This Environmental and Social Management Plan (ESMP) has been prepared in support of the project: “Strengthening the resilience of smallholder agriculture to climate change-induced water insecurity in the Central Highlands and South-Central Coast regions of Viet Nam” (GCF2-SACCR) implemented by the Government of Viet Nam (GoV) and UNDP and updated to reflect changes approved by GCF in response to the Restructuring Paper (RP) FP125-UNDP-13092023-RP.

The project aims to empower vulnerable smallholders in five provinces – particularly women and ethnic minority farmers – to manage increasing climate risks to agricultural production through implementation of two linked Outputs addressing (1) Improved access to water for vulnerable smallholder farmers for climate-resilient agricultural production in the face of climate-induced rainfall variability and droughts, and (2) strengthened capacities of smallholder farmers to apply climate and market information, technologies, and practices for climate-resilient water and agricultural management.

The project has been screened using UNDP’s Social and Environmental Standards Procedure (SESP) and deemed to be a moderate risk project. The ESMP builds on the updated Environmental and Social Management Framework (ESMFRev1) developed for the project based on UNDP’s Social and Environmental Standards (SES).

The ESMP provides mechanisms and measures to manage social and environmental impacts associated with construction activities to be implemented by the project under Activity 1.2: Establish last-mile connections between WEIDAP irrigation infrastructure and the poor and near poor farmer lands to help cope with increasing rainfall variability and drought; and Activity 1.3: Enhance supplementary irrigation for rain fed smallholders to cope with rainfall variability and drought.