In August 2025, Malaysian campaigner Wong Pui Yi stood outside the UN headquarters in Geneva and made an appeal to Global North nations: “Stop treating the Global South as the rubbish bin for plastic waste you cannot handle.”

During that meeting, representatives from 184 countries failed to reach an agreement on a treaty to end plastic pollution. But the need for one has not gone away, particularly for Southeast Asian nations.

The region became the top destination for plastic waste imports following a solid waste import ban by China in 2017. Imports remain at a higher level in some of the region’s countries, according to data from UN Trade and Development. Data from the OECD, a group of mostly high-income countries, found that Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam remained the top non-OECD export destinations for waste from OECD countries in 2023.

Plastic waste washed up on a beach in Sarawak, Malaysia. The country and some of its regional neighbors have implemented bans on plastic waste imports, but experts fear this will lead to a reshuffling of waste to countries with weaker restrictions, perpetuating the cycle of “waste colonialism.” Photo via RDW Environmental/Alamy.

Some Southeast Asian countries have implemented bans on plastic waste imports. But experts fear this will only lead to a reshuffling of waste to other countries with weaker restrictions, perpetuating the cycle of what critics call “waste colonialism.”

This term, first recorded in 1989, suggests that the trade enables the high-consumption lifestyles of the Global North, with countries in the Global South left to deal with the consequences.

Exporting health and environmental harms

The global waste trade emerged in the 1980s as a means for countries with high recycling costs to send waste to countries where recycling could be done at lower cost. In countries like China, imported waste also filled a gap of raw materials to produce plastics, metals and papers.

Looser environmental regulations in importing countries made the plastics trade commercially viable. “They export the pollution to Southeast Asian countries, since we have less regulation and less control because of our historical context,” explains Punyathorn Jeungsmarn, a plastics campaigner and researcher at the Environmental Justice Foundation.

In theory, the trade is meant to create jobs while developing new revenue streams and recycling infrastructure. In practice, however, it has overwhelmed waste management systems in many importing countries.

Thitikorn Boontongmai is a program manager and researcher at Ecological Alert and Recovery Thailand (EARTH). The NGO inspected several “illegal recycling factories” in eastern Thailand and observed waste simply dumped in landfills rather than processed.

With heavy rainfall, much of this plastic ends up in the oceans by way of the region’s long rivers and coastlines: six of the ten highest plastic polluting countries are in Southeast Asia.

In Thailand, the availability of cheap imported plastics has led to lower demand for recyclables. This lowers prices for the waste pickers who collect and trade these materials, Punyathorn explains. He notes that pickers have threatened to stop collecting waste unless the government bans the import of plastics. “If they stop collecting, then the waste in the ground and on the streets is not collected, and you have a situation where the entire domestic supply chain is disrupted.”

An informal waste collector waits to be paid for a delivery of recyclable materials outside a recycling center in Bangkok. The compressed plastic bottles were collected by workers like him, and will be sold on in bulk to make new bottles. Photo by Luke Duggleby/Dialogue Earth.

The plastics trade has also affected human health. An investigation by Greenpeace Malaysia around a dumpsite in Pulau Indah found hazardous chemicals and heavy metals such as cadmium and lead. The report noted that these contaminants may cause health issues including cardiovascular, respiratory and cognitive diseases. Between 2018 and 2019, when plastic burning spiked in Sungai Petani, Kedah, community advocates reported a 30% increase in cases of respiratory diseases.

Southeast Asia pushes back

In response to their environmental impacts, several Southeast Asian countries have rolled out restrictions and bans on waste imports. In January 2025, the Thai and Indonesian governments announced the immediate halting of plastic scrap imports.

Fearing the arrival of waste diverted from those countries, Malaysia restricted the inflow of plastic waste. In July 2025, it banned shipments from countries not party to the Basel Convention on the waste trade. A further ban in February 2026 forbade the import of e-waste, introduced shortly after a six-month blanket moratorium on all types of waste import was proposed.

Sedat Gündoğdu, a marine biologist and member of the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, says complete bans work because “shipping companies will avoid carrying any kind of waste to your country. This is what China did”. But some activists and experts note that bans have not always stopped imports. Thitikorn says EARTH had seen cases of imported plastic waste being declared as something else in Thailand. Campaigners in Indonesia have also documented paper scrap imports being contaminated with plastic, with up to 30% of the import being plastic. These have been sold to brokers or burned as fuel.

“At the end of the day, when it comes to a local level,” Punyathorn says, authorities with power to regulate or permit certain things coming in “may have vested interests that allow them to just… circumvent these [bans]”.

Lukas Fort, who researches Indonesia’s environmental governance at the University of Copenhagen, tells Dialogue Earth that the recycling industry’s dependence on imported plastics “raises the possibility that imports may continue in some form if enforcement is uneven.” He says this is especially so due to the often competing interests of government bodies, for instance the environment ministry and the trade or industry ministry.

Even if bans are effectively implemented, campaigners raised concerns that they would just change where plastic waste ends up. “Every year it’s a new destination,” says Kaustubh Thapa, a post-doctorate researcher at Radboud University’s Faculty of Environmental Science. “Waste traders always will find [new] destinations to exploit.”

An example of this can be seen in 2023, as plastic waste import restrictions were tightening in countries like Thailand. An investigation into customs data during this period revealed that much misreported waste from Europe and North America had been illegally dumped in war-torn Myanmar, transiting through Thailand.

Though Punyathorn thinks the effectiveness of restrictions are limited, he is hopeful about other measures being considered. In Thailand, these include the Sustainable Packaging Act, in which producers will be responsible for post-consumption management of waste, such as recovery and recycling. This act, along with proposed policies on circular economy and a pollution register, show that there is a “growing momentum towards trying to use domestic waste rather than imports,” he notes.

The global plastics treaty

As Southeast Asia deals with the continued influx of imported plastic waste, a global plastics treaty still hangs in the balance. The most recent round of negotiations in Geneva in August 2025 ended with a weakened draft text. Chief among the challenges faced were efforts by oil-producing states to block measures to curb plastic production and regulate chemical additives to plastic.

Even nations pushing for an ambitious treaty have avoided confronting the waste trade directly, Gündoğdu notes, referring to member states of the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution (HAC). “How can a high-ambition group not be ‘high-ambitious’ about strict control of plastic waste trade to [countries in] Africa and other countries?” he says, noting that European HAC members are some of the largest plastic exporters to developing countries. Similarly, some Southeast Asian states have had to balance their petrochemical industry ambitions with resolving the negative impacts of imported waste.

“The last negotiation left off on a very uncertain note,” says Punyathorn, highlighting the resignation of former treaty chair Luis Vayas Valdivieso after nations were unable to agree on two drafts he proposed. Since we spoke to Punyathorn, a new chair was elected, revitalizing hopes of momentum towards an effective treaty.

An art installation of a tap spewing plastic sourced from a slum in Nairobi, displayed at the UN Environment Assembly 5.2 that took place in the city in 2022. The most recent round of negotiations in Geneva in August 2025 ended with a weakened draft text. Photo by Ahmed Nayim Yussuf / UNEP, CC BY-NC-SA.

Existing international legislation could provide a guideline for what an effective plastics treaty could look like. In 2019, the Basel Convention was amended to strengthen control of the trans-boundary movement of plastic waste, notably requiring prior informed consent before such waste crosses borders.

However, being voluntary, the convention is insufficient, says Gündoğdu. A treaty should address the waste trade in a manner aligned with the convention, while consolidating the existing codes for hazardous, non-hazardous and plastics under a single definition of plastic waste to make it more difficult to exploit loopholes, he notes.

One of the key dividing lines in the negotiations — for which next official rounds are anticipated at end-2026 or early 2027 — is whether the treaty will include a cap on plastic production, which is where the harms of the waste trade begin, Punyathorn says.

He explains that countries with more natural gas and oil than needed for energy production will use it to produce plastics, particularly disposable single-use items such as bags, spoons and straws, in order to flush out a high supply as quickly as possible. Once disposed of, these low-quality plastics are harder to collect, recycle and manage, and so are often exported to poorer countries.

He says the best way to stop this is to turn off the fossil fuel tap causing this overflow, “make plastics more expensive, and then you would only have necessary products that can be properly managed throughout the value chain.”

Top image: An officer from Malaysia’s environment ministry examines a container of non-recyclable plastic which was held by authorities at a port in Klang. The country restricted the inflow of plastic waste in July 2025, months after Thailand and Indonesia announced the halting of plastic scrap imports. Photo by Vincent Thian / Associated Press / Alamy.

This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth and was republished with permission. Visit the Dialogue Earth website for more.

With hues of orange and black on its wings and a furry, fluffy face, the painted woolly bat is a stunner. But its beauty has become a deadly liability. People want to hang the bats — dead and stuffed — on their walls, display them as collectibles and even set them in jewelry.

In recent years, taxidermied and framed bats have become popular as Halloween décor and, oddly, as Christmas tree decorations, sold to customers in the US, as well as Europe and Canada. This macabre trade first came to light in 2015 when scientists found dead bats, including painted woolly bats, for sale in Vietnam’s largest metropolis, Hồ Chí Minh City. Then, nearly a decade later, scientists realized that it wasn’t just a few stores selling bats: There’s also a huge online market.

In 2024, researchers from the Bat Specialist Group at the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, documented nearly 800 bats for sale on Amazon.com, eBay and Etsy over a three-month period. Their “Dying for décor” study, published in the European Journal of Wildlife Research, suggests that the trade is global. A quarter of the bats sold online were from a single species: painted woolly bats, or dơi mũi nhẵn đốm vàng in Vietnamese (Kerivoula picta).

After a successful awareness campaign by conservation organizations, eBay and Etsy banned the sale of bat products on their sites in 2025.

Painted woolly bats are nocturnal and sparsely distributed in the landscape, roosting in small groups. Image by faridmuzaki via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Now, a new study finds that this ornamental trade continues to thrive in Vietnam. Two surveys conducted in 2024 in HCMC’s tourist markets found more than 50 taxidermied and framed painted woolly bats in souvenir shops, sold alongside other wildlife products.

Painted woolly bats, also known as butterfly bats, “are one of the most beautiful bats there is,” said study author Chris Shepherd, a senior conservation advocate at US-based nonprofit the Center for Biological Diversity. Native to 11 countries in South and Southeast Asia, they’re classified as near threatened, and populations are declining. A 2020 survey found that their numbers had dropped by 25% over the last 15 years, largely because of this trade.

While it’s illegal to hunt them in each of their range countries, commercial cross-border trade isn’t regulated or monitored, as they’re not protected under CITES, the global wildlife trade treaty.

The US is the biggest importer of these colorful bats and other related species, with more than 1,000 dead individuals entering the country yearly. So in 2024, Shepherd and his colleagues petitioned the US Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the painted woolly bat under the Endangered Species Act, which would prohibit its import, export, transport, trade and possession within the US In August 2025, the agency announced it was initiating a review of the species status based on the petition.

A taxidermied and framed painted woolly bat for sale in a shop in HCMC beside insects, documented as part of research quantifying the scope of the trade in bats. Image by Joanna Coleman.

Thriving trade in Vietnam

In mid-2024, one of the study authors visited HCMC markets to gauge the scale of the trade in the city and the prices that ornamental bats commanded. During an eight-day survey, they visited 85 shops in three different districts: 66 sold souvenirs and 19 others offered traditional medicine. They found 41 painted woolly bats in 13 shops at Bến Thành Market in the city center, dried and mounted in black shadowbox frames. Shops at other markets had none on display. The framed bats sold for anywhere between VND250,000 and 890,000 (about US$10–35) apiece.

The researcher returned to the same market a few months later, in November 2024, and found 18 bat ornaments for sale; six were painted woolly bats, including a pup. “They are mainly marketed to tourists, so this likely amounts to international trade,” said the study’s co-author, Joanna Coleman, a biology professor at the City University of New York in the US and a member of the IUCN Bat Specialist Group.

Since painted woolly bats were extremely popular in HCMC markets — representing a third of all bats sold — she said the demand “must be higher for them than for other bats” because of their striking beauty.

The researchers couldn’t definitively identify the other species for sale, but based on the labels attached, they seemed to belong to the genus, Pipistrellus, a widely distributed group of bats found in Southeast Asia, Europe and Africa. These shops also sold butterflies, beetles, scorpions, moths, lizards, spiders and double-winged true bugs — all dried and framed, just like the bats.

When asked about the origins of the bats they sold, vendors told researchers that painted woolly bats mostly came from the wild. One seller said these shops buy their bats from a wholesale dealer, who hires people to harvest, dry and frame them.

The painted woolly bat is in great demand for the ornamental trade, bought both online and offline for decorations. Image by Vetri Selvan via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Finding young bats in these markets was of particular concern. Baby bats cling to their mothers for the first few weeks of their lives and ride along with her when she hunts or forages. Finding young pups for sale indicates that “[h]unters are taking adults and dependent pups,” Coleman said. “When you remove adult females and their young from wild populations, you are even likelier to cause population declines, especially in animals like bats that reproduce very slowly.” Painted woolly bats birth just one pup a year.

Fieldwork revealed the trade’s impact. When one of the researchers visited the Mekong Delta between June and September 2024 — a region where locals said it’s generally easy to see painted woolly bats — they found just one female after an intensive search. This indicates that local populations are nearly extinct, and those for sale in markets either came from a stockpile or from elsewhere.

Bat scientist Dave Waldien called the findings “unfortunate, but not surprising,” since painted woolly bats are the most popular in trade. Waldien, a member of the IUCN Bat Specialist Group who wasn’t involved in the study, emphasized the importance of this research in highlighting that “the level of threat from the ornamental trade of the painted woolly bat is more significant than previously thought, and that robust and immediate attention is needed to eliminate this threat.”

This image documents ornamental wildlife for sale in HCMC, photographed during a recent study. This shop sold both adult bats and pups. Image courtesy of Nguyen et. al (2026).

Better enforcement and trade monitoring needed

Painted woolly bats are solitary and sparsely distributed, and scientists don’t know much about their life cycle, behavior, or even how many of them are in the wild. “Kerivoula picta is especially hard to study,” Coleman said. “That is exactly what makes the trade a likely conservation concern.” Data on their trade are also patchy; this study is the first to document how many are sold in one of their native countries.

Conservationists say governments of the bat’s range countries should step up to enforce their laws against hunting the species. In Vietnam, those laws come with major loopholes: It’s legal to capture the bats during their nonbreeding season and it’s also legal to sell captive-bred bats, with paperwork to prove it. But there are no known captive-breeding facilities for these insectivorous bats anywhere in the world, researchers say. Since pups have also been found in the trade, scientists say illegal capture is common.

The researchers urge the Vietnamese government to add the species to its national list of endangered, precious and rare animals, which would ban hunting year-round and impose stricter fines and prison terms for violators.

Given that the bats are primarily sold to foreign tourists, experts also suggest regulating trade in this species by adding it to Appendix II of CITES. However, the next CITES summit when that might be considered is at least two years away.

In the interim, range countries can add painted wooly bats to CITES Appendix III, to better monitor international trade from within their borders. That would be “a really big first step in helping regulate the trade and helping countries protect the species in the range countries,” said Shepherd from the Center for Biological Diversity. “Without [Appendix III] listing, there’s no mechanism for controlling or regulating international trade.”

But these mammals face additional threats. Logging and conversion of agricultural plantations into human settlements are erasing their homes.

With striking orange and black streaks on their wings, painted woolly bats are one of the most colorful bats in the world. Image by stingraysilver via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Conservation of this species requires collaboration between governments, conservationists and communities, Waldien said. “In addition to national and international legislation, this should include work with local communities to prevent further collection — and the protection and restoration of the species’ habitat.”

Few people realize the services bats provide. Protecting painted woolly bats — and all bat species — benefits human health and helps produce the food we eat. Like all insectivorous bats, they act as nature’s pest control, keeping insect numbers under check, so they don’t devour crops, and also limiting the spread of insect-borne diseases.

Removing this iconic species from the wild, especially for a senseless trinket trade, will hurt the bats and the ecosystem, Shepherd said. “People don’t need to be hanging this bat on the wall or on their Christmas tree or having it on their desk.”

Top photo: With this species highly sought after as decorations, mostly by foreign tourists, their numbers are dwindling. Image by Abu Hamas via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

This article is originally published by Mongabay. Read the Mongabay article here.

A trail of enormous footprints, criss-crossing slabs of cracked concrete, lead to a battered ranger station in Vietnam’s Pù Mát National Park. Park staff say the wild Asian elephant that left the tracks is as friendly as it is lonely.

Separated from any of the country’s remaining wild herds, the solitary giant satisfies her social appetite by interacting with people at the station. Rangers say the 29-year-old female has been solo since her mother died more than a decade ago. Signs of her visits to the rangers are hard to miss, with craters in the soil left by weighty feet, a fence bent from a playful push, and a dented sign toppled by a frisky trunk.

“The elephant usually comes here to play,” says Nguyễn Công Thành, a ranger at Pù Mát in Vietnam’s north-central Nghệ An Province, as he points out the damage. The wild elephant herd which lives deeper in the forests of Pù Mát — made up of around 15 individuals — is far less friendly, he says.

Nguyễn Công Thành, a ranger at Pù Mát National Park, holds a battered sign which was knocked down by a solitary wild elephant.

