For many folks, moving away also means losing their jobs, their homes and sources of food. Pollution is a major factor in these situations; the amount of plastic waste in Vietnam has been building up. Remember the article about mangroves? There, I talked about how people building homes, businesses and tourist destinations threatens mangrove forests. That same problem applies here too: as people, especially people with a lot of money and power, continue destryong parts of the natural environment here, climate change happens faster and the negative effects of climate change become more severe.
People living in the Mekong Delta have been adapting to the environment here by organizing their communities around the most abundant natural resource in the region: water. People find ways to farm and produce food on the land here during both the wet and dry seasons. Since people have started living in this region, they have used the rivers here to trade and fish. In response to rising water levels, people have been moving further inland, making their homes and roads higher and doing things like reducing plastic protecting and reconstucting parts of the natural environment here (save the mangroves!) to lessen the negative effects of climate change.
