ASSESSMENT OF RESILIENCE OF THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT TO CLIMATE CHANGE: A CASE STUDY FOR THE NORTH CENTRAL REGION

Abstract

Viet Nam is considered one of the countries most affected by climate change (CC).
Climate change is increasingly causing serious impacts on the natural environment in eight agricultural
ecological regions of Vietnam, including: Northwest, Northeast, Northern Delta, North Central, South Central, Highland, Southeast and Southwest regions. In order to identify solutions to cope with climate change for these ecological regions, assessing the resilience of the natural environment is very important. Therefore, this paper aimed at researching and developing a methodology for calculating indicator sets that reflect/assess the resilience of the natural environment to climate change and conducted pilot calculations for the North Central region (including 06 provinces: Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien Hue) in 2017. The three main indicators that constitute the resilience of natural environment of the Northern Central region are: (i) The diversity of natural environment, (ii) flexible management of the natural environment and (iii) the ability to continue providing ecosystem services of the natural environment of the North Central region. The results of those indicators were 0.42, 0.45 and 0.41 respectively and the indicator of resilience of natural environment of the North Central Coast in 2017 was 0.42. The result represents the resilience of the natural environment in the North Central region is comparatively not high and there is a need for adaptive measures which prioritize the ability to provide ecosystem services because that indicator was currently at the lowest value (= 0.42) among the three indicators.
      Keywords: Resilience, natural environment, indicators.