Lộc Văn Hùng, a fellow ranger, with a section of the station’s fence that the elephant damaged

Only around 100 wild elephants are estimated to survive in Vietnam, separated into 22 groups across the country. These last survivors of Asia’s once 100,000-strong elephant population face a myriad of threats, including conflict with people, exacerbated by habitat loss.

Drawn to fruit trees, corn, rice and other agricultural produce, a herd of wild elephants can destroy a farmer’s livelihood in a single meal. And when Vietnam’s remaining wild herds interact with humans, the results are often fraught and sometimes fatal.

As pressure mounts from agricultural expansion and other human development, conservationists warn the dwindling number of elephants will soon approach the point of no return in sustaining a viable population.

In the last two years in Pù Mát, rangers allegedly suspect two elephants may have been killed by poisoning in possible acts of retribution following conflicts with humans.

An Asian elephant takes a bath in Vietnam’s Yok Don National Park in May 2023, when a record-setting heat wave swept Vietnam.

With Vietnam’s elephant populations trailing on the very edge of viability, each incident of conflict threatens the continued existence of the species there.

Vietnam’s elephants on the brink

Asian elephants are listed as critically endangered on the Vietnam Red Book of rare and endangered species, while the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List categorize them as endangered at the global level.

A tourist draws a rescued Asian elephant during a tour hosted by NGO Animals Asia in Yok Don National Park, which is estimated to be home to 28–60 wild elephants.

Vietnam’s wild elephant population has been in sharp decline for decades. Huge swathes of forest were destroyed during the 20-year-long American War, and the animals’ habitat has continued to shrink as the country has developed.

Hunted for ivory and the elephant skin trade, and captured from the wild for use in logging and tourism, Vietnam’s wild elephant population has fallen from approximately 2,000 in 1980 to between 91 and 129 in 2022, according to the Vietnam Forest Administration.

The few surviving wild herds live in areas close to Vietnam’s borders with Cambodia and Laos. The largest groups are in three national parks: Cát Tiên, Pù Mát and Yok Don. Even then, Cát Tiên and Pù Mát are home to fewer than 20 elephants, while between 28 and 60 are estimated to live in Yok Don, according to data from the Vietnam Forestry Administration. The rest of the nation’s wild elephants are sparsely scattered across nine provinces, with four provinces counting just a single wild elephant.

Wild Asian elephant herds have declined steadily for decades in Vietnam. As of 2022, 91–129 elephants are estimated to survive across 12 provinces, with the largest herds restricted to three national parks. • Data source: Vietnam Forestry Administration • Graphic: China Dialogue, Anton Delgado

The Vietnam Forestry Administration lists Lâm Đồng Province as elephant habitat. However, no data on the number of individuals is included.

A national plan to save elephants

Vietnam is currently crafting a national action plan on elephant conservation to protect the country’s remaining wild herds. This program will run from 2023 to 2032, and will set a vision to 2050.

Mai Nguyễn, wildlife program manager at Humane Society International (HSI), an animal welfare and conservation NGO, says that national agencies, along with authorities from those provinces where wild elephants cling on, have been meeting with conservation groups in “consultation workshops” and “technical meetings” to develop the action plan.

A sculpture of an Asian elephant herd made of snares and other wildlife traps in Vietnam’s Pù Mát National Park, which is estimated to be home to fewer than 20 wild elephants.

HSI is leading on writing a draft plan, while also providing technical support and encouraging authorities to find “appropriate interventions” to mitigate conflict between elephants and local communities, Mai says. The plan must be signed by Vietnam’s prime minister or the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development before it comes into effect.

But reducing human-elephant conflict is complex, and more information is needed to inform responses, Mai says. “The conflict is unique and it’s also very complicated. To sort this out is not easy and it takes time… We should keep monitoring and learning about the characteristics of the conflict.”

Retaliation and reconciliation

Some traditional methods used to scare elephants away from crops in Vietnam can be harmful to the animals. While many farmers will bang pots, flash lights, and set off firecrackers, some have also used more violent means.

Locals in Cát Tiên have told conservationists about an incident some four years ago in which they threw a Molotov cocktail at a wild male elephant and lit it on fire in an attempt to drive it away. People in the area later reported the elephant is one of the more aggressive animals now.

An Asian elephant munches vegetation in Yok Don National Park, which is home to Vietnam’s largest wild elephant herd.

Conservationists had initially hoped that “bio-fences” such as bee boxes and chili plants could be used to deter elephants, but these passive interventions have been mainly unsuccessful.

Another potential solution, which some are pushing to be included in the conservation plan, is a countrywide compensation program for property destroyed by elephants. These initiatives are intended to prevent acts of retaliation against the animals, and though some exist on the local level, there is no such countrywide mechanism.

“We hope some compensation to local people can settle down the conflict and hopefully we can protect the elephants,” said Thông Phạm, a research manager with Save Vietnam’s Wildlife.

Phước, a fruit vendor, playing with his three-year-old son at an elephant fountain in Buôn Đôn Square, Đắk Lắk province.

Mai Nguyễn at HSI is working to submit a final draft of the action plan to the government in the hopes of it being signed by the end of this year. “To sort this out is not easy,” she says. “We must represent the elephant voice.”

Training for better responses to human-elephant conflict

In late May 2023, Cao Thị Lý, an elephant expert and retired professor from Tây Nguyên University in Đắk Lắk, led a training course on mitigating human-elephant conflict. At the event, approximately an hour’s drive from Pù Mát National Park, we met with conservationists, rangers, and members of a “community quick-response team” dedicated to mitigating human-wildlife conflict around the park. The training course was arranged by nonprofit Fauna & Flora International (FFI), which runs conservation efforts in Pù Mát and backs the response team.

“Out of 13 Asian nations [with extant wild elephant populations], Vietnam is the one with the fewest wild elephants left,” says Lý. “We have to change to help the elephants.”

Cao Thị Lý, a retired professor from Tây Nguyên University in Đắk Lắk and author of a book on human-elephant conflict in Vietnam, leads a training course on the topic with conservationists, rangers and researchers.

Habitat destruction has exacerbated human-elephant conflict, says Đặng Đình Lâm, a member of the quick-response team.

Rubber plantations and slash-and-burn farming near Pù Mát National Park have shrunk elephant habitat and thus availability of elephant food, Lâm says.

“The conflict has two sides. Elephants lack habitat, and because they destroy crops and property, people dislike them,” Lâm says. “I hope that the government and people will be more responsible about protecting elephants.”

Engineers of the forest

“When I was young, I could see elephants everywhere,” says Quỳnh Phạm, driving an e-cart into the 115,000-hectare Yok Don National Park in Vietnam’s verdant Central Highlands, which is home to the country’s largest wild elephant population. Quỳnh is the ethical elephant tourism manager for Animals Asia, a nonprofit working in Vietnam and China to improve the welfare of captive wildlife.

In December 2021, Animals Asia signed a memorandum of understanding with the province of Đắk Lắk (where Yok Don is located) to end elephant rides completely by 2026 and transition to ethical elephant tourism. As of 2022, there were 37 domesticated or captive elephants in Đắk Lắk province, and between 28 and 60 in the wild.

Ten animals previously used for elephant rides now live in Yok Don, under the care of Animals Asia. The elephants roam freely in the park during the day, with mahouts traveling with them to ensure their safety; they are kept on long chains in the park overnight. Visiting tourists can watch the animals grazing, bathing, and mud wallowing from a safe distance.

While far from the hundreds of Quỳnh’s youth, the 10 retired elephants can now play their key natural role in the forest ecosystem.

Trampling through the forest, two females graze on bamboo and plough through thick vegetation — a long way from the elephant rides of their past. Wild Asian elephants do this for 18 hours a day, dispersing seeds and creating new forest trails for smaller species as they go. As elephant populations have plummeted across Asia, this important role as an “engineer” has been left unfilled.

An Asian elephant, rescued by Animals Asia, feeds in Vietnam’s Yok Don National Park. Elephants can eat up to 150 kilograms of vegetation per day.

Prasop Tipprasert, who has worked in elephant conservation for more than 30 years in Southeast Asia, explains that the presence of elephants in the wild indicates a healthy, biodiverse landscape.

“If we cannot keep elephants from extinction, we lose the potential of keeping our forests healthy,” says Prasop, who now works for the Laos-based eco-tourism agency MandaLao Elephant Conservation.

Cao Thị Lý, an expert in human-elephant conflict, points out a sign warning of frequent wild elephant sightings in Vietnam’s Pù Mát National Park.

Lý, the retired professor, says that for elephants to maintain their role as ecosystem engineers in Vietnam’s forests, the country’s government must actively restore and reconnect their habitat to give different populations opportunities to interact and interbreed.

While elephants could once travel through suitable habitat from northern to southern Vietnam, forests have become increasingly fragmented, with conflict with humans becoming “systematic” as forests shrink, she says.

“Due to the conflict between humans and elephants over the small leftover shared resources, bad outcomes arise,” she notes. “The confrontation between humans and elephants has intensified.”

An approximately 40-year-old Asian elephant rescued by Animals Asia treads through Vietnam’s Yok Don National Park

Elephants on the brink in neighboring countries

The decline of elephants in Vietnam is mirrored in neighboring nations. The wild Asian elephant populations of both Laos and Cambodia are estimated to number less than a thousand. In China, barely 300 wild elephants are believed to survive, with their once enormous range now limited to a pocket of the south-western province of Yunnan.

Conflict over resources is a major concern for China’s remaining wild herds. In 2021, 14 elephants usually resident in a nature reserve in Yunnan’s Xishuangbanna region began to move northwards. On their months-long journey, the elephants destroyed property, creating a challenge for authorities in finding a balance between elephant conservation and protecting citizens’ dwellings and livelihoods. According to local authorities, 150,000 people were evacuated from the elephants’ path to avoid potentially dangerous incidents, and the government paid out a total of US$770,000 in property damages.

Farmland surrounds Pù Mát National Park, one of the few locations where wild elephants cling on in Vietnam.

Sitting just steps from where Pù Mát’s solo female elephant is often spotted, Cao Thị Lý underlines how important habitat protection is if there is to be any chance of saving the last elephants of Vietnam.

“Vietnam is the weakest in everything in elephant conservation,” she says. “We have the chance to help the elephants to keep growing their population in the future, but we need to rebuild forests.”

This story was originally produced by China Dialogue in collaboration with Southeast Asia Globe with additional reporting by Nguyễn Háo Thanh Thảo. It has been republished with permission from China Dialogue.

In April 2023, in the first downpour of southern Vietnam’s rainy season, the narrow rented room where Mã Thị Diệp and her children were staying in Hồ Chí Minh City was inundated by knee-high water.

“It flooded in from the street and came up from the drain in the bathroom. We couldn’t stop it,” recalls the lottery ticket vendor. “The liquid was black like coal and so stinky I almost fainted.” The water subsided after two hours, and the family cleaned the room until midnight. “My skin got itchy a bit, and it’s lucky we don’t have anything too valuable to get damaged,” she adds, half-jokingly.

Originally from Vietnam’s southern province of Sóc Trăng, Diệp’s family — and many other migrants among HCMC’s 9.4 million residents — live in District 12, to the north of the city centre. Despite lying on the higher and supposedly drier side of the city, District 12 has become one of its most flood-prone areas in recent years. Generally it is Saigon’s outskirts, predominantly home to migrants and lower-income households, that suffer the highest rates of subsidence and flooding.

The 2023 rainy season began a month earlier than usual in southern Vietnam, arriving in April. Heavy bursts of rainfall in which 100mm of water fell in one hour used to happen around once every five years last century, but became a daily occurrence in June and July this year, according to local authorities. Research anticipates that heavy rainfall will inundate the city’s underdeveloped drainage system more regularly in the coming decades.

This dwelling in District 2 of HCMC, which is home to many migrants from the Mekong Delta, flooded following a downpour in November 2021. Photo by Cương Trần.

These extreme weather trends feed into a worrying wider picture. HCMC is one of the world’s fastest-sinking coastal cities, alongside Tianjin and Shanghai in China, and Semarang and Jakarta in Indonesia. The city is also at increasing risk of substantial flooding from rising sea levels: a one-meter rise would be enough to submerge a fifth of the city by 2100, according to a 2020 government report.

The economic engine of southern Vietnam, Saigon produces 22% of the country’s GDP. Chronic flooding is currently estimated to cost the city US$1.3 billion annually, rising to US$8.7 billion — or 3% of GDP — by 2050.

“It is a city built on water,” says Nguyễn Hồng Quân, an expert in environmental hydrology and climate change at Vietnam National University. “And now it is put in front of a new set of changes. Without proper planning, more severe flooding is certain in the future.”

Infrastructure outpaced by urban sprawl

Long-time District 8 resident Nguyễn Tấn Lợi says this swampy region was covered by rice fields and fish ponds until the early 1990s. It has since been built over with university campuses and residential wards. “The city’s surface is now mostly paved by concrete, with little open soil for the water to seep into,” says Hồng Quân. “[Rainwater] is flushed into the outdated sewers, which can hardly handle it and eventually spill it out back to the street.”

In the city’s southern reaches, Nguyễn Trung Hiếu and his neighbors also face inundation. His neighborhood in District 8 — one of HCMC’s poorest districts — is flooded twice a month between September and February by the Bà Tàng Canal that runs through it. “The tides get higher and higher, by roughly 5cm a year,” he says. Hiếu has raised his floor “a few times already” and the residents have all paid towards work to raise their shared road.

Nearly half of HCMC’s area lies less than one meter above sea level. It is also criss-crossed by a network of tide-influenced rivers and canals that covers approximately 21% of the city. This network is one reason why the city has been an important trade port for the past two centuries for ships carrying agricultural goods from the Mekong Delta and other areas of southern Vietnam. Following the war in the 1960s–1970s, it became the country’s manufacturing and financial hub.

HCMC’s District 8 is a low-lying, historically swampy area that has been built over in recent years, hindering water drainage. Photo by Thanh Huế.

This explosive economic growth came with rapid urbanization, stacked mostly upon soft, alluvial soil. Plumbing infrastructure was slow to catch up to the urban sprawl, so groundwater extraction using makeshift wells became widespread. Thousands of these wells remain in HCMC, pumping groundwater for industrial, domestic and agricultural uses. Where extraction of groundwater exceeds the rate at which it can be replenished, this can cause the water table to lower, and the ground above it to sink.

Between 1991 and 2015, Vietnam’s wider Mekong Delta area sank by an average of approximately 18cm during those 24 years; a 2017 study found groundwater overexploitation to be the main culprit. The gradual subsidence of this area is forcing the poorest inhabitants with the least amount of land to migrate, most likely to HCMC and adjacent industrial hubs.

According to a 2015 study, HCMC itself subsided by an average of 8mm per year during 2006–2010. The most severe levels of subsidence, reaching 70mm per year, were noted in the city’s eastern outskirts, along the Saigon River. Following municipal efforts to reduce groundwater extraction and defend against sea-level rise, a 2020 study found that subsidence levels had improved to between 3.3mm and 53mm per year during 2017-2019. However, the fastest subsidence rates were still to be found in the city’s outskirts. Meanwhile, rising sea levels are projected to displace 78% of HCMC’s inhabitants by 2100.

Disproportionate impacts on HCMC’s residents

A 2016 World Bank study found that HCMC’s slums (“densely built small households and shelters that have [a] predominantly semi‐permanent character”) are disproportionately exposed to the consequences of flooding, with 68–85% being at risk, compared to an average of 63–68% across all of the city’s urban areas.

HCMC is Vietnam’s strongest migration magnet, but the city’s environmental challenges tend to exacerbate the problems faced by many newcomers. “We found migrants were initially healthier than non-migrants, but then their health declined really quickly over time,” says Hang Ngo, a public health research scientist. Last year, her research into migrants from the Mekong Delta found that most live in small, poorly ventilated dwellings with substandard hygiene conditions. If these dwellings are in flood-prone areas, the risk of dengue fever and skin infections increases.

Lê Văn Lợi, a garment worker by day and motorbike taxi driver by night who lives in Bình Chánh District on Saigon’s western outskirts, shares that floods are his biggest fear: the waters can knock over drivers, while fixing a waterlogged bike costs more than VND150,000 (US$6). “Not worth it for a few dollars’ ride,” says the 29-year-old. During particularly rainy spells, Lợi’s income drops substantially.

Crucially, the city’s low-income and migrant populations, who tend to live in areas of high flood risk with underdeveloped local infrastructure, usually have fewer resources to protect them from flooding. “It is like a vicious circle,” says Cao Vũ Quỳnh Anh, a University of Tokyo researcher who has studied how HCMC residents cope with floods.

A road on the outskirts of Saigon’s District 2, flooded following heavy rain in June 2018. Photo by Cương Trần.

Grey, green and communal problem-solving

The Vietnamese government is currently betting on engineering to hold back the water in its biggest city. But progress so far has been slow. For example, a drainage infrastructure project for the city was proposed in 2001, but 20 years later, its construction was less than 50% complete. Another project, which seeks to protect a 570 square kilometer area encompassing the city centre with ring dykes, sluiceways and water pumps, is currently behind schedule. Insufficient interest in such projects from both city authorities and private investors is reportedly a factor in these delays.

Critics have pointed out that these flood defense projects are too limited in scope however, because they are mainly concerned with the old, central areas. HCMC’s urban sprawl is outpacing protection plans. “These ‘grey’ solutions may help soothe the flooding problems, but they are not enough,” says Hồng Quân.

