Livelihood Outcomes in the Residential Cluster and Dyke Programme

Tan Chau district is the area most heavily flooded and most affected by river bank erosion by annual floods in An Giang province. The floods have caused considerable and serious damage to humans and property in the district. As in other flooded provinces in the Mekong Delta, An Giang Government implements a program for stabilizing livelihoods and promoting sustainable improvements of the lives of communities living with floods by building residential clusters and dykes in order to solve the damage in the longer term. This is a new program, and there have been studies by Ausaid and Care on residential clusters in An Giang, Dong Thap, Long An in Provinces in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. This study looks more specifically at changes in household livelihoods and chooses a district which has not yet been studied. The aim of the study is to understand how people's livelihoods change when they move and the advantages and disadvantages of moving. The study explores livelihoods of people who moved and did not move to residential clusters and dykes; to understand the impact of the resettlement program on livelihoods after resettling as well as to explore how the livelihood strategies.