The University of Hull has secured almost £300,000 of funding to help young people in Vietnam better understand and tackle climate change.
A collaboration between the University’s Faculty of Arts, Cultures and Education and the Energy & Environment Institute submitted a bid to the British Academy for the funding, focused on communities living in the Red River region in northern Vietnam.
A team from the University will now support young people in Vietnam to come up with imaginative ways to mitigate the impact of climate change and flooding in the Red River region.
It builds upon previous work carried out by the Energy & Environment Institute in the Mekong River in Vietnam.
Dr Lisa Jones, Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Hull, led the bid.
She said: “Vietnam is a very vulnerable country when it comes to climate change for instance in relation to flooding.
“The project is about facilitating young people to research and capture existing knowledge from the diverse communities in the Red River catchment, and engage in innovative forms of intercultural and intergenerational knowledge exchange.
“The University already has close ties with the Vietnam National University, and this project will now build on those connections as well as establishing new connections, for instance with the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi to exhibit and showcase what the young people discover.
“The project adds to a range of research the University is undertaking at a global scale to help mitigate against climate change impacts and improve resilience among communities.”
In the Red River basin in Vietnam, extreme events that result in landslides and enhanced soil erosion are increasingly having an impact, while sea level rise across the vulnerable low-lying Delta regions are increasing the frequency of flood events.
The new project will see experts at the University of Hull work with affected communities to strengthen resilience to such events, and ensure the younger generation is equipped to deal with the impacts of climate change.
Dan Parsons, Director at the Energy & Environment Institute, said: “As the planet increasingly finds itself feeling the devastating impacts of climate change, communities all over the world must find new ways to live with increased frequency and magnitude of extreme events such as flooding.
“The University of Hull has in recent years worked closely with communities in Vietnam, in particular with young people, to help them better understand climate change and its consequences.
“This is a great example of cross-discipline working at the University with PhD students in Geography and in the Energy & Environment Institute coming together to initiate the ideas. The project combines Lisa’s expertise in Education with the research we are pioneering on Climate Change in the Institute.”
“We are delighted at the University to have received this vital funding, which will enable us to continue our work on a global scale, both helping and learning from those communities who are most at-risk of suffering the effects of climate change.”
The University of Hull has built close ties with Vietnam in recent years, with a particular focus on building food and water security in the face of climate change and other human impacts.