According to research published in June 2023, the deployment of “small-scale rainwater detention measures” (also known as the “sponge city” approach) would be beneficial in Saigon. Such measures would include installing green roofs, rain barrels, porous sidewalks and water-detention basins. The research found that these smaller-scale, fragmented measures are a “highly complementary adaptation pathway” when deployed alongside large-scale engineering interventions.

Quỳnh Anh says the city is following the same reactive adaptation approach as other Asian coastal cities like Tokyo, Jakarta and Manila. This approach means “fewer choices of measures are left and time is very tight for any solution,” she says.

According to both Hồng Quân and Quỳnh Anh, Vietnam’s most populous city currently lacks a comprehensive flood-mitigation plan that connects solutions together. But for such a plan to materialise, Quỳnh Anh says “better communication between the city and its people” is essential. “Understanding is very important. It helps the city to come up with more applicable adaptation plans, and the residents can be proactive in coping with flooding.”

Meanwhile, both Mã Thị Diệp and Nguyễn Trung Hiếu are running out of solutions. Diệp has moved her family to a new neighborhood on higher ground, but she says she cannot afford a more expensive room if this one floods. And Hiếu knows the tide will keep climbing, but he cannot keep raising his home: “If we lift the floor any higher, it will touch the ceiling.”

This story was originally produced by China Dialogue and has been republished with permission.

Compared to the average Vietnamese, I might be thinking about trashcans a smidgen too much — not just any trashcan, but the infamous penguin-shaped trashcans that are ubiquitous at every corner of our public spaces.

You know what I’m talking about. These bins are usually the size of a burly child, made of glass fiber-reinforced plastic, and are shaped like penguins with their mouths agape. Sometimes a call-to-action text is painted on their belly, with the most commonly seen phrase being “hãy cho tôi rác / please give me trash.”

Vietnam’s relationship with littering, recycling, and waste management is complicated, to say the least, but our relationship with trashcans is very simple: we don’t have enough of them, and the ones that are available aren’t treated with the respect they deserve. This shortcoming makes each can’s presence quite noticeable wherever they’re around, especially quirkily designed ones like the penguin bin.

Cute but creepy, mostly creepy, in a Five Night at Freddy's kind of way.

Novelty trashcan is an uncommon genre of public amenities, but not unheard of; I’ve encountered all manner of bins in the shape of animals, fruits, and even famous cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse. Their natural habitats, however, tend to be areas that children often frequent, like playgrounds, amusement parks, and kindergartens. Only the penguin trashcan proliferates indiscriminately across the country, like Vietnam’s equivalent of the basic bird Pokémon you would spend 5 Poke Balls to catch at Level 5 on Route 1.

Why penguins, you may ask. I’ve thought about this a lot too, but alas, haven’t found a definitive answer. A handful of internet memes allude to the possible existence of a similar penguin design in the Anglosphere; they bear the text “use me,” the main reason why the internet found them funny. The majority of search results point to their significant prevalence in India and Vietnam; neither has endemic populations of penguins, but they share a similar public littering problem.

Perhaps it was a generic stock design that a contractor had readily available for park officials to buy in bulk, or perhaps the penguin was chosen for its unique biology that mirrors the gulping movement of trash — it doesn’t have teeth and consumes food by swallowing fish and crustaceans whole. We might never know. If you have the answer, please reach out.

When Pokemon Go first came to Vietnam, one of the penguin trashcans in Saigon got marked as a PokeStop.

Whatever the reason might be, some research has shown that visually striking can designs — including the use of eye-catching colors or unusual shapes — can help reduce littering by attracting human attention. There might be a method to the madness, after all, and the penguin shape might serve a public cleanliness purpose rather than being whimsical just for whimsy’s sake. 

Sometimes I wonder if the animal trashcan can be elevated into part of a larger effort to educate the Vietnamese public on our native species. The penguin is a distant entity, but the endangerment of animals like sao la, Irrawaddy dolphin, and Mekong giant catfish hits much closer to home. Could the bins be shaped like them instead?

Then again, as someone who appreciates the animal kingdom at large and Vietnam’s biodiversity in particular, I have always felt a vague sense of unease over putting trash in the mouth of a penguin, even though that penguin is a plastic object specifically designed to receive trash. It begs the question of who we’re tidying up for? We’ve all seen that tragic video a few years ago showing rescuers removing a straw from a sea turtle’s nostril. Am I trying to save a turtle by putting my bubble tea straws inside a penguin? Perhaps wild animals, be it in trashcan form or real, might not be the best receptacle for our disgusting trash.

With plastics claiming many of the headlines worldwide and constituting a major issue in Vietnam, scant attention is being paid to other recyclable materials, namely cardboard and aluminum.

On any given day, in every neighborhood, local collectors can be seen pedaling bicycles or driving motorized carts, piling on mounds of flattened cardboard boxes and bags of aluminum cans. These industrious individuals, along with trash collectors, are at the forefront of the recycling industry in Saigon.

Living in proximity to recycling centers in District 7, I have trod the dusty, two-kilometer-long path along Dao Tri Street numerous times, bearing witness to the daily parade of local collectors gathering their materials. This labor-intensive work is mostly carried out by women who have migrated from rural areas. Talking with a few of them, I found that their lives are generally not easy, having left family and farm for higher wages in Saigon. They live together to defray costs and send funds back to their families each month.

I asked one of the women, Uyen, about a typical day in her life. She generally starts her daily rounds at 7am, when stores open. Stopping primarily at mini-marts that get daily deliveries of goods in cardboard cases, she completes the first sweep by 11am. From there, she delivers her haul to a collection shop or “recycling middleman.” She is paid VND2,000 per kilogram of flattened cardboard. Most of these women have established good relationships with stores and businesses in the area and receive their flattened boxes and cans, as opposed to them being left in the street for collection.

Uyen dropping off her morning haul of cardboard and cans at the collection center.

After a brief lunch break, she begins a second collection cycle, at times supplementing her haul with plastic bottles (for which she is paid VND7,000 per kilo) or flattened aluminum beer cans (at VND19,000 per kilo). Her day ends around 6pm, unless another collection sweep is warranted. Belying the fact that this is a day job, I have seen these collectors working late into the night, separating the various materials for delivery the next morning.

Late-morning delivery activity at the collection center.

Members of my friend Hung’s family have been acting as recycling middlemen or collectors/processors for over 20 years, and have developed a rapport with a number of these grassroots laborers. Their family business collects and separates plastic bottles, scrap plastic and metal, aluminum cans and cardboard.

Hung (center) and his family at their recycling collection center.

Su, Con and Muoi separate assorted plastic into the proper containers.

They alerted me to a cardboard drop-off run, so that I could drive with them for a short distance to the recycling facility and witness the process. Entering a cavernous building, roughly the size of a basketball arena, the truck is first weighed with its complete cargo; then unloaded onto the floor. The truck is then re-weighed after disgorging its load, and the vendor is then compensated on the delivered weight of the cardboard.

Truck after truck arrived, and suddenly the building was transformed into a beehive of activity. Two bulldozers wrangled the growing mounds of cardboard toward the conveyor belt. The bales, which average 1,100 kilograms each, emerged inexorably from the compactor to await their stacking onto a flatbed truck for delivery to a larger processing center.

An employee at the compacting facility sorting packing material from the cardboard boxes.

One of the two bulldozers pushing boxes onto the compacter unit. Finished bales are in the background.

Operating the cardboard compactor forming the bales.

The cavernous cardboard facility with compacted bales in the foreground.

Speaking with the plant manager, Nam, I was told they handle three types of cardboard: foldable boxes, like a cereal box; rigid boxes, like computer or phone boxes; and corrugated shipping boxes, for moving and storing goods.

According to Cardboard Balers, a company based in the United Kingdom, recycling cardboard requires just 75% of the energy needed to make new cardboard, so it makes sense that recycling cardboard is a more sustainable option than cutting down trees to make virgin paper products. Cardboard is made from wood fiber, so recycling saves both landfill space and trees. Most cardboard products can be recycled, including boxes, paper towel and the inner rolls of toilet paper, which also reduces the amount of paper which countries have to import. Recycling one ton of used cardboard saves approximately 46 gallons (174 liters) of crude oil, while the majority of the world's shipped products use cardboard packaging, so it's advantageous to recycle from a cost-benefit perspective.

After returning from the cardboard run, I sat with Hung to get his perspective on recycling. “My uncle started this business about 30 years ago, and my dad studied from him and opened his own business, with another uncle handling machine parts for recycling,” he shared.

Hung discussing the future of recycling in Saigon.

The business has changed over the years as it grew.

"Twenty years ago they just bought plastic, aluminum and metal. Now we take in a variety of products, including cardboard,” Hung said. “Loyalty is a big part of the equation when it comes to attracting collectors. We pay a fair price and the locals know they can trust us. Everyone’s involved. My dad runs the business now and drives the truck to the various processing centers. My mom supervises the scale and payments, and [the team and I] do the heavy lifting.”

The rotund, heavy-duty sacks which hold aluminum cans top off at around 60 kilograms each, and the ones for plastic bottles can top 90 kilograms.

Hung lifting a delivery of cardboard onto the scale as his mom, Muoi, watches and records the weight.

Hai, Hung's dad, sews shut one of the massive bags containing plastic bottles.

Muoi recording deliveries at the shop.

Su lifting a huge bag of aluminum cans.

Hung went on to explain that he expects to graduate from university later this year with a degree in environmental engineering. When I asked if he would then join a larger recycling company, he said that he would apply his knowledge to help grow his family business, but he also wants to pursue a PhD in the field.

A similar scenario of truck weighing before and after unloading was evident when I accompanied the team on a run to out to Binh Chanh District to the aluminum can recycling center there.

Crushed aluminum cans before being baled.

Unloading 10 bags of aluminum cans and miscellaneous metal items, weighing up to 750 kilograms in total.

As to the future of recycling in Saigon, Hung reflected that other countries or states have comprehensive policies in place, whereas Vietnam still has no complete plan which includes tax exemptions or incentives. So if waste facilities become overloaded, he hopes this will drive new policies to address the issue. Looking ahead, he would like to concentrate more on plastics, and even buy a machine that cuts and washes small volumes of plastic for more efficient recycling.

While plastic and other man-made products continue to be major issues as urbanization spreads across the country, the intelligent use of recycled materials, such as cardboard and aluminum cans, can help alleviate some of the strain on the city’s resources, and the people doing this back-breaking work should not be overlooked.

This article was originally published in 2020.

Women in the Mekong Delta face numerous challenges, including limited access to educational opportunities and agricultural occupations threatened by the effects of climate change. A source of hope in this economically impoverished area, however, blooms in bright pink.

The lotus, widely considered a symbol of Vietnam, has long been used as a metaphor to describe Vietnamese people: from the mud grows a strong and resilient flower that provides nourishment. The plant is literally providing for women in the region thanks to a multifaceted program supported by WWF-Viet Nam as part of the larger Climate Resilient by Nature - Mekong project (CRxN Mekong).

Native to the Mekong Delta, lotus plants grow in rivers and lakes across a landscape significantly altered due to human development and agriculture. For decades, farmers looking to maximize food production have erected dikes during the flood season to grow a third crop of conventional rice per year. Doing so disrupts water cycles, which leads to soil degradation and loss of nutrients, while the chemicals needed for the plants further pollute the ecosystem. Lotus represents an alternative.

WWF-Viet Nam's lotus planting models support farmers growing lotus during the flood season. After four to four and a half months, the stems and seeds of the harvested plants can be processed and sold for consumption, bringing in approximately US$1,867 per hectare, a significant boon to local livelihoods. The environmental impacts of the program are similarly profound, with the model revealing lower greenhouse gas emissions as well as better water retention and quality, improved soil health and sedimentation, and a healthier biodiversity, all compared to a third season of conventional rice.

The vibrant natural ecosystems and human communities in the Mekong Delta depend on one another.

To encourage local farmers to adopt the lotus planting model, WWF-Viet Nam has provided technical and financial support to nine households in Tân Hưng, Vĩnh Châu, Vĩnh Thạnh communes, Tây Ninh province (formerly Vĩnh Đại, Vĩnh Lợi, Vĩnh Châu A, and Thạnh Hưng communes, Long An province). With the guidance of experts from An Giang Climate Change, the farmers are taught cultivation techniques and given organic fertilizers to prevent and reduce disease on lotus plants. Saigoneer visited several of the sites to understand what the project looks like in action and the impact it has on women in the area.

An Inspiring Visit to the Lotus Fields

Amidst the crisp lines of rice fields that make a checkerboard of the landscape, lotus fields are messy scribbles of green and pink. To reach one, we had to take a small boat. Standing on a narrow embankment, we could just make out a group of women working up to their waists in water, their nón lá occasionally coming into view between flower blossoms, hands rising to pluck seed pods and drop them in baskets attached to their backs. After 15 minutes, the group had worked its way towards us, and we were able to speak with Lê Thị Thòng, a local farmer who was spending her morning harvesting the field.

Thòng explained that she had been planting lotus before this project began, but “before, when I planted lotus, it sometimes succeeded, but without this process, the lotus often got diseases. The engineers supported clean lotus planting, and the technique is very good.”

Lê Thị Thòng collects lotus pods.

Being able to plant lotus that reliably yields income has wide-reaching implications for the women in the region. Thòng uses the income for household needs, including more nutritious meals and her children’s education, which is particularly relevant because having work in the fields near her home means she can be available to pick them up from school, as opposed to industrial site jobs that are often unavailable to women because they require traveling great distances.

Nguyễn Thị Diễm Trinh in front of her home lotus field.

Nguyễn Thị Diễm Trinh, another lotus farmer, echoed these sentiments while explaining that the lotus program also expands her role in the community. After speaking with her about the specific methods of planting and harvesting lotus, she invited Saigoneer for lunch. As she was bringing out plates of thịt kho, khổ qua, and stir-fried lotus stems, people kept arriving at the front yard table. A WWF-Viet Nam representative, a neighbor, and a local official all happened to be stopping by for various routine purposes and were quickly told to grab a plate and sit down. The impromptu gathering resembled the more formal meetings held at her house, where “we gather 20–30 people — then we eat and talk together, it’s fun and friendly,” she explained. Indeed, the lotus planting gives women like Trinh and Thòng a role in local conversations and decision-making that elevates their standing in their homes and community.

Sources of Optimism Inside a Lotus Factory

Every few minutes, a truck would arrive and a group of workers would hustle over to unload bundles of lotus stalks for parceling out across the factory floor, where women seated on plastic stools were washing, cutting, and sorting the stems. Large basins soaked and fermented the pieces on the other side of the cavernous space while a small team worked on preparing and packaging them in bags with bright labels, ready to be sent to grocery stores throughout the country and abroad. Tâm Lotus, a small business in Tây Ninh Commune, was founded in response to the fact that the area produces a significant amount of lotus stems, but had limited to no market for them. The company’s existence not only offers easy and reliable purchasing of the plants harvested in the fields, but also gives women vital occupational opportunities.

By acting as a gathering point for distribution via larger companies, Tâm Lotus allows the largely female workforce to work close to home and thus support their families. During our visit, we even met a woman who occasionally stops by with her adopted grandchild. “Everyone here really loves the child. They often buy little things for him. They know the child is an orphan—the parents separated—so Mr. Tâm, his wife, and their family often give things to the child.”

Like the women who plant and harvest the lotus, the women in the factory told us that the work offers them more than a stable income; it brings peace to their homelives and amplifies their voices. Hương, the plant manager, said, “Before, as a woman staying home to care for the kids, without earning money, my voice didn’t carry as much weight. Now that I work and earn money, I can be more equal in discussions.” She continued, “I feel more comfortable. Earning money and having a stable income makes me feel freer to do what I want.”

The improved livelihood conditions for women, thanks to the lotus activities, coincide with positive environmental impacts for the local environment and broader upstream wetland ecosystems of the Mekong Delta. Compared to conventional rice farming, the lotus model results in a 73.2% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, it leads to better water quality and quantity, with over 662,000 cubic meters of water stored per hectare of crop. Meanwhile, soil fertility is improved, which reduces the need for fertilizers in the subsequent season while strengthening the biodiversity in an environment that is home to more than 86 plant species, 51 fish species, and 73 waterbird species.

Nguyễn Thị Diễm Trinh at home with her young son.

One sees the image of a lotus flower nearly every day in Vietnam. From large public fountains and decor to branding elements to fashions, the beautiful symbol of the nation is everywhere. After learning more about its role in the WWF-Viet Nam’s CRxN Mekong project, one can look upon it with an even greater appreciation, knowing it's not merely an aspirational symbol, but a true source of positive change for the people and land.

The Mekong Delta is developing faster than Google Maps can keep up with. A stretch of road that was too narrow to accommodate cars and required a transition to motorbikes just six months ago was under construction during our August visit. Gargantuan machines for laying pulverized gravel inched aside to let our 7-seater pass so we could reach the home of Nguyễn Thị Thu Thủy to check in on her small fish drying home business.

A peek into the behind-the-scenes fish drying operation at Nguyễn Thị Thu Thủy's home.

