Social impact of climate change on coastal communities in Vinh Long province

Abstract

This study applies the social impact factor (SIF) to assess the extent of climate change (CC) impacts on vulnerable communities in the coastal areas of Vinh Long province. The research approach combined spatial statistical interpolation using kriging with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to construct and quantify the SIF, a metric that reflects social vulnerability. The SIF which includes three main components: exposure (E), sensitivity (S), and adaptive capacity (AC). The research findings indicated that the social impact of climate change tends to increase, with approximately 63% of surveyed households falling within the SIF range of -0.08 to 0.21, corresponding to a high level of social impact.. The group experiencing very high social impacts (SIF ranging from 0.25 to 0.47) accounts for about 6% of the total surveyed households, representing those with the lowest capacity to adapt to climate change impacts. In addition, the results of spatial interpolation analysis indicate that most of the rice cultivation areas were affected by saltwater intrusion, with Tra Cu Commune (15,515 ha) being the most severely impacted, while Truong Long Hoa ward and Long Huu Commune was not affected as rice is not cultivated in this area. These results demonstrated that climate change has contributed to increasing social vulnerability, particularly among disadvantaged population groups with low adaptive capacity.