Vu Van Tuan, an MoNRE official and the report team leader, said the two worst hit provinces were likely to be Ninh Thuan and Khanh Hoa, where 35 percent of residents have lifted themselves out of poverty in the last decade while 19 percent have fallen below the poverty line. Another 4 percent of households said that they had moved in and out of poverty in the last decade, while 40 percent said their financial circumstances had remained unchanged.

Tuan said the poverty survey had been conducted in a number of coastal communes in the two provinces where 50 percent of households interviewed are listed as poor by the Ministry of Labour, Invalid and Social Affairs.

The majority of residents in these provinces earn their livelihoods from fishing or fishing-related jobs.

Tuan said that frequent storms and floods off the coast of these communes sank ships, killed residents and destroyed coastal infrastructure and crops.

Droughts on the other hand also devastated crops and increased people’s susceptibility to diseases such as diarrhoea through drinking of contaminated water, the report said.

In Ninh Thuan Province, which suffers the severest droughts in the country, irrigation meets just 33 percent of demand.

In 2004, water shortages in the province affected some 150,000 people, 230,000 livestock, 1,200ha of rice and nearly 4,000ha of other crops.

The draught caused losses estimated at VND140 billion, while around 200,000 went hungry.

The MoNRE report said that if sea levels rise 50-60cm by 2100 as predicted, swathes of arable land in the central region would be submerged or contaminated by seawater.

Furthermore, because of their precarious existence, the poor in Ninh Thuan and Khanh Hoa provinces are often denied loans.

MoNRE said the plight of the poor could only get worse.

To alleviate the negative effects of climate change, MoNRE said that the State should assimilate the National Climate Change Adaptation plan into the programme for hunger and poverty reduction. The ministry also said that more meteorological stations should be set up in the central region and that greater emphasis should be placed on disaster relief.