Thủy explained that the expanded road will allow her to more easily sell larger quantities of the packaged, dried fish to a more diverse set of buyers. This theme of increased output and growth filled our conversation: her family produces more of the delicious dried cá chốt than her parents ever did; every season she asks her husband and neighbors to buy more fish from the flooded fields for her to process and dry; she dreams of a de-scaling machine so she can take in more cá lóc; and the drying cabinet WWF-Viet Nam provided her via a revolving fund for women allows her to work on cloudy or rainy days, resulting in more money for household needs.

Increased output across agricultural and aquacultural activities is just one element of broader efforts to improve local livelihoods while safeguarding and restoring natural areas in the Mekong Delta. In particular, programs like the Climate Resilient by Nature - Mekong project (CRxN Mekong) aim to mitigate negative environmental impacts while remaining easy to integrate into traditional lifestyles across the region. In Tân Hưng, Vĩnh Châu, and Vĩnh Thạnh communes of the new Tây Ninh province (formerly Vĩnh Châu A, Vĩnh Đại, Vĩnh Lợi, and Thạnh Hưng communes), six livelihood models, along with access to microfinancing and education initiatives, are building on existing behaviors in coordination with local governments and communities to provide scalable examples for how livelihoods and nature can benefit from nature-based solutions.

The Mekong Delta's many waterways and nutrient-rich soil support thriving market scenes.

Hope Floats in the Flooded Fields

“In the past, our grandparents grew [floating rice], so it has a nostalgic value. Growing it again now feels like reviving something from the past — a way to reconnect with old memories,” Nguyễn Ngọc Điền, the chairman of the floating rice cooperative’s board, explained to Saigoneer. More than a heartwarming means of connecting to homeland and heritage, the ancient variety of rice is opening new economic opportunities while helping to protect and replenish the water and soil.

Nguyễn Ngọc Điền sits beside a floating rice field.

Unlike the modern method of erecting dikes to plant conventional rice during the flood season, growing floating rice requires no manipulation of the flood waters. Because the rice doesn’t disrupt the natural flow of water, nor does it require chemicals and fertilizers, it allows the soil to naturally rejuvenate. These powerful impacts explain why WWF-Viet Nam invites experts from Cần Thơ University for support. Moreover, WWF-Viet Nam supplies seeds and agricultural drones.

Nguyễn Thị Bé plants both conventional and floating rice.

Of course, money talks, and bottom-line economics and familiar habits drive decisions in one of Vietnam’s most impoverished regions. One local farmer and cooperative member, Nguyễn Thị Bé, told Saigoneer that “it has to have benefits. In general, this floating seasonal rice — well, here people are used to eating soft, sticky rice, so eating this one, they don’t really like it. But if you cook it the right way, it’s actually very good.”

In addition to helping introduce ways to cook the floating rice, such as in porridge, to appeal to local tastes, WWF-Viet Nam has been helping to connect the community cooperative with buyers who can sell the rice to overseas consumers who are more receptive to its positive health benefits and accepting of its texture. Processing the floating rice into noodles, milk-based goods, and rice paper before export has proven to be a successful approach. The Khải Nam corporation, for example, is working towards Halal certification for the floating rice products to be exported to Malaysia and other Asian markets, as well as European markets such as England and Germany, which has resulted in a request to increase floating rice plantation areas to 200 ha, up from only 10 ha last year. “This makes cooperative members more confident, knowing their product is reaching international markets,” noted Điền.

Harvesting conventional rice frequently involves environmentally-damaging field burning.

Floating Rice Makes Way for Fish and Mushrooms

The success of the floating rice coincides with other project models, including fish cultivation. Native fish, including cá rô and cá lóc, can thrive in the flooded fields amongst the floating rice. Absent pesticides and chemicals, the fish grow naturally and can be harvested for drying and processing, as Thủy has been doing. Her work is supported by a revolving fund that has provided money from a total initial loan amount of 840 million VND (US$32,000) to 82 women for the acquisition of technologies and materials.

Thanks to new technologies, fish can be dried on rainy days.

Compared to conventional rice, floating rice yields a larger amount of post-harvest organic material. This plant matter, rather than being burned, which releases significant amounts of carbon into the air, can be used for growing mushrooms. This will allow the CRxN program to supply households with clean floating rice straw beginning at the start of 2026, supplementing the technical know-how for cultivating mushrooms that is already being provided. After only 45 days, the mushrooms can be harvested and sold for approximately US$384.

Mushroom growing is particularly appealing because it can be undertaken while remaining close to one’s home, which allows women to participate while caring for children and other household tasks. Word of the project has spread in the local communities, with 18 new farmers registering to receive support for the project. Current mushroom farmer, Trần Thanh Tâm, summarized his experiences to Saigoneer: “What I like most is that I can make use of straw to create a clean product, giving people safe mushrooms to eat. They’re great for vegetarians, and also good for parties — chicken steamed with straw mushrooms is very delicious.”

Trần Thanh Tâm monitors the growth of his mushrooms.

Beside the Floating Rice, Lotus, Hyacinth, and Education Bloom

While floating rice is a pivotal element of the CRxN Mekong project, not all models directly involve it. For example, farmers who do not plant conventional or floating rice during the flood season can use their land to grow lotus. Supported via seeds, organic fertilizer, and the development of commercial networks, farmers can supplement their incomes by growing lotus plants. The seeds and stems are both processed as commercial food. Compared to growing three conventional rice crops a year, switching one to flood-based lotus cultivation produces a significantly smaller amount of carbon. Evidence suggests that the model could be a potential opportunity for future integration in the carbon market.

Even before producing carbon credits, the lotus industry is providing significant benefits to local communities, particularly amongst women. Like growing mushrooms, it allows women to stay closer to home, where they can care for family members. Trần Thị Kim Mai, an employee at a lotus processing facility, explained: “Before, I worked in a more hectic job far from home. Now that there’s a workshop here, I can work very close to my house.”

Moreover, steady work has profound psychological effects. Mai furthered: “The sisterhood relationship here is cheerful, people are sociable … Working here feels like part of my life, something I need every day.”

A similar sense of purpose and value is experienced by the women involved in the lục bình weaving group. A CRxN education project invites consultants to communities to teach women how to transform the weed plant into valuable home goods. This transforms the plant from an onerous clogger of waterways into a flexible source of income that empowers women and strengthens families.

While CRxN Mekong’s education efforts focus largely on increasing flood-based agriculture and aquaculture practices, there is significant attention paid to social and cultural topics, including gender equality courses. These teachings, combined with broad improvements in household incomes, have resulted in “more peace at home,” as one resident shared with us.

On our many trips to CRxN Mekong projects over the years, Saigoneer has been invited into countless homes to share meals, hear stories, and learn about the hope people have for the future of the region. In the midst of these very personal moments, it's difficult to keep sight of the program’s larger impact. In coordination with An Giang Climate Change experts, invaluable data and information are being gathered that can be used to devise and test new ideas for Nature-Based Solutions for implementation throughout the Mekong region.

The natural environment, in particular, lingers in our memory after each visit. Graceful egrets fold wings like book pages in Láng Sen’s melaleuca trees, and turtles disappear in tannin-rich waters that snake and tangle beneath lotus leaves. Soft white cajeput flowers burst open against blue skies, and red-tailed laughingthrush’s calls echo. While in this beautiful, wild place, humans may not be in sight, but their impact is everywhere. From agricultural runoff to disrupted flood cycles to the encroachment of farming practices, the actions of human communities threaten the priceless ecosystem. Only by considering both of them via sustainable livelihood initiatives like the CRxN Mekong can we ensure they both prosper for decades to come.

Countries in mainland Southeast Asia have stark differences in renewable energy strategies, balancing them with ample but controversial hydropower and entrenched interests. While solar power has become accessible and cost effective, many of these nations have struggled to make wind power an essential part of renewable energy strategies, despite having locations with high potential. Meanwhile, others have become regional wind power leaders, such as Vietnam. In this explainer, we explore how various mainland Southeast Asian countries are engaging with wind power development.

Top image: Wind turbines in Phan Rang, a coastal city in southern Vietnam. Photo by Thoại Phạm via Alamy.

Thailand

While Thailand has aggressively pursued solar and hydro, it made a slow start on wind power, despite having high-wind areas in the north and northeast. The first project, in Phuket, began in 1983, but projects exceeding one megawatt (MW) did not begin until 2008. The country only reached around 400MW by 2019. As of 2023, wind makes up only around 3% (around 1.5 gigawatts) of the kingdom’s installed capacity.

There is potential for 13-17 gigawatts (GW) of onshore wind energy across the country. And while most of Thailand’s wind power comes from ground-mounted projects, there is potential for another 18–36GW per year offshore in the Andaman Sea. 

Solar has made huge strides in Thailand in recent years, with a current estimated capacity of 3GW and plans to reach 39GW by 2040. Despite this, Thailand is relying on an energy future ruled by liquefied natural gas (LNG), including the building of new infrastructure in Rayong and the Gulf of Thailand.

The current draft of Thailand’s 2025–2037 Power Development Plan (PDP) aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and net-zero emissions by 2065. The plan includes installing an additional 7GW of wind power capacity. 

While the draft (due to be passed by the end of 2025) is aggressively pursuing renewable energy in solar, wind and biomass, its critics claim the government’s energy demand projections are too high: it predicts that the current supply must more than double by 2037. Other criticisms are that the current plan is over-reliant on more traditional energy projects, such as LNG, and that it is holding back the development of renewables. 

Traditionally, Thailand’s supply chain for building wind power plants has been provided by foreign interests. As the kingdom ramps up its renewables efforts for net-zero targets, however, a concerted push has been made to produce and develop wind power components domestically.

Thailand’s leading wind energy developer, Wind Energy Holding, currently operates eight wind power plants. In June, the company announced it was preparing 2GW of projects in line with the current PDP. Yeong Guan Energy Technology, a Chinese company, plans to begin wind power component production trials in Thailand in 2025.

Thai companies are also investing in wind power abroad. Late last year, BCPG Public Company Limited, a renewable-energy subsidiary of the partially state-owned conglomerate Bangchak Corporation, announced it was acquiring a firm that operates two wind power plants in Vietnam.

Thailand also funds controversial hydropower dams on the Mekong mainstream and its tributaries, in neighboring Laos and Cambodia. These projects have been linked to declining fisheries and unseasonable flooding and droughts, affecting biodiversity and riverine livelihoods. As such, more emphasis is being placed by environmental groups on the use of non-hydro renewables, such as wind and solar. 

At present, the push for renewable energy is reviving Thailand’s wind power prospects, as is the current Feed-in-Tariff system, in which producers are offered fixed prices to provide power to the grid. But the PDP 2025-2037 will be essential in deciding how diversified the kingdom’s renewable future will be.

Laos

The energy plan of Laos has centered around being the “Battery of Asia,” using the nation’s natural resources to create hydropower that it sells to its Southeast Asian neighbors and China.

However, the use of the Mekong’s resources has been a heavy source of contention in the Greater Mekong region, so Laos has taken steps to include more solar and wind projects. 

The most widely publicized of its upcoming wind projects is the Power China-produced Thai collaboration that was completed this year, the Monsoon Wind Power project (MWP). It is the first large-scale ground-mounted wind farm in landlocked Laos and has been touted as the largest in Southeast Asia. Continuing the Battery of Asia model with wind power, the 250MW onshore Trường Sơn wind project is expected to supply energy to neighboring Vietnam after its planned completion date later in 2025.

The April 2023 groundbreaking ceremony for the Monsoon Wind Power project in Vientiane, Laos. Photo by Kaikeo Saiyasane via Xinhua/Alamy.

Both Thailand and China have played crucial roles in the energy infrastructure of Laos, in terms of development and power purchase agreements. The MWP project was bankrolled by the Thai company Impact Electrons Siam, and is being rolled out as a prototype that could potentially be used in Laos as a viable form of export energy. 

Around 80% of the electricity produced by Laos is exported to other countries. The MWP project features a 500 kilovolt transmission line to neighboring Vietnam, 22 kilometers of which will be in Laos and 43 kilometers in Vietnam, which has signed a 25-year power purchase agreement for the project. 

Straddling the provinces of Sekong and Attapeu, the MWP project contains 133 wind turbines. According to a quarterly environmental and social monitoring report, it has affected 934 households across 26 villages, with agricultural land most affected. The report identified 210 hectares of agricultural land as temporarily or permanently changed, along with impacts on 112 hectares of forest. Projections from the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank also noted local anecdotal evidence of biodiversity loss in the project development area.

Though the project was only completed in April, Laos is already moving toward a wind farm that is twice as big: the AMI Savannakhet, a 1,200MW wind farm in Savannakhet province, occupying nearly 2,700 hectares. 

In 2023, it was estimated that non-hydro renewables made up less than 0.5% of energy generation in Laos. But analysis of its 2020-2030 National Power Development Plan indicates that — while still relying heavily on hydropower — non-hydro renewables will eventually make up 5%. 

Cambodia

Cambodia has suffered from large-scale power shortages and blackouts. These stem from over-consumption issues and, less recently, drought-based hydropower lapses. According to a 2023 World Bank survey, as many as 43% of firms experienced electricity outages in Cambodia, as the country contends with meeting its short-term power needs. 

The kingdom does not yet have any major wind farms, but in May 2025, authorities approved six wind power projects in Mondulkiri Province that are expected to generate 900MW. Each developer has a 150MW allocation but there are few public details about construction timelines.

HK Oasis Power’s 150MW wind power station is currently the first of the six planned and is expected to begin operating in 2026. These wind projects should become a source of power during the country’s dry season, which usually runs from November to April. 

Another upcoming Mondulkiri wind farm is the 100MW Singaporean Blue Circle project. It will be built in conjunction with Cambodia’s Royal Group, which is also responsible for the controversial, 400MW Lower Sesan 2 hydropower plant.

These projects are a boon for Cambodia’s non-hydro renewable goals but the wind farms raise questions about impacts for wildlife habitats and local ways of life. Mondulkiri’s Indigenous Bunong residents have claimed some of the construction works could impact their lives and livelihoods. For example, one of the companies with project approval, SchneiTec Co, has been constructing a 299-kilometer power transmission line through Cambodia’s Prey Lang wildlife sanctuary.

Previous wind power projects in Cambodia hit permanent snags, such as a Blue Circle project in Kampot, which was set to begin construction on an 80MW wind farm in 2021. It was cancelled after failing to agree a per-kilowatt-hour tariff rate with the state-run energy supplier, Electricite du Cambodge. 

Authorities have stated that wind power will be integrated into the national grid by 2026. But despite these coming projects, Cambodia’s Power Development Plan up to 2040 will lead to only a marginal increase in wind power when compared to other sources, like solar. This is because Cambodia’s wind power potential is comparatively low for mainland Southeast Asia.

Despite issuing a 10-year moratorium on dam building on the Mekong mainstream in 2020, a majority of the renewable energy in Cambodia still comes from hydropower. The rest — just 10.5% — came from solar sources as of 2022, according to the International Energy Agency.

Vietnam

Wind power is the largest source of non-hydro renewable energy in Vietnam, 80% of which was provided by 84 wind farms as of 2023. The country’s status as a regional leader in wind power has been largely attributed to a beneficial feed-in tariff system: the government pays guaranteed, above-average prices for renewable energy. The tariff, along with Vietnam’s government policy and strong potential for both on- and offshore wind energy generation, have attracted investors.

With an installed capacity of nearly 5GW as of 2024, Vietnam has made key changes to its Power Development Plan (PDP8), with a revised draft published in April outlining the country’s energy outlook to 2035. The original PDP8 of May 2023 had an ambitious outlook for onshore wind, including a goal of installing more than 21GW of onshore wind capacity by 2030. This has since been raised to 38GW. This is despite the revised PDP8 also outlining a large increase in expected solar energy, increasing the previous target by nearly six times to over 73GW.

But while Vietnam was an early and enthusiastic adopter of onshore wind power in mainland Southeast Asia, the country has been slow to adopt offshore wind. The original PDP8 planned for 6GW of offshore wind by 2030; this has been revised to 6-17GW by 2035.

Vietnam has signed several agreements for offshore wind projects, including a joint development between the state-owned PetroVietnam and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, a Danish renewable energy developer. The US$10.5 billion investment will supply 3.5GW of wind power. Another is the 1.4GW Phú Cường Sóc Trăng offshore wind farm, developed by the Irish company Mainstream Renewable Power.

In July, authorities said construction on the first project is “likely” to begin by the end of this year.

The Bạc Liêu offshore wind farm on the south coast of Vietnam. Photo by Quang Nguyen Vinh via Alamy.

Recent studies show Vietnam has the potential to generate just over one terawatt of wind energy in its exclusive economic zone, nearly doubling previous World Bank estimates.

Nonetheless, Vietnam has struggled to generate investments for its renewable projects due to fears that its favorable energy tariffs will end. These policies have created a boom in Vietnam’s renewables sector but they have also created losses for the state-owned Vietnam Electricity (EVN), leading authorities to attempt to reduce them.

The revised PDP8 includes far-off goals for offshore wind projects. This is because, at current estimates, development elements such as permit issuance and construction planning is taking up to a decade.

As the country rapidly multiplies its wind power projects, concerns have been raised regarding the local socioeconomic costs of this. Vietnam’s many nearshore wind farms have faced criticism from fishers, whose incomes have been impacted by government-imposed fishing bans for wind farm perimeter zones.  

Both onshore and offshore wind farms also create risks to biodiversity. They could present problems for migratory birds, including endangered species from Siberia that migrate to Vietnam for winter, such as the Nordmann’s greenshank and spoon-billed sandpiper.

