The project was originally intended to focus on the national level decision makers and national level climate change impacts. Bearing in mind the projected severity of sea level rise in the Mekong Delta, the project was redesigned to address climate change issues in the delta. It did so in two ways: (1) it produced a high-resolution GIS database of land cover in the southern part of the delta using SPOT images acquired in 2009 and 2010 and made this available to government and international organisations; and (2) it organised two workshops to discuss environmental changes and emerging climate change impacts in the Mekong Delta. These workshops provided state of the knowledge assessments of environmental conditions and trends in the delta. Based on the workshops, an advocacy program was designed to build the demand for policy reform among provincial leaders who can then lobby central government officials with respect to dams on the mainstream of the Mekong River and other large-scale infrastructure that risk undermining the delta’s ability to adapt to climate change. This advocacy program will be carried forward by other projects.
Project • CBA2009-06NSY-Brunner