Coping with the Changing Climate through Farming Adaptation

“Yard-long bean is just one of the vegetables I grow, and the only vegetable left after the first part of the dry season.”   Other vegetables she has produced include; cucumbers, morning glory, amaranth, and moringa. Through she expects that she will have to stop producing vegetables during the driest part of the year she hopes to replant her garden shortly after May when the rains return and even has plans to expand, planting several fruit trees including coconut, mango, and jackfruit on a hectare close to their village in late April or early May of this year. 

 Neak Sopheap, 46, lives in coastal island based community, Koh Srolao in Koh Kong Province. She lives at home with her two children who are primary and secondary schools students. Currently her husband has migrated and is working at a far from home orchard while in the past he commonly spent multiple months living at sea and working as a fisherman in order to bring home a livelihood.  

 A smart lady like Sopheap has never let an hour pass without taking action. For the sake of her family and the hope to make additional income, she decided to participate the Disaster Resilient through Improved Education and Livelihoods (DRIEL) project as a DREAM household.   This project has received the financial support from Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade New Zealand (MFAT), Czech Development Agency, and covers a wide range of activities targeting vulnerable coastal working closely with them to start to build community resilience. To date 254 families are DREAM households living in 20 villages across Koh Kong province. The overall objective of the project is to ensure that coastal communities from sub-national government structures to households have strong capacity and ability to cope with the changing climate and alternative livelihoods which allow them to further diversity the income which they generate in order to building overall community resilience.

 “Before we earned a living solely based on income we could generate from the ocean. But over recent years the income we generated from fishing and crabbing has significantly declined and we could not earn enough to support or a day to day basic needs.  Additionally we owed lot of money to for the fishing equipment which we always needed to purchase.”

 According to village chief, Mr. Chheang, 52, Sopheaps case is fairly common in costal island,  that people owe money for fishing equipment suppliers and the output and money they earn from fishing is often not  enough for daily food let alone pay back the debt incurred from fishing nets and others equipment.

 Sopheap’s family is one of the 19 families selected to participate in the project from Koh Srolao. The project has made available several alternative livelihood options for integrated farming including chicken, ducks, pigs raising, small home garden production, and even training on development of cash crops such as fruit and nut trees. Participants receive a grant equal to around $30 USD when taking part in a training to alleviate some of the initial risk associated with starting a new livelihood initiative.  

 More important the project equips them with needed knowledge and ongoing support in order to start and sustain their alternative livelihood.  In Sopheaps case using the knowledge she received from training provided by the project she learned techniques allowing to further develop her home garden.  She then made use of abandoned land behind her home, approximately 20 x 60-meters, to enlarge her home garden which she utilized to earn additional income from selling vegetables, chickens and ducks.  On average Sopheas says that she is earning 600,000 riel ($150) in additional income per month.  “Enough to support the ongoing studies of my children, pay off some of her debt and purchase other most needed supplies such as fish, meat and rice.”

 “I will continue applying the new knowledge of improving my livelihoods. I am confident that these new opportunities will be able to help me support my two other children until they finish university,” said Sopheap.