Chamale Cup and his family would normally be busy at this time of the year preparing land to plant once the first rains arrive in Ninh Thuan province, already one of Viet Nam’s most impoverished. 

Instead, Viet Nam’s most severe drought in more than 60 years has left Chamale’s family and more than 1.75 million people in 18 provinces facing the loss of their livelihoods, with 1.1 million in need of food assistance and estimated economic loses amounting to USD671 million as of 15 June, 2016.

For Chamale, the drought is set to result in a second consecutive rice harvest failure, while it has already claimed the family’s two cows, half of its goats and chickens.

He told a FAO-led assessment mission, the second just completed in the worst affected areas currently in a state of emergency due in part to the 2015/16 El Niño weather phenomenon, the family had been forced to take out a loan to get by.

“If we are not able to pay the loan back, we will lose half of our irrigated land as it was assigned as a mortgage to receive credit,” said the Ray Lay ethnic minority man, who admitted he may be forced to migrate to a nearby city to look for construction work if the drought continued.

Further south in the Mekong Delta, 49-year-old farmer Ms. Nguyen Thi Dam also faces some tough choices.

Last October, hard work had seen her raise 40 ducks and 240,000 shrimp fingerlings within 2.6 hectares of cultivation fields. However, the FAO team found the drought had wiped out all her shrimp and 28 ducks within one month due to high levels of saltwater intrusion and salinity in the usually bountiful Mekong Delta.

“Life is also become more and more difficult as we have no access to water for daily usage,” said Nguyen.

These personal insights into the human cost of the drought point to the increased vulnerabilities of people usually considered less prone to impacts of such disasters.  

The FAO-led in-depth assessment mission to 54 villages, in collaboration with World Food Program, UN Women and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, examined the agriculture, food security and livelihoods needs of the Central Highlands (Dak Lak and Gia Lai provinces), Mekong Delta (Ben Tre and Kien Giang) and South Central (Binh Thuan and Ninh Thuan) regions ravaged by the drought and saltwater intrusion.

Of all households interviewed, 40 percent had received some assistance from at least one source to compensate for losses from the ongoing drought, with the Vietnamese Government and charity groups the primary assistance deliverers.

The mission, following a first one during 21-24 March in response to a Vietnamese Government request for FAO and partners to utilize expertise to assess and recommend interventions in agricultural sub-sectors, also found that households’ capacity to cope with drought was largely dependent on capital ownership and financial resources.  Of households not reached by external aid, small-scale and agriculture-based ones were found to be the most vulnerable. With limited human capital and technical resources, these poorer households have mortgaged land or borrowed cash to purchase agricultural inputs. Failure to harvest crops and generate income during the past two crop seasons have exposed them to an extreme scenario with limited coping capacity.

While numerous short, medium and long-term interventions will be announced once data gathered during the second mission is analyzed, FAO and its partners are already working on ways to support the worst affected communities.

With support from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund, FAO in July will distribute seeds and fertilizers to the most affected households in Ca Mau, Gia Lai, Kien Giang and Ninh Thuan provinces to restore livelihoods and strengthen food security. FAO is also developing a pilot drought index in Ninh Thuan to improve agricultural drought monitoring and early warning systems.

Such responses are vital, as more than 600 000ha of crops could be seriously affected by July. At present, a total of 477 113ha of cropland have been damaged, the fisheries and aquaculture sector has been severely hit and animals (poultry, pigs, buffaloes) have died, registered uncommon levels of sickness and migrated. Most importantly, it is essential to address the medium and long-term challenges caused by climate change and strengthen the resilience of communities to future shocks, protecting livelihoods and ensuring food security.