# **3.2 Results**

There is considerable spatial variation in poverty and environmental risks across Vietnam. As is indicated by the dark red districts in Figure 1, the incidence of poverty is highest in the Northern Mountains and in the Central provinces. The dark blue districts in Figure 1 suggest that air pollution and temperature variability are highest in the Northern districts. The Northwest region and Central Highlands face high tree cover loss and steep slopes, while the Central Coastal zones, the Red River and Mekong River Deltas face high rainfall variability and flood hazards. Areas with high land degradation and flood hazards appear across the country ‐ mostly in the Northwest and Southeast region and the Mekong River Delta. These findings suggest that some areas face various risks so that their populations are exposed to multiple hazards.

Across Vietnam there are some large hotspots of high environmental risks and poverty. As indicated by the dark districts in the maps (Figure 1), Northern districts face a combination of high poverty and high air pollution, tree cover loss, steep slopes, temperature variability and drought hazards. In the Central Highlands, tree cover loss, steep slopes and rainfall variability pose high risks on poorer districts. And in the Mekong River Delta there are a few poorer districts that face high land degradation, flood and drought hazards. When looking at absolute poverty numbers, a few shifts in these patterns emerge from sparsely populated districts, as for example, in the Central Highlands, to districts with larger concentrations of poor people (Figure A.1).

Generally, in high risk districts the poverty rate is higher than in low risk districts. The difference is most pronounced for tree cover loss and slope, but also significant for all the other environmental risks (Table 1). Only for flood hazards, poverty is significantly higher in low risk districts than in high risk districts. This observation can be explained with the higher incidence of flood hazards in prosperous coastal regions and river deltas (Figure 1, also see Bangalore et al., 2016).

Similarly, a high number of people below the poverty line are concentrated in high risk areas. And the number of poor people is significantly higher in high risk than in low risk areas, with an average of about 30,000 people living in districts with high tree cover loss and land degradation, steep slopes and large drought hazards (compared to 20,000 people in low risk districts) (Table 2). And even an average of 20,000 people live in districts with high flood hazards, implying that floods can still affect a high number of poor people, even though they affect relatively wealthier districts.

Table 1 _Poverty headcount across environmental risk categories at district‐level_

|Risk<br>category|Air<br>pollution|Tree cover<br>loss|Land<br>degradation|Slope|Rainfall<br>Variability|Temperature<br>Variability|Flood<br>hazards|Drought<br>hazards|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Low|21.3%|13.5%|19.5%|14.6%|20.6%|18.0%|49.1%|21.4%|
|Medium|33.2%|29.1%|32.6%|16.8%|35.6%|32.2%|16.7%|28.3%|
|High|26.9%|38.6%|30.0%|49.7%|25.5%|31.5%|15.4%|31.6%|
|ANOVA|||||||||
|F|16.83|92.14|24.11|361.41|28.49|31.56|322.54|12.71|
|Prob>F|0.0000|0.0000|0.0000|0.0000|0.0000|0.0000|0.0000|0.0000|

Notes: Table shows the poverty headcount rate across the three environmental risks categories as calculated for Figure 1 and statistics from a one‐way analysis‐of‐variance (ANOVA).

_Source: Authors’ calculation based on data from Brauer et al., 2015, Hansen et al., 2013, Vu et al., 2014b, Harmonized World Soil Database, Climate Research Unit, Bangalore et al., 2016, Winsemius et al., 2015, and Lanjouw et al., 2013._ 7