Abstract
Despite the widespread implementation of flood control infrastructure, modern cities around the world remain vulnerable to flood hazards. Although flood management has in general placed less emphasis on structural measures, urban flood hazard mitigation continues to fixate on the flood control paradigm, the ideology that flooding must be prevented in the first place, as flooding is assumed to be disastrous. To promote urban flood resilience, this paper argues for the alternative flood adaptation paradigm, which concerns preventing damage when flooding occurs and allows flooding to enter the city. The argument is grounded on our fieldworks on the ecological wisdom of living with floods in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta in two hamlets, Vinh An and Ha Bao, where flooding is mostly harmless and brings benefits. To turn this ecological wisdom of the rural hamlets into practical knowledge, we extract lessons for modern cities: Modern cities need ecological knowledge to nurture ecological wisdom and need to become agile by developing localized flood-response capacity, striving for timely system-wide adjustment, and turning amphibious. To make these lessons of the ecological wisdom actionable, we translate them into three urban design principles: Urban design should (1) anticipate and accommodate flooding, (2) incorporate the ecological process of flooding, and (3) reveal the flood dynamics to the public.
This chapter is a reprint with permission from Elsevier. Landscape and Urban Planning, 2016 Special Issue on Ecological Wisdom.
Liao KH, Le TA, Van Nguyen K (2016) Urban design principles for flood resilience: learning from the ecological wisdom of living with floods in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. Landscape and Urban Planning, 155:69–78.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Adger WN, Brooks N, Bentham G, Agnew M, Eriksen S (2004) New indicator of vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Tyndall Centre, Norwich
Andersen TK, Shepherd JM (2013) Floods in a changing climate. Geogr Compass 7(2):95–115
Ashley R, Garvin S, Pasche E, Vassilopoulos A, Zevenbergen C (eds) (2007) Advances in urban flood management. Taylor & Francis, London
Barbedo J, Miguez M, van der Horst D, Marins M (2014) Enhancing ecosystem services for flood mitigation: a conservation strategy for peri-urban landscapes? Ecol Soc 19(2):54. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-06482-190254
Berkes F, Colding J, Folke C (2003) Navigating social-ecological systems: building resilience for complexity and change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Bichard E, Kazmierczak A (2012) Are homeowners willing to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change? Clim Change 112:633–654. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-011-0257-8
Biggs D (2010) Quagmire: nation-building and nature in the Mekong Delta. University of Washington Press, Seattle
Brocheux P (1995) The Mekong Delta: ecology, economy, and revolution, 1860–1960. Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison
Brown B (ed) (1998) Eco-revelatory design: nature constructed/nature revealed. Special issue: exhibit catalog. Landscape J
Catling D (1992) Rice in deep water. The Macmillan Press, London
Colten CF, Sumpter AR (2009) Social memory and resilience in New Orleans. Nat Hazards 48:355–364
Cuny FC (1991) Living with floods: alternatives for riverine flood mitigation. Land Use Policy 8(4):331–342
Danh VT, Mushtaq S (2011) Living with floods: an evaluation of the resettlement program of the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. In: Steward MA, Coclanis PA (eds) Environmental change and agricultural sustainability in the Mekong Delta. Advances in global change research 45
Dewan AM (2013) Floods in a megacity: geospatial techniques in assessing hazards, risk and vulnerability. Springer, New York
Ehlert J (2012) Beautiful floods: environmental knowledge and agrarian change in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. ZEF development studies. Berlin, LIT
Gill SE, Handley JF, Ennos AR, Pauleit S (2007) Adapting cities for climate change: the role of the green infrastructure. Built Environ 33(1):115–133
Green C (2010) Towards sustainable flood risk management. Int J Disaster Risk Sci 1(1):33–43
Grimm NB, Faeth SH, Golubiewski NE, Redman CL, Wu J, Bai X, Briggs JM (2008) Global change and the ecology of cities. Science 319:756–760
Johnson CL, Priest SJ (2008) Flood risk management in England: a changing landscape of risk responsibility? Water Resour Dev 24(4):513–525