Myanmar

Myanmar, still embroiled in civil conflict at the time of writing, has had a number of wind power projects fall through. These include the high-profile, Chinese-built Chaung Tha project, which fell apart long before Myanmar’s military junta took control via the 2021 coup. 

The current administration is working with Russia to cultivate wind power. The Russian state-owned firm Rosatom, which also has nuclear energy ambitions in Myanmar, began working with a Myanmar developer on plans to build a 200MW wind farm near Mount Popa in 2023.

Despite the civil war in Myanmar and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the collaboration has seen movement in the past two years. Myanmar claims it is fast-tracking Mount Popa. The energy ministry has also signed a memorandum of understanding for eight wind-power projects across the country. Rosatom is behind three of them.

In 2023, Myanmar agreed to work with China on three wind power projects in Ann, Gwa and Thandwe, all in Rakhine state, for projects ranging from 100-150MW. However, reports in 2024 said the Ann and Thandwe projects had been taken over by the Rakhine people’s Arakan army.

Beyond its domestic wind power ambitions, Myanmar plays a key role in the development of regional wind power. It is a site for the illicit mining of heavy rare earth elements (HREEs). These are used to produce powerful permanent magnets in wind turbines that increase power generation and improve heat resistance, lowering the maintenance demands of larger — especially offshore — turbines.

A 2024 Global Witness report on HREEs states that firms involved in the creation of these magnets are reliant on Myanmar’s supply. Chinese interests are responsible for 85% of all rare earth processing, and China is the world’s number one consumer of HREEs. 

The unregulated and illicit mining of HREEs in Myanmar has led to high environmental and human costs. This is expected to continue. In addition to deadly mining incidents, chemicals used in the mining process such as oxalic acid have reportedly caused skin and respiratory damage, as well as deaths related to kidney failure.

The Global Witness report also highlights the use of in-situ leaching, a process by which ammonium sulfate is injected into pipes in the ground to circulate and extract rare earths. It says the toxins from these processes are flowing into streams where local people fish and collect drinking water. Nearby residents claim this chemical exposure is leading to deaths, the devastation of fish and other animal populations, and the report also notes that surrounding lands are becoming non-arable.

China backs the military junta. Its position as both participant and mediator in Myanmar’s conflict drastically affects global access to rare earth material. Almost half of the world’s accessible rare earth materials are mined in Kachin, Myanmar’s northernmost state. The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) took control of much of these resources in October 2024. The following May, China demanded the KIA stabilize the rare earth supply chain and threatened to stop buying HREEs from Myanmar.

This article was originally produced by Dialogue Earth and has been republished with permission. Read the original version here.

Everywhere I go in Vietnam, I keep my eyes peeled for the incredible birds that call this country home. Sometimes I don’t even realize that I’m doing it. I scan the horizon above low hills for migratory hawks. I stare into breaks in the foliage for passing buttonquail. I peer into rice paddies, fingers crossed for a cryptic snipe. And, of course, there’s Facebook. I refresh Facebook over and over again, waiting for the arrival of the mandarin duck. Its scientific name is Aix galericulata, which one assumes means “prettiest goddamn duck in the world.”

In actuality, “aix” is an Ancient Greek word first used by Aristotle to refer to an unknown diving bird while “galericulata” is the Latin for a wig, derived from galerum, a cap or bonnet. This is the kind of bird so utterly magnificent that you basically assume you’ll never see it. Mandarin ducks breed in the dense and isolated forests on the edge of rivers and lakes in far eastern Russia, China, and Hokkaido, Japan; the total number tallies up to just a few thousand pairs. During the winters they migrate southwards, fleeing the subarctic temperatures of their breeding grounds for the warmer swamps and flooded fields in central China. And every winter there is a single family group that decides to fly a little farther than the rest: about a thousand kilometers farther, to a hidden lake in northern Vietnam.

A family of Vietnam's next top avians.

Ba Bể is the largest natural lake in the country, and the heart of Ba Bể National Park. While only four hours from Hanoi by car, this treasure of the northern mountains is often skipped by Sa Pa trekkers and Hà Giang road trippers. But it is not ignored, thank goodness, by the Vietnamese birdwatching community. Steep limestone cliffs and primary forest all around the lakeshore make Ba Bể a hidden haven for birds, including the too-beautiful-to-be-allowed mandarin duck. My search for the duck during the migratory season begins online, where Vietnamese birdwatchers share their photos, tips and secrets.

Birdwatchers like Nguyễn Mạnh Hiệp, a senior official at the Vietnam Administration of Forestry, who keeps tabs on the ducks by staying in contact with national park rangers. There's also Nguyễn Thanh Sơn, an office worker and wildlife lover in Hanoi who, like me, relies on a network of bird and photography enthusiasts to let him know when incredible species like the mandarin duck are spotted. This winter, when the prodigal ducks returned, photos of them immediately began to pop up among this insular community of dedicated birders. Sơn decided one afternoon that he had to see them, and the next morning he was up at 3am to make his way north. I was on a business trip in Thailand when they appeared, and the moment I returned to Hanoi I was on my way, too, not wasting the hour it would have taken to go home and drop off my luggage.

Mandarin duck is the kind of bird so utterly magnificent that you basically assume you’ll never see it.

The passage into Ba Bể felt very much like entering another world — so much so that it’s worth saying this, despite the cliché. I joined my friend Bùi Đức Tiến, Vice President of the Vietnam Bird Conservation Society, and together we caught an early morning boat from town that coursed down a narrow river feeding the lake. We passed through an enormous limestone cave, coming out on the other end to the secluded sanctuary of Ba Bể. I was, of course, deeply anxious. We did not yet see the duck. It was far from certain that we would see the duck. I'm not sure I can describe how much I wanted to see the duck.

And then, there it was. It was Tiến, of course, who spotted it first: a single male, perched on a tree that overhangs the water. We cut the engine and coasted towards it. I lay on my stomach on the bow, steadying my camera and holding my breath. The duck, who has, in the past weeks, flown on little wings across a significant portion of the Asian continent, was totally relaxed. He was, without exaggeration, one of the most beautiful birds on a planet so richly populated with beautiful birds. Purple, indigo and chestnut splayed from his body at odd angles, like ornate shavings of tinted glass. What a thing it is to behold.

Majestically leaping off the water.

The Vietnamese name for these ducks, chim uyên ương, can be literally translated as “love bird.” Vietnamese novelist and translator Nguyễn Hiền Trang points out that the name comes from the Chinese language: yuanyang (鸳鸯). In both Vietnam and in China, these ducks have a cultural significance dating back millennia. Mandarin ducks first started to show up in ancient Chinese poetry more than 1,500 years ago, appearing as symbols of both romantic and fraternal love. In Vietnam, terra cotta mandarin ducks decorated palace and pagoda towers during the Lý and Trần dynasties. The ducks even make a few appearances in the classic Vietnamese narrative poem 'Chinh Phụ Ngâm Khúc' once again as symbols of devotion and love.

Why symbols of love, you ask? The answer is in their duality. With ostentatiously colored males and much more modest females, the mandarin duck embodies the balance of yin and yang — gendered forms of the feminine earth below and the masculine firmament above. Perhaps owing to this legend, people across the ducks’ migratory route believe them to mate for life. But while lifelong monogamy isn’t unheard of in the world of birds, I regret to inform you that, in the case of these ducks, it is indeed a love story that’s too good to be true. Male mandarin ducks may be beautiful, but they are also carousing ruffians, hilariously unfaithful lovers, and absentee fathers.

Mandarin duck is one of the most beautiful bird species that can be spotted in Vietnam.

But that name, love birds, still rings true. One of the joys of birdwatching is escaping the self, and spending time appreciating an animal entirely on its own terms, and in its own world. Love birds may better describe the feelings that the mandarin ducks give us than it does their talent for monogamy. Judging by their prominent place in ancient Vietnamese culture, we can guess that there used to be a whole lot more of these ducks flying around than just this one family, at this one hidden lake. But with a growing number of Vietnamese people committed to protecting these creatures, we can hope that they will remain safe for generations to come. That’s what we could all use in times like these, I think. More birds. More love.

This article was originally published in 2023.

Why aren’t there any Vietnamese dinosaurs?

Well, Vietnam probably was home to dinosaurs; we just haven’t found their fossilized bones yet.

Scientists have uncovered fossilized remains of these beloved prehistoric animals in Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, but not Vietnam. In the last few decades, the Southeast Asian discoveries have included a great range of species representing many familiar groups, including Spinosaurus, Titanosaurus, and Iguanodon in their membership. Clustered around the middle period of dinosaurs’ 165-million-year reign, the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous species have greatly expanded our understanding of dinosaur variety and distribution.

Map of current ornithischian dinosaur finds in mainland Southeast Asia. Information adapted from this scientific paper. 

So why haven’t any been found in Vietnam yet? It all comes down to luck and money. Many of the region’s discoveries were the result of happenstance and activities unrelated to paleontological searches, including a chance sighting in a Northern Thai ignite mine and a bone exposed at low tide on the coast of a Cambodian island. The uncovering of these fossils frequently results in cross-national partnerships, most notably between Thailand and Japan, wherein foreign scientists provide knowledge and financial resources to further global understanding of dinosaurs.

Editor's note: Dinosaurs images adopted from Vietnam's released stamp collection and not illustrative of actual findings.

Unfortunately, there have been no such fortuitous findings in Vietnam, and without at least a clue for where to look, costly surveys are difficult to justify. The few expeditions to find dinosaurs over the years, led by mostly Hanoi-based geologists, have unfortunately come up empty-handed. The most recent search, a collaboration with Japanese paleontologists, explored Lạng Sơn and Sơn La and found fossiliferous rocks of the correct age, but no dinosaurs. So while geologists can confirm that dinosaur ecosystems existed in Vietnam based on rock formations, we are left waiting for further expeditions, a construction project or a sharp-eyed forest hiker to notice a unique rock that lures scientists. Experts suggest Quảng Bình is the most likely spot one will be identified.

Photo by Alberto Prieto.

Despite not yet having a dinosaur to call its own, Vietnam has shown an appreciation for these “terrible lizards (khủng long).” Several times since 1976, Vietnam has issued stamps featuring dinosaurs, maintains Tangvayosaurus material at the Hanoi Geological Museum, and a large dinosaur statue looms in front of the capital’s National Museum of Nature, revealing an understanding of how dinosaurs capture the public interest. One need only browse a toy store here to understand that Vietnamese children, like children everywhere, agree that dinosaurs are very cool. And this is why it matters that Vietnam finds one. If young people learned that there was a species with a Vietnamese name, found in a familiar province by people who speak their language, an appreciation for paleontology and science in general would surely increase. Future generations, at least a portion of them, might develop greater reverence for a natural world that thrived before people evolved, and hopefully will continue to do so long after us.

Why “Sticky Discovery”? This was the first question I asked during my interview with the man behind the YouTube series of nature documentaries. His name is Dính, given by his paternal grandmother because after Dính’s mother had two miscarriages, she’d hoped Dính (meaning “sticky” in English), would stay put.

Dính filming in An Giang.

Not common or conventionally beautiful, the name wasn't something Dính enjoyed having growing up. But over time, he came to appreciate it more, particularly as he saw the “sticky” qualities of topics that fascinated him: Dipterocarpaceae oleoresin and the collagen in crocodile bones, for example. He decided to name his YouTube page after it during one particularly fortuitous afternoon.

The whale Dính saw in Bình Định.

During a work trip to Bình Định, Dính learned that a whale had been observed in the nearby ocean. Against what seems like all possible chance, he thought he might be able to see it if he went out there. So he and a colleague arranged a boat to take them 30 minutes away from shore to where the whale had been last spotted. During the ride, Dính was thinking about the YouTube channel he was beginning to upload videos to. It needed a name. As land receded from view, the idea came to him out of the blue: Sticky Discovery. “Why not? My name is beautiful,” he thought. Sticky Discovery is thus both an acknowledgment of his coming to accept his own name, as well as an adjective that unites many of the topics he explores in his videos.

Growing up amongst butterflies, dragonflies and flowers

“To protect my beautiful childhood memories,” Dính said when I asked what motivates him to film and edit stories about Vietnamese nature.

Dính as a young child.

Born in Long Xuyên, An Giang, in 1995, Dính grew up beside a rural river surrounded by verdant delta flora. Simple strolls around town would bless him with interesting flowers, fruits, trees, and tiny critters to marvel at. But over the years, the idyllic natural area has been changing. A modern city has emerged, with gardens constrained, constricted, or destroyed to make way for construction and development. While Dính would share additional motivations for the Sticky Discovery videos later in our conversation, one important reason is to capture the natural areas that remain in Vietnam and remind him of the abundance he knew in his own backyard — the abundance that helped ignite a passion for nature in the first place.

A favorite photo from An Giang.

“I would usually go around my home, taking photos of butterflies, dragonflies, and flowers. And at that time, I watched BBC and NatGeo videos, and their behind-the-scenes, and wondered, ‘Wow! How can I get there? How can I do that?’ I asked my mother if I could study how to film nature or something like that. But, you know, at that time, it wasn’t available in Vietnam,” Dính reflected. Indeed, particularly 20 years ago, there was no clear path to take Dính from loving nature documentaries to actually making them.

Thus, with a dose of practicality and his mother’s concerns in mind, he enrolled at the University of Science in Hồ Chí Minh City after an older, former schoolmate returned to help with admissions and career counseling and handed out the school’s brochures. “I liked biology most because it involved most of the things that I love, but biotechnology involves technology, and technology is something maybe we can make money with,” he said. This wise assessment of the university’s degrees and the occupations they lead to, combined with some advice from a teacher, compelled Dính to enroll in biotechnology, though he didn’t quite follow the rules.

Dính in the Botanical Laboratory.

Dính has a hustler’s charm and wit, which allows him to finagle his way into conversations and opportunities that shouldn’t be available to him. For example, while studying the required biotechnology coursework in university, he would sneak into the biology classes, sometimes asking permission from the professors, sometimes not, and join field trips with the biology majors. For his thesis, Dính joined a biotechnology research group led by collaborating lecturers from biology and biotechnology. The project, “Evaluation of the Mosquito-Repellent Activity of Selected Essential Oils Combined with Plant-Based Carrier Oils,” enabled him to gain access to the biology major’s Botanical Laboratory — a place he had felt a deep pull towards and wished to be part of. That was the beginning of many field trips with biology lecturers and students.

Dính on a field trip in LangBiang. Photo by Tihon.

During his time in the botanical lab, Dính became friends with many of the students in that major, including Phan Thị Thanh Nhã, a botanist and botany artist and illustrator Saigoneer recently featured, through whom I met Dính. Since graduating, he has worked as a laboratory technologies salesman, providing equipment and reagents across various industries and now to hospitals and companies that use them for DNA tests, amongst other applications. He makes enough money to live and keep his mother from worrying too much while dedicating his free time to nature documentaries.

The power of happenstance and trusting one’s curiosity

Nhã introduced me to Dính at her booth in the Saigon Zoo during a botanical fair. I didn’t know it then, but they were selling postcards to raise money for a trip together. They planned to go to Huế to look for a fabled species of camellia flower. The dazzlingly bright red petals were described by French colonialists, but the plant’s current existence remains uncertain. “The color is very beautiful, but until now, nobody's seen it. I can only find the leaf and the sample that the French kept. I've not found the flower, but maybe I can see it out there somewhere. Maybe, maybe not, maybe it’s extinct already,” he said before noting that were he lucky enough to discover it, he wouldn’t post any announcement about it online before a clear protection plan was in place to safeguard it from the poachers who would seek to steal it.

Camellia bugiamapensis (left) and Camellia cattienensis (right).

When Dính and I initially spoke at the zoo, he introduced Sticky Discovery via the three-part piece on Cát Tiên’s crocodiles. Indeed, these are the videos that I now recommend to people checking out Sticky Discovery for the first time. They take viewers on a journey through the history of the species’ re-introduction to Bàu Sấu; how farms raising them for meat and leather have been crucial for their preservation; and how this led to a medicine developed from their bones that is helping Vietnamese children born with a rare genetic disorder. The videos even include a brief detour to an ancient archeological sight where the animals appear on the gold coins of a forgotten civilization in the highlands.

The crocodiles of Cát Tiên.

Dính never set out with this meandering story arc in mind when he started filming. Rather, he simply followed his curiosity after learning an anecdote about the crocodiles' reintroduction. He also wanted to push back against some YouTube comments left on an early video wherein people questioned why anyone would release a dangerous animal that could kill people. He wanted to correct this wrong mindset and allow visitors to Cát Tiên who see a crocodile to have a deeper understanding and respect for the true nature and value of the animals.

For the making of the crocodile videos, one question led to another, and a string of people agreed to meet with Dính, despite him not being able to offer any credentials or a real clear reason for the request. “If they are the right people, they will take time to meet with you. If not, they aren’t the right people,” he said. In explaining how he is usually able to convince scientists, researchers, experts and business people to sit for interviews, Dính referenced his belief in duyên, loosely translating to “faith met by opportunity,” which is the same concept that he credits for bringing him to the whale in Bình Định. I suspect that these professionals are like me and they are simply won over by Dính’s earnest enthusiasm for niche topics with no ulterior motives.

