Publications

Coastal aquaculture, particularly brackish water shrimp farming, plays an important role in the
socio-economic development of most coastal communities on the North Central Coast (NCC) of
Vietnam. However, coastal aquaculture in the region is among the activities most affected by
increasing global climate change, which threatens sustainable development of the fisheries
sector, as well as food security of the country. Within the action plan framework for adaptation
and mitigation for climate change in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the
CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS),
climate-smart aquaculture (CSA) trials have been conducted in Hoang Phong commune, Thanh
Hoa province in 2015 by WorldFish, the Vietnam Institute of Economics and Planning (VIFEP)
and Thanh Hoa Agriculture Extension Center (TEC). In the farm-level climate-smart aquaculture
trials, tilapia was raised in rotation with tiger shrimp, mud-crab and seaweed in a traditional
extensive aquaculture system. Initial results show that the aqua-smart practice under the CSA
approach is a “triple win” for local aquaculture farmers through: (1) sustainably improving
aquaculture productivity and farming efficiency of the current production system; (2) increasing
adaptive capacity and resilience of coastal aquaculture to climate change; and (3) contributing to
climate change mitigation. However, a number of constraints, such as lack of high-quality fish
seed and feeds, low market uptake for tilapia and uncertainty from extreme climate events,
should be considered in scaling out the aqua-smart practice throughout the region.