Laituri MJ (2000) Cultural perspectives of flooding. In: Wohl EE (ed) Inland flood hazards: human, riparian, and aquatic communities. Cambridge University, Cambridge, pp 451–468
Lamond JE, Proverbs DG (2009) Resilience to flooding: lessons from international comparison. Urban Des Plann 162:63–70
Liao K-H (2012) A theory on urban resilience to floods—a basis for alternative planning practices. Ecol Soc 17(4):48
Liao K-H (2014) From flood control to flood adaptation: a case study on the Lower green River Valley and the City of Kent in King County, Washington. Nat Hazards 71:723–750
Nguyen VK, Alexander K (2014) Farmers’ perceptions of and responses to annual flood events in the Vietnamese Mekong River Delta: adapting to climate change impacts. In: Lopez-Gunn E, Stucker D (eds) Adaptation to climate change through water resources management: capacity, equity, and sustainability. Earthscan, London
Nguyen HT, Tuan LA, Tran TT, Bastakoti RC, Lebel L (2013) Multi-level governance and adaptation to floods in the Mekong Delta. In: Daniel R, Lebel L, Monorom K (eds) Governing the Mekong: engaging in the politics of knowledge. Strategic Information and Research Development Centre, Selangor, Malaysia
Park J, Seager TP, Rao SC (2011) Lessons in risk versus resilience-based design and management. Integr Environ Assess Manage 7(3):396–399
Parker D (ed) (2000) Floods. Routledge, London
Pielke RA (1999) Nine fallacies of floods. Clim Change 42:413–438
Poff NL, Matthews JH (2013) Environmental flows in the anthropocene: past progress and future prospects. Curr Opin Environ Sustain 5:667–675
Rodriguez CNAS, Ashley R, Gersonius B, Rijke J, Pathirana A, Zevenbergen C (2014) Incorporation and application of resilience in the context of water-sensitive urban design: linking European and Australian perspectives. WIREs Water 1:173–186
Scawthorn C, Flores P, Blais N, Seligson H, Tate E, Chang S, Mifflin E, Thomas W, Murphy J, Jones C, Lawrence M (2006) HAZUS-MH flood loss estimation methodology II: damage and loss assessment. Nat Hazards Rev 7(2):72–81
Shannon K (2013) Eco-engineering for water: from soft to hard and back. In: Pickett STA, Cadenasso ML, McGrath B (eds) Resilience in ecology and urban design—linking theory and practice for sustainable cities. Springer, New York, pp 163–182
Terpstra T, Gutteling JM (2008) Households’ perceived responsibilities in flood risk management in the Netherlands. Int J Water Resour Dev 24:555–565
Thaitakoo D, McGrath B, Srithanyarat S, Palopakon Y (2013) Bangkok: the ecology and design of an aqua-city. In: Pickett STA, Cadenasso ML, McGrath B (eds) Resilience in ecology and urban design—linking theory and practice for sustainable cities. Springer, New York, pp 427–442
Tuan LA, Hoanh CT, Miller F, Sinh BT (2007) Floods and salinity management in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. In: Be TT, Sinh BT, Miller F (eds) Challenges to sustainable development in the Mekong Delta—Regional and national policy issues and research needs. The Sustainable Mekong Research Network, Bangkok, pp 15–68
UNISDR (UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction) (2009) Terminology on disaster risk reduction. UNISDR, Geneva
Vietnam-Netherlands Cooperation (2011) Towards a Mekong Delta plan. Synthesis of water sector assessment
Walker BC, Holling CS, Carpenter SR, Kinzig A (2004) Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social-ecological systems. Ecol Soc 9(2):5. URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art5/
Ward JV, Standford JA (1995) Ecological connectivity in alluvial rivers ecosystems and its disruption by flow regulation. Regulated Rivers Res Manage 11:105–119
Wilby RL, Keenan R (2012) Adapting to flood risk under climate change. Prog Phys Geogr 23(3):348–378. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309133312438908
Xing W-N (2014) Doing real and permanent good in landscape and urban planning: ecological wisdom for urban sustainability. Landscape Urban Planning 121:65–69
Zevenbergen C, Cashman A, Evelpidou N, Pasche E, Garvin S, Ashley R (2011) Urban flood management. CRC Press, London
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Liao, KH. (2019). Living with Floods: Ecological Wisdom in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. In: Yang, B., Young, R. (eds) Ecological Wisdom. EcoWISE. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0571-9_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0571-9_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-0570-2
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-0571-9
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)