In addition to Dính’s knack for convincing people to share their knowledge with him, he has a talent for patience. He said that if a story requires four visits to a site, he’ll go four times; if it needs five, he’ll do five, and the same holds for however many interviews he needs to conduct. He is in no rush. “It’s just my hobby,” he said, “When I feel interested, I will feel happy with my trip, that’s how I enjoy my life. I see the story as my responsibility to tell everyone.”

Progressing slowly by design

“I want to do something like NatGeo or the BBC, but the Vietnamese version to talk about the diversity of Vietnam. If that works, then maybe later I’d do it in another country, but I’d love to do it for my country first,” Dính said of his long-term plans. He is working on a project about the diversity of camellia flowers at the moment, with one released about the topic already. He will also continue to post vlog-like videos and compilations of trips and years in review, which he said he makes for himself as a way to remember what he has seen and done; if others enjoy them, that's great too.

Since releasing the crocodile videos, Dính has heard from more people who are interested in making the same types of videos as he is and are on the same “frequency” when it comes to nature. Some of these people have found ways to fund their projects via grants and foreign institutions. Dính is inspired by these possibilities but isn’t in a hurry to monetize anything quite yet. “I’m still finding my way,” he said. “First, I need to understand myself and learn how to do everything on my own,” he said, noting that before he invites in any of the people who have expressed interest in collaborating with him, he wants to “go a little bit slow and find my way.”

Filming in An Giang.

So while he will sometimes travel with friends, simply enjoying their company on the journeys, for now, he considers the making of the videos to be a one-man operation. This includes the filming and editing process. He has taken some basic filmmaking and storytelling classes to improve the way he approaches the topics, but is happy to slowly learn via trial and error and not complicate the process by taking on additional people. Similarly, when he feels they are ready for more viewers he will expand the promotion of Sticky Discovery beyond his personal page and organic gathering of followers.

“I do not think about the audience before I post a video, I just want to share it, and if people like it, they like it. I’m trying to find a way to make scientific things easier to understand so people will realize that science is not something complicated, it's very simple and a part of everyday life,” he said when reflecting on the impact he hopes the videos have on his viewers.

In addition to making average people more aware and inspired by the nature that surrounds us all, he hopes his videos could influence important decision-makers when confronted with choices that impact nature. By seeing the practical and economic value of crocodiles, for example, they might eventually take actions that are in greater harmony with the natural world. “At the end of the day, I imagine that it's not a complicated scientific matter of ‘you have to do this, you have to do that.’ No, it’s just a little change in their mindset so their behavior is more friendly towards nature; so they can enjoy it and not destroy it.”

In Phú Quý.

While Dính will admit his videos are still a little rough around the edges as he learns his craft, they already hold immense power that should inspire us nature lovers who sometimes feel at a loss for how to share our enthusiasm for plants and animals in a way that makes an impact. Dính provides a great example. In one video, he explores Bến Tre, and the discussion of the myriad benefits of coconuts and the surrounding industry is interrupted by mudskippers in the canal. He deviates to simply express excitement over spotting the wondrous fish that shimmy up onto muddy land. The many problems facing the natural world will not be solved if more people were excited by nature, but it would certainly help. Here, Sticky Discovery is making a difference.

You first know she’s approaching by the sound of her wings; her broad shadow flashing across the forest floor. Even from far below, her body looks enormous. At half a meter long, she is roughly five times the size of the woodpeckers seen in the gardens of Europe or North America. She is the largest woodpecker left in the world, and the jewel of Yok Đôn National Park.

A great slaty woodpecker. Photo by Md Shahanshah Bappy

This April, I traveled to Đắk Lắk to search for the great slaty woodpecker (gõ kiến xám), a rarely seen species native to the dryer forests of Southeast Asia. In Vietnam, the best chance of spotting this magnificent bird is Yok Đôn National Park. Snug up against the Cambodian border, Yok Đôn offers over 1,000 square kilometers of broadleaved dipterocarp forest. It is the largest national park in Vietnam and was among the first to be founded. But despite its size, beauty and relative accessibility — the park is flat, walkable, and well-maintained — Yok Đôn sees few visitors. The main draw of the park is a population of domesticated Asiatic elephants, another charismatic gray giant.

Yok Đôn's towering dipterocarp trees. Photo by Thomas Mourez.

But we weren’t here for elephants. We were a small party of dedicated birdwatchers, led by Bùi Đức Tiến, vice-president of the Vietnam Bird Conservation Society and a contributor to the recently released Các Loài Chim Việt Nam (The Birds of Vietnam, Thế Giới Publishers). This is the definitive Vietnamese-language photographic guide to the over 800 species of bird that can be found in Vietnam, and it has no equal in English. Which is all to say that Tiến knows his stuff — he’s familiar with the various habitats of the park, and was reasonably sure that we could find one of these gray giants. Still, a birdwatcher knows better than to make promises. The great slaty woodpecker is a threatened species. Previous visitors to the park have come up empty-handed.

Left: Bùi Đức Tiến, vice-president of the Vietnam Bird Conservation Society, during the trip. Right: The road leading into the forest. Photos by Thomas Mourez.

The great slaty woodpecker is not the only giant to be pushed towards extinction by human activity. That caveat, “largest woodpecker left in the world,” is only because the larger ivory-billed and imperial woodpeckers of North America were recently considered to be certainly extinct, though back in the United States there remains a devoted cohort of unicorn-chasers who insist that the ivory-billed is alive, poring over pixelated photos that are roughly as compelling as evidence of bigfoot. For the time being, there is no question that a healthy population of great slaty woodpeckers remains in Yok Đôn. But given their listing in 2010 as “Vulnerable” on the IUCN Red List, their future is not guaranteed.

Tiến explained that the greatest threats to the bird life of Yok Đôn come, predictably, from humans. Cattle grazing within the park boundary, as well as poaching and trapping for the caged bird trade all take their toll. Within minutes of entering the park, we saw evidence of this activity. Herds of cows wandered beneath the broadleaved trees, their bells the only sound in the silence. On our second day, we encountered and destroyed a large mist net, over two meters high and four meters across, meant to snare birds as they passed through. But the bird life in the park remains abundant. We saw 111 species in just four days, 11 of those being different kinds of woodpecker, with gõ kiến xám taking the place of honor atop our list.

It is difficult to describe the sensation of spotting a rare and beautiful bird in the wild. Imagine four people hooting and leaping while trying to make as little noise as possible. Our first of two sightings happened suddenly, a bird bursting across treetops and flying directly over our heads. Its silhouette is that of a pterodactyl — thin neck and oversized head, great dipping wingbeats. The woodpecker landed on an exposed patch of tree trunk just long enough for a few passable photographs, and after that abundant courtesy, it was gone.

Gõ kiến xám seen from a distance. Photo by Thomas Mourez.

We are not alone in this passion, us four lunatics all celebrating as though we’d each just scored the winning goal in a World Cup match. According to the Center for Responsible Travel, birdwatching is a multi-billion dollar industry, with over 3 million international trips taken every year with the primary purpose of birdwatching. As a safe country with outstanding bird diversity, Vietnam stands to benefit from a boom in low-impact, high-spend birdwatchers. Indeed, Tiến sees forest preservation and anti-poaching efforts as working hand-in-hand with efforts to increase domestic interest in Vietnam’s amazing birdlife, and improving accommodations and other tourist infrastructure.

A pair of black-headed woodpeckers (gõ kiến xanh hông đỏ) seen during the trip. Photo by Alexander Yates.

Until that boom comes, gõ kiến xám remains in the forests of Yok Đôn, raising chicks on meals of fat termites. Anyone looking to see them, or the many other stunning falcons, parakeets, owls and woodpeckers that inhabit Yok Đôn, need only step into the woods, look up, and hope.

This article was originally published in 2022.

What is your favorite sound?

We don’t ask each other this enough. Favorite food, color, movie, sure, but sound? I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that. And my answer is easy: a gibbon call.

Video of the southern yellow-cheeked gibbon (vượn đen má vàng Nam)'s morning call in Cát Tiên National Park. Video via Ryan Campbell.

A series of resonant whoops accelerating to reverberating chirps, answered by staccato yips and howls fills Vietnam’s jungles at dawn. It sounds as if the gibbons have poured molten indigo into the forest’s every leafy gear and fusebox. The so-called “great call” of a yellow-cheeked gibbon and the enthusiastic duet response of her male life partner is simply one of the most astounding noises in the animal kingdom. 

When the sun begins to peer through the mist hanging in the towering tung trees, the calls stampede above the forest. Each gibbon pair begins their day by announcing their territory with duets that serve to simultaneously strengthen their bonds. The songs plunge listeners into the realization that they are fully and completely in a complex and beautiful natural world that exists beyond the petty concerns of humanity. 

A male (left) and female (right) southern white-cheeked gibbon. Photo via iNaturalistUK.

I gained a greater appreciation for the gibbon calls earlier this month during a trip to Cát Tiên National Park, when I could hear the songs in their natural environment, amidst the totality of the rich and interconnected rainforest ecosystem where endangered Bengal monitors stalk the leafy undergrowth, and rosewood trees rise in defiance of furniture manufacturers. If the forest could offer a single song to express its fragile vibrancy, it would be the gibbon’s morning call. 

That recent trip wasn't when I first came to love the gibbon call, however. When I lived overlooking the Saigon Zoo, I heard the resident gibbons sing every morning. Particularly during the COVID-19 period, when the noises would shatter the aching silence of the city, they seemed to manifest loneliness and anxiety, much like how the great Chinese poets Li Bai and Du Fu used the calls to conjure isolation and melancholy. 

My appreciation for the calls goes back decades before that, however. Before embarking on my university studies, I spent a summer taking a course in ethology at the University of Chicago. I was tasked with observing gibbons in the zoo for several hours a day, noting their every behavior, including their morning calls and separate calls of warning and alert. The exercise proved essential for teaching me that I didn’t want to embark down a path of science that dissected with painstaking record, keeping the intricacies of the natural world in clinically quantifiable terms. I preferred to let it wash over me in a deluge of unknowable, quasi-religious awe. It’s not much exaggeration to say I have the gibbon call to thank for inspiring me to become a writer and not a scientist.

I’m not unique, though, and I think we all could learn something from listening to the gibbon call, particularly when it essentially translates to “good morning - leave us alone in our corner of the forest.”

When science and art commingle in a botanical illustration, it’s as if a magical world appears, where colors, brushstrokes, and lighting work together to not only replicate but also breathe life into nature’s best creations.

Phan Thị Thanh Nhã is a botanist by trade, working as a teaching assistant at the Botany Lab of the Faculty of Biology-Biotechnology at the University of Science, HCMC Vietnam National University. Interestingly, she is also the author behind all the illustrations in her botanical research.

Phan Thị Thanh Nhã at the exhibition “Fields of Optics | Chapter I: Biocenosis”

Nhã embarked on her journey with botanical illustration, a relatively new and challenging field in Vietnam, thanks to previous works by Professor Phạm Hoàng Hộ, including two iconic books Cây cỏ Việt Nam (The Flora of Vietnam) and Hiển hoa bí tử (Flowering Plants). She was the first artist in the field from Vietnam whose art pieces were featured internationally, at the “Flora of Southeast Asia” exhibition in September 2022. The success of the event helped consolidate Nhã’s faith in her craft, making her realize that there’s a space in botanical illustration for young enthusiasts like her, as long as they approach it seriously and with an open mind.

Rhynchospora corymbosa (L.) Britton | Chủy tử tản phòng | Golden beaksedge

Into the world of native flora

Nhã is pursuing different forms of scientific illustration, but her focus is on botanical illustration and botanical art. The former places emphasis on scientific utility and perspective; the latter, while still scientifically accurate, can concentrate on aesthetic appeal instead.

A botanical illustration is a faithful depiction of a species, often used in scientific documents, textbooks, and research publications. Artworks in this genre require a high level of accuracy when it comes to detailing every part of the plant. These visual portrayals, alongside in-depth description texts, will provide readers with a comprehensive profile about the species in question.

‎Garcinia phuongmaiensis V.S.Dang, H.Toyama & D.L.A.Tuan | Bứa Phương Mai | Exhibition: “Margaret Flockton Award 2023”

Botanical art, on the other hand, aims to blend the precision of botany with the emotional appeal of visual art. It’s still rooted in scientific specifications, but instead of showing every part and life stage of the plant, the artist can choose to zoom in on a leaf or a flower. As long as the work is botanically accurate, the author is free to experiment with composition, lighting, or even emotional narrative to help the species stand out.

Camellia honbaensis Luu, Q.D.Nguyen & G.Tran | Trà mi Hòn Bà.

“Each species has its own scientific name in Latin,” she explained. Before starting any illustration, Nhã must seek out its scientific name and read all related documents, such as the plant’s medicinal properties, natural distribution, and usage. In learning comprehensively about the species, she arrives at the most complete picture to start sketching.

The final work is a team effort

Once an initial sketch is done, she will send it to the leading experts of each plant family or order to get their feedback, and discuss with them how to adjust the illustration.

Camellia yokdonensis Dung bis & Hakoda | Trà mi Yok Đôn.

“For instance, when I was creating a piece on the Yok Đôn camellia flower, the researchers suggested I modify the flower to face upwards, and informed me about its two color variants: vibrant orange and gentle pink,” Nhã recalled. “After our discussion, they recommended I depict the pink variant to appeal to viewers’ taste, so they could feel connected to it and maybe will seek it out to plant at home.”

Still, accuracy is a high priority for her artworks, as each fold and vein of the leaves must be replicated correctly. The experts not only weigh in to help correct the sketch but also provide her with ample references on the plant’s visual appearance, medicinal use, and biological attributes so she could best bring the plant to life on paper.

Calophyllum inophyllum L. | Mù u.

Picking the right medium for the illustrations is also a crucial step. Each plant species carries with it a distinctive elegance, angularity or movement, so the material to execute their portrayal should also fit those characteristics. Colored pencils and watercolor are most commonly used to depict flowers. Rhizomes like ginger relatives tend to be sharper, so she usually picks acrylic. Besides, silk painting is another possible choice for botanical illustrations.

A piece of botanical illustration is often highly valuable, not just due to material costs, but also because of the effort and time spent completing it. The creative part does require a high level of focus, but to Nhã, the most challenging step involves getting feedback from the experts and then modifying each small detail based on the comments so that the plant appears most accurately. Some illustrations, because of that, might take years to finish.

Loving means understanding

It’s Nhã’s hope to transform seemingly complicated science into something approachable to everyone, so they can better understand the flowers, trees and fruits of their nation. She believes that only by really understanding something can we grow to love it; and once we love it, we’ll spend efforts to preserve and protect it, and to cultivate it in order to prolong its existence on Earth. One of the methods of plant conservation that she tries to promote is ex situ conservation — protecting species outside of their natural habitat.

Inside the “Scent Station” workshop.

Nhã has been doing her part to connect and expand the community of plant aficionados through many initiatives, from organizing workshops to hands-on programs to give people a chance to get to know Vietnam’s amazing botanical diversity.

Starting from October 2023, Nhã commenced a series of events providing multi-sensory experiences revolving around botanical illustration, including “Botanical Art: Ways of Seeing” (visual), “Botanical Art: Scent Station” (olfactory), and “From Palette to Palate” (gustatory), and tactile experiences via a collaboration with a fashion organization in Saigon.

Common household spices of Vietnam as seen in Scent Station.

During the olfactory workshop, Nhã presented a collection of essential oils and introduced oil extraction methods while providing cautions on how to use them to guests. Various nuggets of specialized knowledge from fields like organic chemistry and plant anatomy were peppered throughout the event in accessible and educational ways. Participants had an opportunity to explore the oils with four senses: observing the physical state of the oils and viewing illustrations of the plants that produce them, listening to the background information, feeling the sensations of some skin-safe oils like mù u, passion fruit, and sachi on their hands, and smelling them.

In 2024, she also organized events focusing on sketching and exploring the plant world with children, students, and senior participants. To join, one does not need to know how to draw or have any botany knowledge, because Nhã believes that anyone can pick up a pencil to draw and get closer to the universe of botanical illustration.

Each artwork reflects the soul

The time spent working closely with plants is when Nhã feels the most connected to nature in a wholesome way. It’s not simply replicating the silhouettes of a leaf or a petal, but embodying their truest soul on paper via an in-depth understanding.

Neptunia oleracea Lour. | Rau nhút.

Spending time with plants is also a journey of self-discovery. The illustrator can hone their fingers’ nimbleness and sharpen their observational skills, but most importantly, learn how to listen to their body. With every brushstroke, they could reduce stress, be in tune with the rhythm of their breaths, practice mindfulness, and marvel at the beauty of nature.

The world of plants is expansive where each leaf, each cell is constantly living. Through her work in botanical illustration, Nhã has a front seat to witness those pulses of life while unearthing the eclectic natural treasures in the familiar world around her.

“It’s been so long I can barely remember. It’s delicious, fragrant, soft but not sticky,” says Trần Văn Lựa, 53, a farmer from Đồng Tháp Province, south-west Vietnam, recalling the taste of wild rice. As a child, he would harvest the grain during flood season, when wild rice flowers. Today, however, it is a rare sight.

Wild rice, known locally as “ghost rice” (lúa ma), is the common name for Oryza rufipogon, a perennial native to Vietnam’s Mekong Delta and the ancestor of modern Asian rice (Oryza sativa). It carries genes that confer resistance to pests like rice leaf folder moths, stem-boring insects and viral diseases like rice grassy stunt and ragged stunt — traits lost in modern varieties. Its high genetic diversity is a rich resource for scientists to develop new genes that are adaptive to drought, flooding, heat and acidic soils.

