The Mekong Delta landscape is shaped by dense networks of rivers and canals with more than 10,000 km of natural and man-made waterways (Miller, Nguyen Viet Thinh, and Do Thi Minh Duc 1999, 37).
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All over the delta, there exist more than 1,000 man-made canals serving transport, flood and salinity protection, land reclamation, and urbanisation (Le Thi Viet Hoa et al. 2007). The canal system is distinguished by two main orders: the main canal system and internal field canals to individual farms.
Professor Tran Ngoc Them (2008) uses river and water attachment (tinh song nuoc) to signify an important trait of the Mekong Delta culture. Over generations, delta dwellers lived their lives intensively attached to and connected with water bodies, forming the river and water civilisation that can be prominently observed today. Water plays an important role in all aspects of local life from daily domestic uses and house construction to production organisation and transportation (Evers and Benedikter 2009; Kọkửnen 2008; Le Anh Tuan et al. 2007). In the South of Vietnam, people use a wide variety of dialects to refer to concepts and objects relating to water: rach, xeo, lang, xang, lung, bung (water containers); cu lao, con, bao (water-surrounded areas); rong, nhung, uong (water movements); ghe, xuong, tam ban (in- water means of transportation) (Tran Ngoc Them 2008).
The waters and rivers trait manifests itself in the way local people “behave” and interact with their water resource surroundings and environments. I could not agree more with synthesised comments such as “Mekong Delta farmers are very adaptable to the changes in water regime and apply sustainable production techniques” (Le Anh Tuan et al. 2007, 23). Unlike disastrous stormy floods in Central and Northern Vietnam, flooding in the delta, especially during the September – October rising water season, or mua nuoc noi, is always awaited. Our interviews with farmers during this time of year in 2010 in Can Tho show that they were very worried that the water level of this year would be not become high enough. Rising water is a symbol of prosperity as it brings about natural fish resources and other “free goods,” land fertility and thus crop productivity (cf. Biggs et al. 2009; Dun 2008;
Howie 2005; Nguyen Huu Ninh, Vu Kien Trung, and Nguyen Xuan Niem 2007; Tran Thanh Be, Bach Tan Sinh, and Miller 2007). Mekong Delta inhabitants use “nice floods” or “beautiful floods” to express this process of rising water levels between half a metre and three metres of depth (Ehlert 2012). Regularly rising water also indicates the return of an old friend who brings the message from nature that this year weather is favourable (mua thuan gio hoa). This mode of human-environment interaction of Mekong Delta inhabitants is in a large extent different from their northern fellow citizens in the Red River Delta, nationally the second largest in the northern part of Vietnam (cf. Ngo Van Le 2010, 330-346).
“Early in Vietnamese history, possibly before the Christian era, the Vietnamese developed an elaborated system of dikes and canals and the rudiments of governmental authority to control and channel the supplies of water” (Sardesai 1998,12).
Nguyen Huu Hieu (2012) further argues that “lu” was widely used in the mass media over the last 30 years, but it is a foreign concept that inaccurately reflects the nature of Mekong Delta rising water and its relationship with local life. Terms such as “mua lu” (flood season), “tran lu” (an attack of flood), “de bao chong lu” (flood resistance dykes), etc., are strange and alien to the local language and culture of Mekong Delta residents.
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Recent research on water resources in the Mekong Delta have often kept the focus boundary within the concept of a hydraulic society, originally used by Wittfogel in his Oriental Despotism. It is assumed that hydraulic management in water-based societies and economies has created strong hydraulic state bureaucracies (Evers and Benedikter 2009; Molle, Mollinga, and Wester 2009). Evers and Benedikter (2009) provide an in-depth analysis of the process by which the lower Mekong Delta has been transformed from a society adapted to its natural environment into a human-regulated environment or a modern hydraulic society. The process has taken place more dynamically over the past 30 years with the State’s production-oriented water policy. Technological progress in hydraulic management has been applied, and hydraulic works are growing in size. In Can Tho alone, a large investment in dyke building has been made:
“In the last 30 years, floods greatly damaged both the lives and property of the people of Can Tho city. The government of Vietnam has invested VND 1000s billion to build dyke works with the aim of controlling floods, exploiting the maximum available potential and benefits of floods and reducing the negative impact of floods for agricultural production and the lives of people. Thus, a series of dyke works has been implemented in recent years in order to control flooding levels between sub-areas, drain acid water, floodwater and protect even against floods in agricultural production activities (such as summer-autumn rice crop protection in inundated areas of Can Tho city)” (Pham Cong Huu, Ehlers, and Subramanian 2009, 5).
