Mira Ka ¨ko ¨ nen Mekong Delta at the Crossroads: More Control or Adaptation? Development in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam has been very dynamic in the recent past, and currently it stands at an interesting crossroads. On one hand, agricultural production has developed successfully, and economic growth has been very rapid, but on the other hand, intensifying agriculture and large-scale water-control structures have challenged the environmental sustain- ability and social equity. The development plans have included a strong belief in the human mastery over the nature and waters of the Mekong Delta. In many cases, water resources planners have underestimated the complexity and integrated nature of the ecology and livelihoods of the Mekong Delta. This article examines cases where development efforts, while successful in some dimensions, have also contributed to create new risks for, especially, the poorest groups. The current situation calls for a more sustainable future route that would require examination of more adaptive measures in relation to the changing water flows of the Mekong River. INTRODUCTION: WATER AND TECHNOLOGY SHAPING THE DELTA’S LANDSCAPE The Mekong Delta is a society where the waters of the Mekong River are present everywhere and in all the aspects of life, serving transportation, communication, fishing, agricultural, and aquacultural needs and all kind of daily domestic uses, often including drinking water (Box 1). Life in the delta is greatly affected by the floods, rising and falling tides, and saline water intrusion from the sea. Water has always had two-sided effects in the delta. On one hand, the Mekong alluvium-rich waters bring many benefits to the area, such as soil fertility and productivity. On the other hand, the delta has been exposed to permanent threat of water disasters in the form of floods in the wet season and water scarcity and saline intrusion in the dry season. Attitudes toward the changing flow regime of the Mekong and the delta’s environment have been twofold, they have been characterized by human interventions and control but also by adaptation. The conversion of marshes and forests of the delta into a landscape dominated by highly productive rice paddies did not happen without major human interventions. In 200 y, the delta has undergone dramatic ecological and economical transfor- mation through major engineering and other public works, and its marshes, swamps, and forests have been turned into one of the main rice production and export areas of the whole world (2). Still, the society has had to learn how to live with the changing flow regime of the Mekong River caused by the monsoon climate and with the changing periods of both too much and too little water. For a long time, livelihoods and farming systems were characterized by adaptation to the changing environmental conditions. In upper parts of the delta, floating rice (lua mua) suited to the local flood and tidal regime grew along with rising flood water, and was thus fed by it, and was harvested after the flood receded. In areas near the coast, the period with brackish water was avoided, and rain-fed rice (mua) was sown when the rains started and harvested before the intrusion of brackish water. However, especially in the last decades, actions toward the environment have shifted strongly from adaptation to control and, at the same time, from decisions made at the farm level to centralized decisions on greater scales (3). The large-scale hydraulic control structures have targeted mainly the floods in the upper part of the delta and saline intrusion in the coastal areas (see Fig. 1). Thus, the Vietnamese Mekong Delta is currently one of the most human-regulated water regimes of the basin and has much more flow-independent farming systems than, for example, the floodplains of Cambodia. The combination of the hydraulic control structures and agricultural modernization in terms of high-yield rice varieties and agrochemicals has made the delta an incredibly productive rice area, but along with higher yields and production goals, there have also been such environmental consequences as worsening of the water quality, diminishing biodiversity, increased demand for water, and increased saline water intrusion. The modified distribution of water has also changed the distribution of risks: new canals and new control structures bring floods and saline intrusion to new areas. The costs and drawbacks of the engineering works have not been distributed evenly. As is often the case, it seems that the most disad- vantaged group is that of the poorest farmers and landless people. The focus of this article is an examination of the interplay between water management and socioeconomic changes in the Mekong Delta and the modernist aspirations that have framed the development process. This begins with putting the delta’s development in historical perspective and analyzing the influence of colonialism and development engineering plans of the French and Americans. Next, recent examples of the ways in which the waters of the Mekong River have been modified increasingly under human regulation to serve agricultural production are presented. Also, the environmental and socio- economic impacts of these changes are discussed. Finally, alternatives for the delta, as opposed to more control over water and natural resources, are examined, and more adaptive measures are explored. This article is based on a review of existing literature, as well as on studies conducted in autumn 2004 and spring 2005 within WUP-FIN2 project’s socioeconomic work in the Mekong Delta. The objective of the work was to deepen the under- standing of the water-related socioeconomic issues in the WUP- FIN2 water model application areas. The work was carried out in the form of four case studies that included village surveys, key informant interviews at different levels of administration, and statistical analysis of available socioeconomic and related statistics (5). THE PATH TOWARD A MORE HUMAN-REGULATED ENVIRONMENT The delta has been settled to some extent since at least the second century, first by the Fu Nan civilization and then the Khmers. For the Vietnamese, land reclamation began in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. A lot of water work and Ambio Vol. 37, No. 3, May 2008 205 Ó Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 2008 http://www.ambio.kva.se