As climate pressures mount, these qualities are proving more important than ever. Yet Vietnam, one of the species’ last global refuges, is struggling to preserve it.

A lifeline during flood season

In the 1970s, wild rice was a lifeline during wartime and food shortages. It thrived in the floodplains of the Đồng Tháp Mười region, where seasonal inundation submerged fields for months. A sack of wild rice, locals say, would fetch three times the price of regular rice.

Once abundant, it has since become a rarity, often mistaken for “weedy rice” (Oryza spontanea), an aggressive weed that produces fewer grains, which shed early, causing mass crop failures. The perception of wild rice as a weed has persisted even among international scientific circles, with the North American Plant Protection Organization and several US states classifying it as such.

Vietnam is home to four of the world’s wild rice species: Oryza rufipogon, Oryza nivara, Oryza officinalis and Oryza granulata. Only rufipogon and officinalis are still found in the Mekong Delta; nivara was last seen in the Delta’s Tràm Chim National Park in 1980, and is now still present in Hồ Lắk, a lake in central Đắk Lắk Province.

A rare cluster of Oryza rufipogon, or “ghost” rice, in Tràm Chim National Park, Vietnam. Once abundant and a crucial food source during shortages, it has since become a rarity, often mistaken for “weedy rice.” Photo by Nam Phong/Mekong Eye.

Bùi Chí Bửu is the former director of the Institute of Agricultural Science for Southern Vietnam and one of the few Vietnamese scientists studying wild rice. He says its remarkable genetic diversity makes it ideal for breeding climate-resilient rice.

Wild rice grows low across wetland plains and can survive months of inundation. Its seeds can lie dormant for years, germinating only when conditions align.

Harvesting it requires precision: wild rice sheds grains at the slightest breeze, so farmers often go out on their boats before dawn — when winds are calm — spreading blankets across their boats and tapping the stalks with bamboo poles to catch the falling grains.

This ghostly shedding is what earned it the name lúa ma, meaning “ghost rice.”

It is valued for its genes. “Wild rice possesses a highly diverse genetic foundation,” Bửu says. “The species contains rare genes that cultivated and native rice varieties have lost over the evolutionary pathway.” These include alleles — specific gene variants — that were largely lost during the domestication of rice and modern breeding efforts, which narrowed the gene pool by selecting only for traits like high yield or uniformity. Many of these lost genes are now recognized as critical for tolerance to climate stress and toxic metals in acidic soils.

Bùi Chí Bửu, one of the few Vietnamese scientists studying wild rice, tends to Oryza officinalis in his garden in Cần Thơ. He says that the species contains rare genes that cultivated and native rice varieties have lost over the evolutionary pathway. Photo by Nam Phong/Mekong Eye.

Research by Bửu’s team found that while cultivated rice in Vietnam has a low genetic diversity index (0.2), wild rice in the Mekong Delta ranges from 0.4 to 0.6, sometimes higher. “For a country with weak genetic diversity [of rice] like Vietnam, preserving species with rich genetic foundations is essential,” he says.

Meanwhile, despite resembling cultivated rice, weedy rice is genetically unstable due to crossbreeding with genetically dissimilar strains. It sheds all its grains at maturity, causing up to 60% crop loss, and spreads rapidly. Its similarity to farmed rice renders it resistant to herbicides, making it especially difficult to control.

Tracking a vanishing gene bank

In his home garden in Cần Thơ, Bửu tends to several wild rice species collected from across southern Vietnam.

Wild rice is remarkably resilient, but not invincible. To keep them alive, he must propagate the plants every few years. “Even as a perennial, if left alone, they will exhaust themselves and die,” he explains.

On-farm breeding — where plants are cultivated and selected in open fields rather than labs — is a low-cost method used in Vietnam and parts of Africa, but it comes with risks. Plants are vulnerable to cross-pollination and small gene pools can collapse with a single failed generation.

A more secure backup lies at the Mekong Delta Rice Research Institute (MDRRI), also in Cần Thơ, where hundreds of pots of wild rice are maintained alongside a small seed bank. The institute stores 600 samples of Oryza rufipogon and Oryza officinalis in cold storage and net houses — screened structures that regulate sunlight and pest exposure. To preserve viability, seeds are periodically revived, grown and re-stored to prevent the gradual loss of germination.

In the net house of the Mekong Delta Rice Research Institute, hundreds of pots of wild rice are cultivated. Photo by Nam Phong/Mekong Eye.

Two wild rice varieties, Oryza officinalis and Oryza rufipogon, are currently stored in the gene bank of the Mekong Delta Rice Research Institute, but funding has become a problem. Photo by Nam Phong/Mekong Eye.

However, institutional seed banks face funding challenges.

“In the past, funding for our gene bank came entirely from the Plant Resources Center, which supported cold storage and seed rejuvenation,” says Trần Ngọc Thạch, the institute’s director. “But now, we fund the cold storage ourselves, so preservation is less than ideal.”

There are two main strategies for conserving wild rice: ex-situ, through storage in seed banks, and in-situ, conserving the plants in their natural habitats. While gene banks safeguard genetic material, they halt natural evolution. In-situ conservation, on the other hand, allows species to continue adapting to changing conditions.

Elsewhere, wild rice remains a low priority. The Indigenous Rice Gene Bank at Cần Thơ University is among the few better-funded preservation facilities in the country, with around 5,000 samples. But its focus is on seasonal, lowland and rain-fed varieties from the Mekong Delta — none of them wild.

“Wild rice seeds require special regeneration conditions, which we are not prioritizing due to limited funding and manpower,” says Nguyễn Thành Tâm, head of agricultural development at the MDRRI. 

In-situ conservation is widely regarded as the best way to protect and evolve the species. But it, too, is under pressure: farmers prefer high-yield hybrids, and wetland habitats are shrinking or degraded.

Tràm Chim National Park, in Đồng Tháp province near Vietnam’s border with Cambodia, is the country’s largest in-situ wild rice conservation site and has drawn international interest for its biodiversity. The park, along with the larger province, is home to Oryza rufipogon populations with the highest recorded genetic diversity in the Mekong Delta.

Before 2015, Tràm Chim’s wild rice fields covered nearly 1,000 hectares, thriving alongside wetland species like Eleocharis dulcis (water chestnut or năn ống), Eleocharis atropurpurea (purple spikerush or năn kim) and several types of native grasses.

Ghost rice growing on a canal bank in Tràm Chim National Park, near Vietnam’s border with Cambodia, where it used to thrive alongside other wetland species. Photo by Nam Phong/Mekong Eye.

Today, park officials estimate only 520 hectares remain, half the area seen a decade ago. Pure wild rice fields, which totalled just 33 hectares in 2015, have continued to shrink. “Wild rice is now scattered across many areas rather than concentrated in one place,” says Đoàn Văn Nhanh, deputy director of the park’s Center for Conservation and International Cooperation.

Cruising through Tràm Chim’s waterways in early January, the usual blooming season for wild rice, there was little sign of the plant — only stretches of water chestnut. A few clumps of wild rice clung to levees.

Each year, wild rice sprouts tall as Mekong floodwaters rise, flowering at peak inundation, but patterns are changing. “It seems that this year, the flood surged and retreated unusually fast, leaving barely any wild rice,” says Trần Văn Lựa, a local farmer.

Nhanh agrees. He believes erratic floods have disrupted the plant’s natural cycle. Roaming cattle, often released into the park, graze on what little remains.

Rebuilding a habitat

Covering just over 7,300 hectares, the national park shelters 130 plant species, 130 freshwater fish and 231 bird species — many of them endemic. But years of mismanaged hydrology have disrupted this delicate balance. A 10-year restoration project, backed by over VND184 billion (US$7 million) from the Đồng Tháp Provincial People’s Committee, is now underway. The Sarus Crane Conservation and Development Project combines ecological restoration, captive breeding and organic agriculture to restore crane populations and protect the park’s biodiversity.

A flock of sarus crane in Tràm Chim National Park. The endangered species uses ghost rice fields as feeding and resting grounds and are now a rare sight in the area. Photo by Tang A Pau.

“At Tràm Chim, we are restoring and rehabilitating the ecosystems, with a focus on Eleocharis atropurpurea [purple spikerush], the main food source for cranes,” says Nhanh. The cranes are an indicator of wetland health, he adds.

To prevent forest fires, park managers introduced canals and levees to maintain higher water levels year-round, altering the natural six-month cycle. Wild rice, unable to regenerate without dry periods and decomposed surface nutrients, began disappearing, including from its former stronghold on the park’s eastern side.

Wild rice plays a critical ecological role in the Delta. Its roots, stems, leaves and seeds are a major food source for birds and fish during stressful periods like deep flooding or drought, explains Dương Văn Ni, a biodiversity expert at Cần Thơ University. When wild rice disappears, the food chain unravels. Species that depend on it decline and eventually vanish.

“Water flow into the Mekong Delta no longer follows its usual patterns,” says Nhanh. “With unpredictable climate and hydrological factors, we must remain flexible in how we manage the park to avoid significant losses.” Water levels, he adds, are now adjusted in response to shifting rainfall patterns.

Efforts to reverse the damage are underway. Controlled burning of grasslands was reintroduced and park staff are restoring native grasses critical to crane habitats, alongside wild rice. A five-hectare pilot plot of wild rice has shown tentative signs of recovery. A new ecological rice farming initiative, dubbed “Rice calls the cranes back,” has also been launched to align organic cultivation with habitat restoration. The broad goal is to convert 200 hectares to this model by 2028.

But as Mekong flood patterns grow more erratic — driven by climate change and upstream hydropower — the long-term outlook of species like wild rice remains uncertain. Their loss would not only threaten local biodiversity, but erase genetic resources for climate-resilient agriculture across the region.

“Each species has its own adaptation limits, and wild rice is no exception,” says Dương. “Maintaining a healthy natural ecosystem, therefore, creates the best conditions for many species. Ongoing, updated research will be essential to sustain the ecosystem as a living being.”

This article was co-published in English by Mekong Eye and Dialogue Earth and was republished on Saigoneer with permission. Visit the original article here.

Nguyễn Văn Quại, 63, walked slowly on the muddy dirt path in his yard, his hands clasped behind his back. He stopped beside a tree split in half, its branches dipping into the stagnant water of a narrow moat, and gestured towards the rest of his leafless crop — their trunks yellow, their bark cracked and brittle.

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.

Nguyễn Văn Quại points to his durian trees in Ngũ Hiệp.

For decades, Quại has called Ngũ Hiệp home. The small island on the Mekong River in Tiền Giang Province is less than two hours inland from the sea. His family first farmed rice but turned to durian, a more lucrative crop, in the early 1990s. Now, more than 200 trees stand in his yard, their thorny fruit bringing in hundreds of millions of VND.

But like many farmers in the Mekong Delta, Quại is watching his land turn against him. Last year, drought pushed saltwater deep into the delta’s freshwater reserves, seeping into fields that had sustained generations. Thousands of hectares of crops withered, leaving farmers scrambling to salvage what they could.

Like Quại, many farmers in the region are struggling under the combined weight of drought, rising sea levels, and coastal erosion. Under the pressures of climate change and industrial exploitation, briny water from the sea is pushing further and further inland. 

Lifestyles and livelihoods in the Mekong Delta are reliant on the region's waterways. Photo: On the river in Cần Thơ.

According to the Mekong River Commission, approximately 65 million people in the Lower Mekong rely on agriculture as their central livelihood. However, salt intrusion is only getting worse. Researchers at Netherlands Utrecht University and the Deltares research institute have found that saltwater intrusion has been increasing over the last twenty years and by 2050, as much as 100,000–800,000 hectares of land in the Mekong Delta could be affected by worrying levels of salt intrusion. 

Climate change and human drivers, such as upstream damming and sand mining, are two of the greatest factors driving the salt intrusion crisis, said Sepehr Eslami, lead researcher on the study. The effects are being felt heavily downstream. 

Boats bridge the gap between the banks of the Cần Thơ River in late July 2024. Local travel in the region often requires boats.

“This year was one of the worst in the past few years,” Quại said of the drought that killed off about 30 of his durian trees, including all of his newly grown durian saplings in late April last year. “People didn’t even have enough water to use, let alone plants.”

A fallen durian tree lies on its side in Nguyễn Văn Quại’s durian farm on July 27, 2024.  

Quại said it costs about VND100,000 to buy a durian tree sapling. This expense does not include the cost of fertilizers and pesticides, labor and the constant upkeep needed to protect them from pests and other stressors. His family lost about VND30 million as drought and saltwater intrusion devastated their crops. 

Durian saplings for sale at Trần Thị Kim Thơ’s nursery.

Durian, however, is not the only crop that reacts poorly to elevated levels of salt. Rice plants, for example, produce fewer and lighter grains when exposed to too much salt. Their leaves also curl and turn yellow, and many of their flowers fail to turn into seeds, meaning a smaller harvest. It also impacts another popular crop known to be moderately salt tolerant: coconut trees. When exposed to prolonged or excessive salt stress, they experience stunted growth, reduced yields and potential death.

For durians, it often starts with leaf tips and edges drying out, turning yellow and eventually dropping, Quại said. As the stress on the trees worsens, they produce fewer flowers, and young fruits drop before they have a chance to ripen. 

A stack of dead durian trees, chopped up for firewood, is piled in Nguyễn Văn Quại’s yard after the 2024 growing season.

Normally, a durian tree takes four to five years to bear fruit and can thrive year-round — provided there is a stable water source. But as droughts and salt intrusion continue, keeping the trees alive has become an uphill battle. The worsening conditions forced Quại’s youngest daughter to leave Ngũ Hiệp, relocating to Đắk Lắk with her husband and friends in search of more stable land to grow durian. But even in the Central Highlands, she found no refuge — droughts there, too, were taking their toll.

Many of Quại’s durian trees were affected by other issues exacerbated by elevated salt levels, he said, like fungi and pests. For him, 2024 was the worst year yet. But 2025 is delivering its own challenges, as experts warn salt intrusion could be particularly high over the next two months. Provinces on the west coast like Cà Mau will have the highest salinity readings in April and May this year, said Nguyễn Thị Hồng Điệp, Advanced Senior Lecturer at Cần Thơ University’s College of Environment and Natural Resources, noting that industrial exploitation and climate change are key driving factors.

Coconut trees along the Mekong River show yellowing leaves in July 2024.

“The best course of action is to live with nature”

High temperatures, droughts, water shortages and saltwater intrusion affect many regions in Vietnam, including the Mekong Delta. In 2024, a directive from Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính called for a series of urgent measures to safeguard water resources, protect agricultural production, and ensure stable living conditions for millions at risk. The directive laid out several strategies, including monitoring weather patterns, devising emergency response plans, and urging farmers to adopt water-efficient practices. Investing in water infrastructure projects was also identified as a priority, among others. Local authorities have also been tasked with dredging key irrigation channels to boost storage capacity and deploying tanker trucks if necessary to ensure uninterrupted access. 

Planting salt-tolerant species and changing farming models can also help protect the region in the long term, Điệp said, while strategies like rainwater collection, water recycling, and changing crops may be the best course of action for local farmers.  

Construction of a sluice gate at Cái Khế Canal in Cần Thơ City, preparing to open at the end of Summer 2024. Sluice gates are used to reduce flooding and prevent salt intrusion.

Though climate change has played a significant role in the region’s issues with salt intrusion, industrial developments like upstream damming also continue to put stress on river levels by disrupting fresh water supply downstream and depleting the region’s sediment. According to the Mekong Dam Monitor, a project of global think tank the Stimson Center, there are approximately 60 upstream dams across China, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia that significantly disrupt the flow of freshwater downstream to agricultural lands in Vietnam. 

Much of the issue of salt intrusion comes down to protecting the sediment supply, said Esmali, which is essential for preventing the erosion of the South Vietnam coast. As salt intrusion becomes more extreme, farmers may face difficult choices.

“They will either have to change crops, or they will have fresh water supply challenges, or they have to switch jobs and migrate from the region,” said Esmali. “There is a range of adaptation options and none of them are easy.” As conditions become more extreme, freshwater zones like Cần Thơ and Tiền Giang provinces that are protected by sluice gates will begin to experience some of these challenges as well, and conditions in areas that are already affected will get worse.   

But adapting and adjusting at a local level will be essential. “The best course of action is to live with nature and to adapt,” said Võ Thành Danh, Professor of Economics at Cần Thơ University, who has helped to assess the viability of coastal adaptation strategies in the delta. Turning environmental stress into opportunities to change crops may be one way to adapt.

Lê Thị Bé Hai and her family lost around VND30 million in income after salt intrusion killed several of their durian trees.

Delta residents like Trần Thị Kim Thơ are doing exactly that, as her family was forced to cut their losses as saltwater intrusion wiped out all 100 of their durian trees. Also natives of Ngũ Hiệp, Thơ’s family have grown durians for nearly 30 years. But with the land no longer reliable for full-grown trees, they pivoted to selling ornamental plants and saplings — among them, more than a thousand young durian trees.

“People only buy them when their durian trees die — the more plants that die, the more they buy,” Thơ said about the saplings. Though her family doesn’t make as much as they did before and their income is unstable, she said, it’s a much safer investment. The saplings and ornamental trees require less water than durian trees, making them less vulnerable to droughts and saltwater intrusion, she explained.