The result of this process is the dramatic development of agri and aquaculture in the region as well as the formation of new strategic hydraulic groups (Evers and Benedikter 2009). In fact, huge water regulation works, such as the Vinh Te Canal, were started under the first emperors of the Nguyen Court. The water resource landscape of the Mekong Delta was dramatically changed during the colonial time with “progress” and “oeuvre” projects (Biggs 2003; 2010).
From expert’s perspectives, a hydraulic society is a useful concept to investigate the transformation of water-based societies in terms of water control resources development and management and associated power. A river and water civilisation might include technological, managerial, and power-related aspects, yet the civilisation underlines much broader human-environment interactions and human- human behaviour in the water-relied Mekong Delta society as earlier analysed, at least from the local researchers’ and residents perspectives. It would be mistaken, then, to see the civilisation of waters and rivers as a past product without implications for the current development and construction of the delta. The fact is that the civilisation is of endosmosis into the lives of delta inhabitants and is thus renewed over periods of time. The values and knowledge developed over the local people’s long ecological and social relationship have been identified to be crucial to the successful impact of water regulating interventions that aim to support local development or larger national construction. Biggs (2003) presents a significant conclusion in examining the delta’s hydraulic landscape reorganisation by technology under French colonial engineers and administrators:
“Like nationalist narratives, progressive narratives on colonial public works may ignore the role of the pre-existing conditions within which these projects were located. […] The same situation applies to environmental histories that begin by assessing history limited to the colonial oeuvre itself without considering how pre-existing ecological and social relationships shaped the conditions in which people located that work. The mistake in accepting object-oriented narratives in historical
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writing is that, they silence important social and ecological relationships that may precede and succeed the life of the project. Unlike the tangible solidity of a canal (or bridge or road), ecological and social relationships are invisible, and thus more difficult to define. The terms of their existence are a subject of open debate, whereas a canal is proof enough of its own existence. Yet these perceived relationships in ecology and society frequently determine the lifetime of a work and its continuing utility for such tangible things as increasing food supply, allowing people to move freely and quickly, establishing towns, etc.” (Biggs 2003, 96).
Modern dyke systems in Can Tho City have shown several disadvantages in the long-term assessment due to State planners’ ignorance of social aspects of the construction and consultation with local researchers and people.
“The transformation from a rural society living with the natural rules of floods to one living with floods under human control has produced new challenges for the inhabitants of Can Tho city. Dyke system planning can obtain foreseeable benefits in short term, but can also lead to unpredictable negative impacts on the long – run. It changes the flood regimes and inundation levels between sub- areas within Can Tho city. Existing problems of dyke system planning have not been addressed adequately (such as water pollution, land fertility decline and fish reduction which have led to disadvantages for the lives of local people in the protected flooding areas). The natural rules of floods have been changed and are now under human control. The natural advantages of floods are gradually disappearing and are replaced by new disadvantages for the lives and livelihoods of local people in the long-term” (Pham Cong Huu, Ehlers, and Subramanian 2009, 24).
This is not to say that the Mekong Delta residents’ practice of “living with floods” means no actions mitigating possible natural hazards should be taken. Instead, disaster reduction, mitigation, or compensation plans should not and cannot be hard technology-induced while neglecting local ecological and social conditions and relationships.
One example of a hard-component focused project that is facing project sustainability challenges is flood avoidance residential zone (FARZ) construction. This program has been especially promoted by the central and provincial governments after the year 2000 historic flood, which produced serious damage in the Mekong Delta. Implemented in all Mekong Delta provinces (except Long An) in two phases from 2001-2010 and 2009-2013, the program is expected to build up 983 residential zones homing 185,000 households with 148.200 poor households (scatter poor households from flood prone areas are collected and provided a house free of charge while front houses are publicly sold to complement the governmental construction funding) (Vietnam News Agency May 28, 2012).
The zone as an urbanised mini-area is well connected with internal roads, water, and electricity supplies, which provide the inhabitants safe and better infrastructure. However, the greatest challenge of such construction projects is the livelihood development for the poor who used to live along the rivers or canals with wild fish, shrimp, and snails as their main source of food and income.
Even with microfinance support, some poor households just keep the money uninvested to return it on the maturity date because they do not have cultivation land, while animal husbandry becomes impossible in such a house-detached urbanised environment. We can observe several houses left desolate in a residential zone for a long time with closed doors, broken windows, and dirty furniture (Field diary 25.10.2010, 02.11.2010). Their owners are told to return to the water edges for their living (Interview 201, Khmer male, FARZ inhabitant, Can Tho, 25.10.2010). Several poor families have even sold their houses and land, gradually making FARZs a residential cluster of state cadres and rich urban families. The remaining poor households are those successfully engaged in marketplace activities or hired labour work, yet they are confronting the degradation of house facilities, which are not affordable with their modest wages. Many of them have to defecate in their neighbours’ toilets or back in the fields because of a full toilet tank, which was not designed to be large enough for a 4-member family in some years (Interview 201, Khmer male, FARZ inhabitant, Can Tho, 25.10.2010).
