Study on Assessment of Indigenous Knowledge in Adapting to Floods of Farmers in an Giang province, Mekong Delta, Viet Nam

An Giang, one of the headwater provinces in the Mekong River Basin, should be influenced by the annual floods. When floods coming, besides bringing a huge amount of silt and improving soil fertility, field sanitation, washing alum [3]; as well as creating jobs and income for local people through natural fishing, aquatic vegetable picking, tourist services, etc. However, from 2000 to the present, the abnormal flood circumstances have affected livelihoods of local people. To be able to adapt to the changes of the flood, with the changes of the society and environment, human must always know how to use indigenous knowledge to exploit natural resources appropriately and manage more flexibly [2]. Indigenous knowledge in adapting to floods in An Giang is understood as experience that has been accumulated by the local community over many generations and inherited widely. It is reflected in the lives of local people and harmonized responses to floods every year to effectively exploit resources brought by the flood, but to avoid the damage caused by floods [6,15]. Responding to floods activities based on prior knowledge of the local community should be investigated and disseminated effectively to contribute to the sustainable development of the locality before the circumstances of climate change are affecting vagaries of floods. There Abstract


Research questions
The research is focusing to answer the following questions: • What is farmer's indigenous knowledge and their adaptive capacity to floods of different zone?
• To what extents the traditional knowledge has been used helping the local people to adapt with flood?
• What should be done to make sure the traditional knowledge will be work well in terms of interaction with modern techniques to reduce flood damage?
• What are proposing solutions to conserve and enhance the use of indigenous knowledge in reducing the vulnerability of people living in flooding areas and livelihood strategies of flood affected people are both effective and sustainable?

Research methods
To achieve objectives provided, the study was analyzed and synthesized from different information sources. The research is focusing to answer the following questions:

Questionnaires
Questionnaires is used to find out the damages of flood on the livelihood of local people, questionnaires mainly to identify current observed flood and its effects of such changes particularly on • Literature review: to refer the previous researches and reports which related to climate change, the status of drought and its impact, especially in the Mekong delta. Both the quantitative and qualitative methods were used for survey. The research was done following these methods: in -depth interview (for both local authorities and local people), focus group discussions and questionnaires.
• In -depth interview: the team has conducted in depth interviews those people who are representative of local authorities at the three levels (province, district and commune). By interviewing, the general information about the how local people know about flood and their actions to cope with it will be understood. In addition, the demand of local people may be found out in this step. Also, individual people who showed appreciable knowled of environment change were selected for in-depth interviews. The interviews focus on the story of using their own knowledge to adapt wele with the effect flood. The in -depth interviews were conducted by using semi-structured questionnaires. Information were written down and recovered by voice recorder.
• PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal): the meeting was done, the participants for the meeting were 15 people. It was done in the upper zone (Phu Huu. Phuoc Hung communes), middle zone (Vinh An, An Hoa communes) and lower (Vinh Phuoc, Luong An Tra communes), An Phu, Chau Thanh, Tri Ton district, An Giang province. Therefore, these households have enough time to experience and accumulate local living experiences while gaining indigenous knowledge that has been applied to life experiences and to get a general understanding about the life of local people, their assets and also to know how they have faced with the flood in context of climate change. The criteria to people that they are farmers, who are experienced households living with floods and more than 50 years of living of study sites. These five tools were used: time line, mapping, seasonal calendar, problem tree, Venn diagram, ranking. The participants are people doing in agricultural production in the community.    (Source: Protecting fisheries Sub -department of An Giang, 2016) [14].

Results and Discussion
According to the results from the survey, when the water level decreases, fishing yields naturally also decreases; when flood levels increase, the fishing yields also rise. This shows that there is a linear correlation between the flood water level and fish production by a factor of R 2 = 0.87 ( Figure 4).   (Table 1). In addition, upstream communes seem to have more flood forecasting experience than midstream and downstream ones because floods occur earlier with higher vulnerability ( Figure 5).

Signs Descriptions
Flood period • In May and July of the Lunar year, the water rises quickly; In July and August, flood starts.
• Big flood takes place during Year of Dragon or October of Lunar year.
• Every 3 year with small flood, 1 big flood will take place.
Water color • The water is red or dark. Reed has 50 cm long segments.

•
Grass leaf grows near the tip or grows multiple segments. • Young bamboo shoot grows higher than older ones.

Animal behavior observation
• Bees, ants, termites, weavers nest on tall trees; rats burrow on high places. •

Swallow, storks come in groups
• Spider web appears more than usual in lunar July Water measure • On December 30 of lunar year, people weigh a bottle of river water; On January 1, people get a different river water bottle at the same position then weigh two bottles, big flood are about to take place if the later bottle is heavier.  Household interview results (2016) showed that upstream communes seem to have more weather forecasting experience than midstream and downstream ones ( Table 2).

Rain period change
• Rains start in the beginning of lunar March or April.
• More rains take place during lunar June, July.

Night sky observation
• Gloomy sky or less stars means rain the day after. • Winged ants appear, rains take place the day after.

Daytime sky observation
• Termites appear, rains take place the day after.
• Flies and gadflies attack paddy fields, rains are about to take place. Currently, due to unusual and complex weather, unpredictable nature so the accuracy of flood and weather prediction is no longer as high as before, in addition to the impact of science and technology, the number of people with indigenous knowledge is not many.
Specifically, 89.4,% of the interviewees said that the current flood situation is not predictable; 10.0% said that they change their predictions a little and only 13.3% said that the weather situation remains in their predictions ( Figure 6) .

Conservation measures and promoting indigenous knowledge in flood adaptation
• The local knowledge mainly due to collected experience during agricultural production and transferred by word of mouth for the next generation without writing and widely dissemination. Therefore, in order to preserve and promote indigenous knowledge, it should be collected, documented and widely disseminated to the people.
• Local knowledge becomes less effective due to flood change and extreme weather. Therefore, local knowledge and scientific and technical knowledge should be combined to promote the its values and overcome the limitations.
• In order to maintain and promote local knowledge, it should be integrated into projects of local development.

Conclusion
Indigenous knowledge plays an important role in adapting to changes in the environment. As a national resource, it also con-

Recommendations
• It is necessary to recognize and preserve the remaining indigenous knowledge to accurately predict and adapt to floods more efficiently and sustainably, as well as facilitate the exchange and sharing of experiences between the people in the same and other localities.
• In order to develop local knowledge effectively and sustainably currently and in the future, community knowledge should be strengthened and combined with technological advances to help farmers adapt to environmental changes.
• Indigenous knowledge should be documented and summarized into a book to predict and adapt to flood changes and extreme weather events.
• Indigenous knowledge should be integrated into farmer service system and technical transfer such as providing suitable seed varieties for local conditions.