Trần Thị Kim Thơ’s family switched to selling durian saplings after losing nearly 100 durian trees due to salt intrusion.

But Thơ and her family are among the few in Ngũ Hiệp who have stepped away from this prized crop out of caution. With its high economic value, durian continues to attract many others in the region. Despite the mounting challenges, they remain determined to grow it, holding onto the hope that the rewards will ultimately outweigh the risks, she said.

Quại and his wife, 62-year-old Lê Thị Bé Hai, are among those willing to take the risks. As they pulled back the tarp covering the chopped-up remains of the trees that didn’t survive, they said it wasn’t their first time doing this. “If a tree dies, we chop it down and grow a new one,” Hai said. “We’re not giving up.”

Locals cross the Cần Thơ River. As saltwater conditions become more extreme, freshwater zones like Cần Thơ may have to contend with a more difficult future.

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.

Over the past few months, WWF has been running a multi-faceted campaign to spotlight the importance of sustainable ingredients from the Mekong Delta.

The collaboration kicked off last year with the Elements of the Mekong Delta networking dinner. Chef Trụ Lang and his team at Mùa Craft Saké worked with Nguyễn Thị Phương Uyên, head chef of Nam Mê Kitchen & Bar, to design a menu highlighting products from the WWF’s nature-based solutions (NbS) projects. Centered around floating rice, shrimps, crabs, lotus seeds, and freshwater prawns, the six-dish “Ăn Cơm” concept gave guests a taste of how Saigon foodies can support and benefit sustainable practices. By amplifying the visibility of the delta’s responsibly produced agriculture and aquaculture alongside the voices of farmers and communities embracing the projects, WWF hopes more consumers will consider the items for their homes and restaurants.

Elements of the Mekong Delta dinner.

One dinner alone isn’t enough to introduce these delicious, sustainably sourced ingredients to the many people who would appreciate their impact on both communities and the environment. That’s why WWF created Elements of the Mekong Delta, a four-part video series showcasing these products through the lens of culinary creativity. Each episode features a talented Saigon chef creating a dish with different NbS project ingredients, highlighting their unique flavors and versatility.

Filming day for Elements of the Mekong Delta video series.

In episode one, Chef Trụ Lang kicked things off with ốc bươu cơm tấm made with floating rice. Chef Anaïs Ca Dao van Manen followed up in episode two with tôm sú kakiage, pairing crispy black tiger prawns with delicate floating rice noodles. Episode three brought Chef Nghiêm Minh Đức’s refined cua Cà Mau consommé, and for the grand finale, Chef Peter Cường Franklin served up fried floating rice with dried cá chốt—a bold and flavorful tribute to Vietnam’s rich culinary heritage.

Each of the four dishes made for the Elements of the Mekong Delta series.

But Elements of the Mekong isn’t just about incredible dishes—it’s about the people and places behind them. While the chefs shared their love for these ingredients and the realities of sustainable cooking, we wanted to go further. Together with WWF, Saigoneer ventured into the heart of the Mekong Delta, traveling to Long An, Cà Mau, and Kiên Giang to meet the farmers themselves. We watched as they carefully harvested black apple snails, black tiger prawns, and mud crabs—ingredients that have been part of local traditions for generations. Seeing their deep connection to the land and the patience required for their work made every dish feel even more meaningful.

Farmers in the Mekong Delta invited Saigoneer into their home to learn about the NbS projects.

Now, these same ingredients are making their way into markets and kitchens across Saigon, ready for anyone to explore their flavors. Watch all four episodes of Elements of the Mekong and dive into the stories behind each dish here each dish here. 

The Power of  Sustainable Ingredients

Elements of the Mekong Delta’s mission to raise awareness for the availability of local, sustainably produced ingredients is of great importance. Compared to conventionally-produced fruits, vegetables, grains, meats, and seafood, they help protect ecosystems, promote biodiversity, and sustain the livelihoods of local farmers. By introducing fewer chemicals and pesticides into soil and waterways, allowing natural cycles to restore and replenish nutrients, and allowing native flora and fauna to thrive, sustainably produced products can ensure priceless nature continues while human communities can exist comfortably.

Farmers in Long An amongst the floating rice. Photo courtesy of WWF.

These efforts are particularly important in the Mekong Delta, which is facing numerous challenges that threaten the environment and jeopardize the livelihoods of those who depend on the region’s agricultural output. By improving the socio-economy and resilience of local communities through the bolstering of sustainable livelihoods, it becomes easier to protect and restore critical ecosystems, and vice versa.

Working with Nature to Restore the Mekong Delta

Restoring the Mekong Delta requires a multi-faceted approach, with NbS such as those featured in Elements of the Mekong emerging as one of the most promising strategies. WWF’s vision for addressing the region’s challenges spans the entire delta including the headwaters, central floodplains, and coastal regions. The strategically selected project sites are located near protected areas, national parks, and other ecologically significant landscapes to enhance biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.

Scaling up sustainable food production is at the heart of the WWF’s work and requires close collaboration with farmers, government agencies, and funding partners to promote food production systems that align with the delta’s natural flood cycles.

Ca Mau communities and farmers benefit from the NbS projects. Photos courtesy of WWF.

The projects include the CRxN Mekong Expansion – Vietnam Country project which is supported by WWF-Australia and DFAT to restore the floodplain in Láng Sen Wetland Reserve by transforming traditional to flood-based agricultural models that contribute to climate resilience.

U Minh Thượng National Park. Photo courtesy of WWF.

WWF is also working to preserve U Minh Thượng National Park, one of Vietnam’s last remaining peatlands by improving the lives of poor communities through the Conservation-Friendly Alternative Livelihoods project, supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). Meanwhile, in Cà Mau, a shrimp and rice rotation model is being deployed in mangrove canopies to ensure environmental and economic resilience.

What You Can Do

While WWF’s initiatives and similar efforts have made significant strides, restoring the Mekong Delta remains an ongoing challenge—one that requires continuous and collective support.

Photo courtesy of WWF.

By choosing sustainably sourced products, you play a vital role in empowering farmers to maintain eco-friendly practices, protect their livelihoods, and preserve this precious ecosystem for future generations.

Frequently touted as environmentally friendly options that help preserve the planet, cotton tote bags require so much energy and freshwater to produce that you must use one at least 7,000 times to make it an effective alternative to plastic bags. Finding out that purchases, habits, and initiatives you thought were good for the planet, such as using tote bags, are in fact not likely to help our current climate crisis can be disheartening. Recognizing how the sustainability movement is rife with performative acts, corporate greenwashing and good intentions thwarted by misinformation threatens to discourage people from the entire concept.

You should push back against this sustainability burnout, however. By approaching sustainability not as an all-or-nothing, extreme concept, but rather a mindset supported by a clear philosophy, firm knowledge, and realistic practices, you can confidently identify and proceed with behaviors that can help save the planet. 

Vietnam is home to countless scenes that exemplify Earth's natural splendors.

Before considering how one can act sustainability, one must articulate why it's important. At its most basic level, for humans to continue as a species, our Earth must have clean water, soil, and air. But even before conditions that would eradicate the entire human race develop, pollution, rising sea levels, chaotic storms, and a myriad of other human-caused scenarios will significantly endanger people’s health, safety, and quality of life. It’s already happening. This is in addition to the impacts on flora and fauna that face extinction through no actions of their own. The science is settled on the cause of these issues and the only question one must ask oneself is if humanity is worth survival.

Evidence of human impact on the environment and the behaviors that cause them is everywhere.

Admitting we want to save the planet is easy, but identifying what must be done is more difficult. There is no magic bullet that will solve the many compounding issues, and even if there were, we need as much time as possible to discover it. Reducing just one aspect of climate change will require the ideas and actions of many people working together. Large corporations will need to change how they operate, including transitioning from fossil fuels and adopting new technologies such as sand batteries. But we cannot rely on ginormous businesses and governments alone to make all the changes. Individuals must act in small ways that add up when done collectively. For example, scientists can research ways to more efficiently grow and store crops, but households must still work to reduce food waste via simple decisions such as not throwing away uneaten items and purchasing local, seasonal produce. 

Most industries, such as coffee (left) require massive amounts of heat, which can benefit from employing a sand battery, such as those produced by Alternō (right).

At this individual level of acting sustainability, every decision is an opportunity. Recognizing that a good action is not the enemy of a perfect action allows one to compare the impact of all options and take sustainability into account alongside other factors such as ease and cost. For example, it’s not realistic to never travel in a motorized vehicle even if that were the best way to limit your personal carbon emissions. Still, you can often opt for public transportation or an electric vehicle as opposed to a private, internal-combustion car. Thankfully, such decisions are becoming easier with innovators across sectors providing everything from electric vehicle chargers to bodhi leaf tea bags. 

Electric vehicle chargers are becoming increasingly common across the world, including in Vietnam.

Part of adopting a balanced, rational approach to sustainability involves admitting you will make choices based on other criteria. Price and convenience realistically influence our actions. But even if sustainability is not the primary determinant of any choice, it can still play a part. For example, we often eat what is tastiest, but knowing a dish is sustainably produced may motivate us to order it as opposed to an equally delicious one that isn’t. Similarly, solar panels may be better for the environment than connecting one’s home to the power grid, but the fact that they reduce monthly electricity bills may prove to be the necessary motivator for homes and factories to install them. 

Solar panels can help the financial bottom line for industrial and residential buildings, including countryside homes such as those pictured here.

Education is crucial for taking actions that make a tangible difference. You must have a strong foundational knowledge about what choices are available and the facts behind them. Media literacy and staying informed via trustworthy publications, websites, and speakers, as opposed to TikTok influencers and corporate marketing doublespeak is essential. Research and vetting companies and activities can take time, but it's worth it when the health of the planet is involved.

Representatives from Vietnamese companies focused on sustainability explaining their visions during the Powering a Sustainable Future event.

Educating oneself about sustainability is difficult to do alone and it's therefore important to seek out events, organizations, and institutions that can help bridge knowledge gaps. In Vietnam, the Empowering Sustainability Unitour, for example, is a university-based series of events that connects students with experts and innovators via panel discussions, mini-exhibitions, and career opportunities ranging from alternative energy solutions and green transportation to sustainable entrepreneurship, emphasizing practical applications and innovation. The event is particularly helpful for young adults entering full adult independence who must decide where to work and how to live. With this great range of decisions comes opportunities and responsibilities to act with a sustainability mindset which the Unitour can help develop.

With collected, concerted efforts, we can maintain the planet's natural beauty.

Thinking about our planet’s demise and its impact on humanity can be terrifying. Because sustainability has been so thoroughly co-opted by the agents of consumerism, the concept offers little solace. However, if you can consider a sustainability mindset from a holistic perspective, taking into account its philosophical and practical elements alongside a willingness to act boldly in the world, you can do your part. 

When seeing a reflective row of solar panels situated on a roof in Vietnam, it’s easy to assume that the home, office, or factory belonged to someone who had decided to pay a little more for the sake of the common good. One might think that while solar energy has become more affordable and convenient as technologies continue to improve, it still requires consumers to make a conscious decision to spend extra for electricity because it is better for the environment. This, however, is wrong.

An increasing number of solar panels can be seen throughout cities and the countryside in Vietnam.

The Virtues and Surprising Value of Solar Power

We all know that energy derived from the sun is cleaner and better for the environment than energy obtained from burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil. It creates no carbon emissions or other heat-trapping gases that contribute to global warming and climate change. Additionally, it comes without the environmental destruction required for mining or drilling fossil fuels or the massive amounts of water needed for power plants. While it's not without impact, as solar panels rely on precious metals and materials, it's vastly cleaner than conventional alternatives.

Capturing sunlight to transform into energy results in no harmful emissions.

Moreover, Vietnam is particularly well-suited for an increase in solar power adoption. According to a recent study published by The International Journal of Management and Technology for Research Studies, energy demand is rising rapidly as the economy develops, but traditional, dirty sources such as coal and crude oil constitute the largest sources. Meanwhile, large land areas receive significant amounts of sunlight per year with Vietnam amongst the leading nations for sunlight as observed on the solar radiation map. 

For these reasons, we were confident that environmental concerns are the primary driver of solar power adoption in Vietnam, however, a conversation with Stride, a cleantech company involved in Vietnam’s solar energy industry, changed our perspective. 

Financial considerations motivate the installation of solar panels on large factories and farms.

“I want to reduce my electricity bill, so solar becomes a way to help solve that problem.” Andrew Fairthorne, Stride’s Chief Executive Officer shared when explaining the motivations of many of his customers. "They are less motivated by environmental concerns, and are looking for ways to reduce operating costs for their business to make it more profitable."

The specific economics behind solar energy adoption can be complex, particularly when considering the tariffs, rebates, grants, and taxes that different governments offer to individuals to incentivize adoption. One constant, however, is that energy derived from fossil fuels will continue to rise with increased demand and finite supply, and solar energy will continue to become cheaper to own, install and operate thanks to new technologies. While limiting one’s reliance on fossil fuels is a positive motivator that many consider to be a matter of ethical obligations, the financial bottom line is currently the most convincing reason why people in Vietnam are purchasing solar systems. 

Solar panels are particularly effective in rural areas on large buildings.

The Need for Financial Expertise

Solar panels reduce a building’s monthly energy bills from the moment they are installed, and given enough time, these savings pay for the cost of the required equipment. This equipment, however, requires upfront costs that can be overwhelming. The panels “might cost, say, 4,000 US dollars for a typical household, and most people do not have that money readily available,” Andrew said. Large, local banks aren’t eager to maneuver the difficult process for single households or small businesses loans, and individual credit cards aren’t designed for such purposes, he explained. Unless a customer has the full, upfront cost in cash, there aren’t a lot of options. “That's where the financing comes in, allowing for repayments to be made in small installments using the savings generated from the solar energy system.”

Vietnam has many experienced, professional operations for solar panel installation

With more than four decades of combined experience in financial services and technology, Andrew and Stride co-founders, ​​Leo Polojac and Tra Le, have the expertise needed to facilitate private purchases of solar systems which are paid off in small increments. An intuitive mobile app that provides for on-the-spot approval allows customers to make payments and calculate how long it will be until the solar system is paid off using the savings from each month’s energy bills. Moreover, Stride provides comprehensive insurance for protection against natural disasters such as the recent Typhoon Yagi and an independent quality assurance check to ensure the solar system is installed to an international standard.

The specifics of how Stride provides the financing is complicated and not particularly interesting for the average consumer. But this is where Stride excels. Successfully navigating international transfers, cross-border regulations, and lending via currency exchanges is only part of the equation. Stride must have a firm grasp of the underlying technology and market.

Fortuitously, through a mutual acquaintance, the founders got to know Huy Le, who has a background in solar technologies. Not long after they began brainstorming about the potential of solar power in Vietnam after witnessing its proliferation in their native Australia, Andrew and Leo invited Huy to join Stride as Chief Commercial Officer. Huy was able to explain in greater detail how the technology works and also the specific uses, needs, and challenges for Vietnamese customers. He also ensures that Stride only works with experienced, reputable installation companies that offer fully certified and trustworthy equipment.

The Stride team at the Powering a Sustainable Future event speaking with potential clients.

Amongst these challenges for local Vietnamese is a lack of familiarity or comfort with debt and financing options. We all know individuals here who don’t like to use banks and prefer to keep their money in cash, gold, or land. Convincing these individuals to take advantage of Stride’s system often requires clear explanations and positive reputations based on word of mouth and community connections. Huy’s time in the industry has proven instrumental in this. Meanwhile, Leo and Andrew’s roles with global banks working in Vietnam have allowed them to overcome obstacles inherent to explaining to overseas investors and institutions what to expect in terms of timelines, processes, and requirements for the local market.

Since their founding in 2021, Stride is succeeding as evidenced by their support of over 400 solar installations across 48 provinces in Vietnam.  This has resulted in over 6,100 MWh's of solar energy produced with a reduction of 2,300 Tonnes of CO2 carbon avoided.

An Impact Beyond Bank Accounts

Saving money may be the main motivation for solar system adoption in Vietnam, and Stride was undoubtedly founded as a means to generate profits, but Andrew admits there is more to life than making money. He shared with pride how a Stride solar system is reducing electricity costs for a kindergarten in the Mekong Delta while providing children with an opportunity to learn about the earth and sustainable stewardship, for example. Meeting large and small customers like the teachers and students at the school and hearing about the positive impact Stride is having is extremely gratifying. “Previously, while in banking, it was mainly looking at reports and numbers”, he said, emphasizing the value of witnessing a difference being made. Reflecting on the experience with the school he said: “By using Stride, they didn't have to put up a lot of capital up front. So they're like, ‘Well, this is a pretty good deal. The solar system pays for itself.’ And then they shared what they were able to do with the savings: buy more toys and upgrade their learning supplies.”

Members of a kindergarten in the Mekong Delta with a Stride representative who helped them fund solar panels for their school.

Stride’s success reveals that the differences being made with solar energy, and environmental progress in general, will require economic incentive. Our society is ultimately driven by money and few decisions are made without it as a primary consideration. For the sake of the planet, we must therefore look to maximize the situations where sustainability makes economic sense. We must be prepared to recognize and foster situations where it’s cheapest to act responsibly towards the Earth. Doing so requires businesses like Stride that have financial and technological expertise along with cultural knowledge and trust.