Water resources are crucial in both practical and symbolic meanings to the local people in the Mekong Delta. However, the resources are challenged and adversely impacted by human development intentions, such as Mekong River upstream dam development, escalating pollution by domestic and
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industrial waste, and climate change, often a product of the human development process. Many of these challenges need international and regional commitments and cooperation. In any case, local knowledge and practices should be integrated into hydraulic development plans. Local lessons of environmental and social interaction and relationships should be learned in the process of new knowledge and technology production. Natural conditions and historical development have created different water-shaped landscapes for the Mekong Delta and the Red Delta (Waibel 2010). Peasant social systems are described as distinctive in the two regions in that Mekong communities are seen as
“open peasantry” while northern villages are represented by “closed corporate peasant communities”
(Rambo 1973). Therefore, it must be very critical to take and introduce success elsewhere into the Mekong Delta, either with societal organisation or human-nature interaction models, especially ideas of mastery over nature.
For the purpose of this research, some important traits of Southern33 Vietnamese culture are highlighted. Tran Ngoc Them (2008) systemises five main characteristics of the Southern Vietnamese people: river and water attachment, tolerance, dynamics, affection and gratitude appreciation, and practicality (see Figure 2.2). These cultural features are synthesised, reconstructed, crystallised, and developed in the relations with and interaction among the Vietnamese culture, Western culture and the social and natural conditions of the South.
Figure 2.2: Traits of Southern Vietnamese culture
Source: Tran Ngoc Them (2008, 13)
33 Southern Vietnam is divided into two regions: Eastern South (mien Dong) and Western South (mien Tay). The Western South includes 13 provinces/cities in the Mekong Delta. The Eastern South consists of 6 provinces/cities: Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong, Binh Phuoc, Tay Ninh, Dong Nai, Ba Ria - Vung Tau with the total area of 23,545 km2 (7.15% of the national area).
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The clearest manifestation of tolerance (tinh bao dung) is the harmonised existence of multiple ethnic groups and religions (Buddhism, Brahmanism, Catholicism, Protestant, Muslim, Hoa Hao, and Cao Dai) in the delta. Hoa Hao (Harmony) alone, as its name suggests, stresses the wide acceptance and altruism of different religious philosophies in this locally invented religion. Association and cooperation to create united power and mutual support in difficult times have shifted from a need to develop a rule of conduct among immigrants to the delta. They open their hearts to welcome others, even strangers. They are willing to help others in need without any expectation for reciprocation. It is not unusual that the Mekong Delta people will let guests stay at their home and treat them as their acquaintances (cf. Tran Phu Hue Quang 2011). During my fieldtrip, despite my Central Vietnam accent and the fact that I was meeting them for the first time, I was often invited to have lunch or dinner with villagers. They also prepared for me the best accommodation they could arrange in situations where I could not drive back to the city center within the same day. It was in my most difficult time of waiting for the interview approval with the State’s agencies that I started talking with farmers who supplied me with all the needed information. I must admit that the Mekong Delta farmers’ hospitality and sincerity encouraged my discoveries aided in the completion of my research objectives.
Mekong Delta dwellers value affection and gratitude appreciation (tinh trong nghia). They appreciate affection more than wealth. They wholeheartedly help and protect other people in their time of distress. They spend all their money on treating without thinking about the future. This trait is largely manifested in our analysis of knowledge-sharing patterns among farmers and by “advanced” farmers who have been trained by university researchers (see Chapters Four and Six).
The cultural traits of dynamics (tinh nang dong) and practicality (tinh thiet thuc) are evidenced through their high adaptability to changes and novelty. They promote trading and take the risks of carrying out large-scale business activities. They tend to simplify all matters, respect trading rather than literature, and prefer light humorousness over deep philosophy (Tran Ngoc Them 2008). Our case studies present a number of progressive and innovative farmers in the delta (see Chapters Four and Six).
However, searching for large-scale production and trade without sufficient knowledge and strategic planning might lead to unnecessary losses (see Section 6.3). Also, the consumeristic characteristic of Southern Vietnam residents and farmers in particular is becoming their own trap in a consumerism society (Cao Tu Thanh, Tia Sang June 16, 2008) (see Section 6.2). In these situations, the support from State agencies and research organisations is very important.