A Place Defined by Rising Water

The people of southern Vietnam live with their soils partially submerged under water. For nearly half of every year, the season is termed “wet” and the great Mekong River swells beyond its banks. During this time rice patties glisten, and muddy water ripples beneath the floorboards of houses raised on stilts. Commerce, travel, and daily commuting happens by boat, giving this season a distinct sound of buzzing outboard motors.

The Mekong River Delta was built by flooding waters, which deposit sediment from upstream. 3,000 years of flooding has built the landmass of southern Vietnam, and now it is among the most fertile regions on planet Earth. It’s nutrient rich soils and consistent access to flooding fresh water has allowed Vietnam to become the second leading global exporter of rice. Thus, agriculture (and rice production in particular) has become the fabric that defines so much of Vietnam’s culture and history, and today it is the foundation of one of the world’s fastest growing economies.

Flooding waters have made this place into what it is today—but they will destroy it too.

Global climate change poses an incredible threat to this place and its people. The projected rate of sea level rise that is associated with global climate change will very likely be catastrophic to southern Vietnam because of its low elevation as a coastal delta. The Nobel Prize-winning 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report identifies Southeast Asia as among the most vulnerable regions on Earth. This is due in part to the geography of Vietnam as a low-lying coastal nation. Statistically, the country ranks fourth behind China, India, and Bangladesh in terms of the absolute number of people living in vulnerable, low elevation coastal zones (LECZ), defined as the contiguous area along the coast that is less than 10 m above sea level. About 43 million Vietnamese, or about 55% of the country’s population, are living in this LECZ. That is the highest percentage of all countries worldwide.

Vietnamese researchers predict that a sea-level rise of 100 cm would cause a predicted land loss of 40.000 km or 21.1 % of the Mekong River Delta’s land mass. This level of loss would expose and/or displace 17.1 million people, which is 23.1% of the population. In the words of Michael Waibel: “Although Vietnam has only played a small part in creating the problems of global environmental change and faces many other challenges, it cannot avoid the impacts of climate change. Implementing adaptation policies seems mandatory” (2008).

I believe that the people of the Mekong River Delta will adapt. They have lived much of their cultural history adapting to seasonal changes in water levels, and by their very nature, they are a dynamic people with an incredible ability to respond to changes. This ability lies in the fabric of who they are. However, this belief does not justify inaction by developed nations such as the United States. In fact, it is quite the opposite.

As a developed nation, the U.S. arguably holds the greatest burden of responsibility as we move into an era defined by a changing climate. Our economy has been industrialized for over a century, and today we produce more Greenhouse Gas emissions per capita than any other country in the world. Therefore, we owe a tremendous amount to developing nations like Vietnam, which have done almost nothing to create climate change but nonetheless suffer from its worst consequences.

Vietnam’s vulnerability is due in-part to their status as a developing nation. Adaptation for the coasts of developing countries will be more challenging than for coasts of developed countries, due to constraints on adaptive capacity. According to the 2007 IPCC Report on coastal systems and low-lying areas: “Developing nations may have the political or societal will to protect or relocate people who live in low-lying coastal zones, but without the necessary financial and other resources/capacities, their vulnerability is much greater than that of a developed nation in an identical coastal setting”

Therefore, the U.S needs to provide the most aid to low-lying coastal nations such as Vietnam. Adaptation funds should be provided by the economies with the most historical responsibility, and our country took a great step in this direction two years ago in Copenhagen, when Hilary Clinton announced a commitment to generate $20 billion in adaptation funds between the U.S and other developed nations.

But $20 billion will never be enough. It is simply impossible to quantify what is at stake in southern Vietnam. There is no monetary value that can be placed on the river culture of the Mekong Delta, nor can you quantify the livelihoods of generations upon generations of rice farmers. What’s at stake is more than rice exports or economic growth—more than 40,000km of lost landmass. The fabric of Vietnam’s history, economy, culture, and way of life is truly at risk in the face of global climate change. For Americans, the knowledge of such a threat should be a call to action. For me, this experience in Vietnam has been just that.