside storing IK documents, it contains information about the project, investigation, and planning procedures. This website has significantly contributed to local groups’ knowledge of climate change adaptation practices through its associated searchable and visualized database, which promotes the utilization of existing knowledge and the development of new knowledge. The IK database website includes following pages:
A mapping user interface of database.
About: Describes project objectives as well as team members.
Register: Allows for online account registration.
IK management: Includes adding, updating, and validating IK documents.
Map: Chooses layers of spatial visualization from a georeferenced list.
Search: Filters IK data by farmer name, address, agro-ecological zone, and farming model.
Based on the principles in free and open-source software, we have developed an IK application for mobile management solution. The latest version of our Android IK application has been published on the Google Play Store. Our mobile application offers facilitation to interviewers and users to access and gather IK documents.
We conducted performance testing on Apache Jmeter (The Apache Software Foundation, 2021) to determine the responsiveness, reliability, throughput, and interoperability of the IK database website. Apache Jmeter has been performed on the home page, the login page, and the register page of the website with 200 threads of users in a duration of 20 seconds. The results of performance testing on the website in Table 2 show that the average response time is less than 0.2 second and the throughput of the IK database website is about 10 requests per second. The performance of the website is reasonable for an IK database. The response time of the HTTP request on the home page is lower than the two others because the web server has heavy processes on this request.
The results of performance testing on the IK database website
Discussion
Several researches in Vietnam indicated that successes in regarding and sharing IK on climate change adaptation might assist ethnic groups in the north mountain region in changing their farming systems to become more adaptable to climate change (Ho et al., 2019; Ho and Kingsbury, 2020). The IK of ethnic people in the central region plays a fundamental role in determining appropriate adaptation strategies in agricultural practices (Huynh et al., 2020). In addition, the IK also assists Khmer people in the low-lying coastal plain zone of the VMD adapt to climate risks (Nguyen et al., 2019). However, the preservation and continued application of IK on climate change adaptation remain obstacles because of the lack of collaboration among scientists, governmental sectors, and indigenous peoples (Ho et al., 2021). We hope that our database will provide a solution to overcome the challenges.
Based on the contents of IK of farmers in the riverside plain zone as in Table 1, we realized that some farmers in the Cho Moi district have lost IK concerning flood forecast, whereas farmers in the An Phu district still possess this IK. The reason for this is that the Cho Moi district has constructed full-dikes to clock floods for the past two decades, while the An Phu have only built semi-dikes. Therefore, the farmers in the An Phu district have used knowledge of flood forecasts every year during the flooding season. In addition, the Khmer farmers living in the low mountain zone mainly grow two/three rice crops or vegetable-rice intercrop on sandy soil. Therefore, they have IK to deal with the water shortage during the dry season, improve soil nutrients through rice-legume rotation and cow dung application, and use drought tolerant varieties such as legumes.
Furthermore, farmers in the Kien Giang province who reside along the coast in the open flooding and the coastal plain zones are openly affected by saltwater intrusion. Therefore, they possess indigenous knowledge in recognizing changes in water salinity through the color and clarity of the water as well as the expression of some fish and aquatic plants. In addition, they have chosen farming models that are well-adapted to the saltwater intrusion and drought such as pineapple-shrimp-rice crops, rice-shrimp crops. Particularly, some farmers in the Hon Dat district who participate in fish in sea after rice harvest possess IK in forecasting extreme weather events through indicators from star at night, shape of cloud, waves, as well as appearance and disappearance of fish, snail in the sea. As the climate continues to change, farmers should be encouraged to adopt farming practices that are adaptable to new environmental conditions. In this context, the IK database can serve one of the learning resources for communities.
Although our online IK database is a useful method for documentation and presentation of IK as well as collaboration of stakeholders. It is not without its limitations. Firstly, the emphasis on IK sharing cannot guarantee the intellectual property of knowledge holders. Secondly, the database needs to be a continual investment of time and effort to maintain the data. Thirdly, the knowledge gathered primarily focuses on farming models used in representative communes in the five of nine agro-ecological zones.
Conclusion
The online IK database on climate change adaptation from farmers in the VMD has been developed with collaboration between IK holders, public sector, collecting institutions, and researchers from the universities. With the aim to preserve IK and prevent their vanish through documenting and providing an online access, we have collected 267 IK documents from farming practices that are well-adapted to climate risks such as droughts, floods, and saltwater intrusions as well as the use of traditional knowledge to forecast weather, saltwater intrusion, and crop pest and diseases. The locations of IK have been displayed on agro-ecological zones through a web-based map. The online IK database has been established by using free and open-source software and runs on the online environment with reasonable responsiveness and reliability.
Based on our initial database, we will continue to collaborate with academics, local agriculture officials, and communities in the VMD to invite users to further utilize and contribute indigenous knowledge on climate change adaptation in order to improve the quantity and quality of information documented. As the climate continues to change, it becomes essential to encourage the use of indigenous knowledge in agricultural and aquaculture production.
Notes
This research is totally funded by Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City (VNUHCM) under Grant Number B2020-16-01, Vietnam.