Tropentag, October 5 - 7, 2011 in Bonn "Development on the margin"

The Immediate Social-economic Impacts of an Implemented Project in Northern Vietnam (Lang Son, Cao Bang)

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Institute of Tropics and Subtropics, Czech Republic

Abstract

The survey is dealing with the immediate real impacts of already implemented project “Support of freshwater fish farming in the mountain areas (Vietnam)”. Project was financed by the Czech Ministry of Agriculture under the heading of official development assistance and lasted for three years. The overall objective of survey was to find out the immediate real impact of above mentioned development project in social and economic sphere on involved people. The specific objectives were focused on the overall situation of mountainous regions and most pressing problems hindering the development and also on aid´s beneficiaries in terms of knowledge (technology) dissemination among other people living in regions and thus contribution to poverty reduction and development. The research consisted of primary data collection done in the last phase of the project realisation. Since the respondents and the area present a specific environment also the combination of used approaches was necessary to implement. Research thus stands in between the qualitative and quantitative approach with the sociological empirical research as the main used method. The final results show that even though the project just ended, it already had several impacts which are already visible. Among most important impacts which were already possible measure belongs the income improvement, wider structure of activities related to improvement of living standards etc. Also it was possible to observe that some of the involved people are no longer dependent on project´s support and they already preparing for next production period from their own assets. In the social sphere had the project many interrelated impacts. One of the most important things was the persistence of the good relations with families measured by the time spent together, good labour distribution among cooperative´s members who share new responsibilities equally, willingness to continue with aquaculture and improve the current standards and also to share the new knowledge to other people in regions. There were already measured several more impacts, these impacts will be however more remarkable after longer period of time and they should be again surveyed. Then they can contribute to a better understanding of the Vietnamese society and contribute to future successful project realisations.

Keywords: Aquaculture, cage culture and culture based fishery (CBS), cooperatives, evaluation, income, Northern Vietnam, social capital, sociological empirical research

Contact Address: Veronika Jelinkova, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Institute of Tropics and Subtropics, Department of Economic Development, Kamýcká 129, 165 21 Prague 6, Czech Republic, e-mail: jelinkovavits.czu.cz