Search

The article analyzes the interpretation of Fr. Alexander Men (1935-1990) of Buddhism as teaching of the “Axial Age”. It is based on his seven-volume work “History of Religion: In Search of the Way, Truth and Life” (1970-1983). First defines the methodology used by Fr. Alexander, which is comparative and hermeneutic in nature. At the same time, he proceeds from a theistic-Christian value position, which, nevertheless, allows him respectfully treats other religious-philosophical traditions. The originality of the author’s interpretation of Buddhism is determined, both its adequate features and one-sided, set by the value orientation. The concepts of transcendence and transcendent are differentiated, which allows conducting a comparative analysis of Buddhism and Christianity, assessments given by Fr. Alexander. The denial of the transcendent in Buddhism does not mean the absence of transcendence, especially in understanding the status of nirvana, which is defined purely apophatically. In the Indian worldview, he finds five essential principles that make Buddhism and Christianity related, despite all the difference in their positions: apophaticism, denial of the highest value of earthly goods, recognition of the high dignity of personal asceticism in spiritual life, the concept of “karma” as retribution (it is the aspect of retribution that is emphasized), the idea of salvation-liberation as the main goal of religion. These principles, in his opinion, “constitute a strong bridge connecting Eastern religious experience with the Gospel”. The work of A. Men contributes to the expansion of the cultural horizon, liberation from both nationalist and Eurocentric points of view, contributes to the development of a dialogue that is so necessary right now. It is noted that the “Axial Age” concept by K. Jaspers as a whole allows avoiding one-sided assessments, revealing the common source of all axial teachings, which can be defined as “a breakthrough to the transcendent”.

In April 2016, four provinces of Vietnam were struck by one of the largest manmade environmental incidents in Vietnam. Through a discharge of toxic chemicals by Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation, oceanic waters along Vietnam’s central coast were severely polluted. Consequently, the livelihoods of over 510,000 people living in coastal communities were severely affected by the Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation incident (FHS incident). This study focusses on ex-ante and ex-post differences in livelihoods, and the subjective resilience of small-fishery households affected by the FHS incident in Hải Dương commune, a small coastal community, in central Vietnam. This was done through a qualitative analysis of livelihood strategies and resilience capacities of the affected households. Semi-structured interviews (n = 30), expert interviews (n = 3) and secondary data analysis were conducted from March to May 2018 employing a case study approach. Results show that the level of subjective resilience was strongly affected by a combination of social, financial, and human capitals. The presence, or lack, of these capitals combined with contextual factors influenced the livelihood strategies a household could pursue. Households that were able to pursue a combination of intensifying and diversifying livelihood strategies were most successful in recovering from and adjusting to the environmental incident. Households with restrained access to livelihood capitals were limited to intensifying livelihood strategies, having no real other option than persistence and increased dependence on government subsidies. Lastly, migration as a livelihood strategy and subsequent transformative resilience capacities remained generally low.

This study investigated the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on livelihoods of households with migration workers, who returned home to the central coastal region during the peak disease outbreak in Vietnam. Five hundred and twenty-nine households with returned migration workers aged eighteen and above in the coastal areas of Quảng Bình, Quảng Trị, and Thừa Thiên Huế provinces participated in this study. Results showed that the livelihoods of all studied households were highly vulnerable due to impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, with almost 90% at moderate or high risk according to the vulnerability index. All livelihood assets were negatively affected, and financial, psychological, and social assets were the most affected, with Common Vulnerability Score System scores of 3.65, 3.39, and 3.17, respectively. Male, younger workers, or those with a lower education level and fewer social networks were found to be more vulnerable than others. This study suggests that young laborers could aim to attain a higher level of education and/or practical skills to be able to obtain stable employment with benefits such as social insurance if they desire to out-migrate. Further, social programs which allow for migration workers at the destination to meet each other may have positive impacts on their vulnerability.

To what level are ethnic minority farmers aware of climate change and the importance of their adaptive capacity? This study was conducted in two mountainous districts of Thua Thien Hue province, Vi...

This study was conducted to reinforce the hypothesis that ecotourism in Quang Loi commune’s lagoon created differences in income and lagoon resource protection of different beneficiary groups. Data was collected through secondary sources, 3 key informant interviews and interviews of 62 households in three household groups: tourism service, fishing, and aquaculture households. The results reveal that ecotourism services in Quang Loi commune started in 2010 and thrive since 2017, relying on the advantages of the local natural resources. Local community organized and provided tourism services such as: sightseeing on the lagoon, fishing experience, dining and accommodation, and some other services. By joining such services, labors in ecotourism service households earned 39.07 million VND/ year, which significant contributed to improve household’s income. Ecotourism service households, therefore, had higher income than that of fishing group and aquaculture group (85.15 compared to 72.29 and 60 million VND, respectively; p value < 0.05). The lagoon environmental protection activities such as: lagoon night patrol, waste collection, propaganda and advocating for lagoon environmental protection, etc. were paid more attention by the local community since the development of ecotourism. Similarly, there was a significant higher participation time of tourism service households in the above activities in comparison with the rest groups (p value < 0.05). The lagoon environment and resources was assessed to be improved by local residents. This result implicates that ecotourism development is a suitable strategy to improve the local people's livelihood and Tam Giang lagoon resources protection currently.

Social learning is crucial for local smallholder farmers in developing countries to improve their adaptive capacity and to adapt to the current and projected impacts of climate change. While it is widely acknowledged that social learning is a necessary condition for adaptation, few studies have systematically investigated under which conditions particular forms of social learning are most successful in improving adaptive capacity of the most vulnerable groups. This study aims to design, implement and evaluate a social learning configuration in a coastal community in Vietnam. We make use of various methods during four workshop-based interventions with local smallholder farmers: interviews with key farmers and commune leaders, farmer-to-farmer learning, participatory observations and focus group discussions. The methods for evaluation of social learning configuration include in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and structured survey interviews. Our findings show that the social learning configuration used in this study leads to an increased problem ownership, an enhanced knowledge-base with regard to climate change impacts and production adaptation options, improved ability to see connections and interdependencies and finally, strengthened relationships and social cohesion. The results suggest that increased social learning in the community leads to increase in adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers and improves both their economic and environmental sustainability. We discuss the key lessons for designing learning configurations that can successfully enhance adaptive capacity and smallholder farmers’ agency and responsiveness to the challenges posed by climate change impacts.

Climate change as expressed by erratic rainfall, increased flooding, extended droughts, frequency tropical cyclones or saline water intrusion, poses severe threats to smallholder farmers in Vietnam. Adaptation of the agricultural sector is vital to increase the resilience of smallholder farmers’ livelihoods in times of climate change. To complement efforts already implemented by farmers to reduce social vulnerability it is important to understand how farmers perceive their current and future capacity to adapt to climate change. This paper aims to explore smallholder farmers’ capacity to respond to climate change in current and future agricultural production. We carried out open, in-depth interviews (n = 13), focus group discussions, and structured interviews (n = 114) in the Thua Thien Hue province. Our findings show that farmers nowadays experience more extreme climate variability. Farmers report increasing stresses due to temperature increase and droughts. The autonomous adaptation strategies adopted by farmers include; adjusting the season calendar, using tolerant varieties and breeds, applying integrated crop production models, and income diversification. The motives for adopting particular planned adaptation options differ between farmers in crop production and livestock production. Four factors were found to be significant (p < .05) in influencing the spread of adaptation measures (AMs) farmers adopted: farm income, the number of available information sources, number of workers on the farm, and farmable land available during the summer season. Farmers report several barriers to implement adaptation strategies including; market price fluctuations, lack of skilled labour, lack of climate change information, and lack of capacity to learn and apply techniques in their daily practice. While both crop and livestock farmers participated in one or several training courses on climate change in the past years, livestock farmers were still uncertain about their future capacity and possible AMs.

Successful implementation climate change adaptation depends to a large extent on the capabilities of individuals, organizations, and communities to create and mobilize the adaptive capacity (AC) of their socio-ecological system. Creating and mobilizing AC is a continuous process that requires social learning (SL). Although rich with empirical cases, the literature theorizing and empirically investigating the relationship between AC and SL is highly fragmented. This paper aims to critically examine the peer-reviewed literature that focusses on SL and AC in the context of climate change adaptation (CCA). Special attention is paid to the interplay between the two. Understanding this interplay can help improve our understanding of how CCA takes place in practice and advances theoretical debates on CCA. Systematic review methods are used to analyse 43 papers (1997–2016). Our findings reveal three perspectives that each play an important role in different contexts: an AC-focused perspective, a SL-focused perspective, and a hybrid perspective. These differences in conceptualizations of the relationship between SL and AC may seem trivial at first, but they have consequences for the design of learning-based interventions aimed at helping communities respond to climate change. It appears that such interventions need to be preceded by an analysis of the climate change context in order to decide whether to emphasize AC, SL or both simultaneously.

Climate change has seriously affected agriculture and many aspects of the life of local people in the Vietnam Mekong Delta (VMD). Learning to shift towards sustainable development to successfully adapt to climate change is essential. The VACB (V&mdash, garden/orchard, A&mdash, fishing farm, C&mdash, livestock farm, B&mdash, biogas) model is considered one of the best approaches and methods to adapt to climate change in the VMD. This paper aims to explore the transformative social learning and sustainable development associated with this model in terms of agricultural transformation for sustainability to climate change adaptation in the VMD. The mixed methods approach that guided the data collection included focus group discussions, in-depth interviews with key informants and household surveys. Our findings show that there are three learning processes associated with transformative social learning linked to the VACB model: instrumental, communicative and emancipatory learning. Farmers reported increased knowledge and improved relationships and efficiency when applying the VACB model using several learning channels, both formal and informal. Farmers highlighted six factors that influenced transformative social learning during the adoption and development of the VACB model and several barriers to implementing adaptation strategies to climate change in an attempt to upscale the VACB model.

Governments fulfil important roles in increasing the adaptive capacity of local communities to respond to climate change impacts, particularly in developing countries. Existing studies on how governments enable and constrain the ways in which local level communities learn and build their adaptive capacity, however, generally adopt network or market-oriented types of governance. However, the most vulnerable regions to climate change impact in the world are generally governed through hierarchical policy systems. This research aims to understand how the hierarchical policy system in Vietnam creates enables and/or constrains the policy capacity of policy actors to contribute to effective climate change adaptation. We conducted interviews (n = 26) with key actors at multiple levels of government. Our findings show the importance of clear legal institutions, available financing for implementing policies, and the training of governmental staff, particularly at district and commune levels where the policy capacities are generally too low to deal with climate change impacts. We conclude that any efforts to support local actors (i.e. smallholder farmers) should include investments in policy capacity to ensure uptake and upscaling of adaptation actions more broadly.