Community-Based Urban Flood and Erosion Management in Can Tho, Vietnam: Co-Management Approaches for Climate Resilience
This climate resilience case study, produced by the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition (ISET), documents a community-based urban flood and erosion management project implemented in An Binh ward, Ninh Kieu district, Can Tho City, Vietnam between 2012 and 2015. An Binh is a densely populated, lower- and middle-income residential area traversed by the Cai Son River and a network of traditional drainage channels. These waterways historically served multiple community functions — supporting waterway transport, domestic and agricultural water use, and residential drainage — but have been severely degraded by a combination of shifting Mekong hydrological patterns, sea level rise, unregulated riverbank construction by poor migrant households, and urban encroachment that has narrowed channels from 8–12 meters to just 1–2 meters. As a result, residents face increasingly frequent, deeper, and longer flood inundations, with associated financial losses, structural damage, and health impacts from polluted backwater.
The project takes a “safe failure” approach to flood and erosion management, prioritizing flexible, low-cost, nature-based interventions over expensive hard infrastructure solutions. Key activities include biological riverbank stabilization using green corridor methods, rehabilitation of traditional drainage channels, improved waste management, and strengthening of community monitoring systems. Drawing on existing community-initiated practices — such as bamboo fencing, water hyacinth cultivation, and mangrove planting — the project works to coordinate and scale these fragmented efforts through structured community groups and joint planning mechanisms involving the An Binh People’s Committee, Can Tho City Climate Change Coordination Office (CCCO), ISET-Vietnam, Can Tho University, and other partners.
A central innovation of this initiative is its experimentation with co-management as an institutional model — seeking to foster genuine collaboration and shared responsibility between community members and local government for the protection, restoration, and ongoing monitoring of urban water infrastructure. The project develops new platforms for participatory planning, coordination, and regulation, and tests mechanisms for equitable benefit-sharing and conflict resolution. This is particularly significant in the Vietnamese context, where enabling legislation for co-management is still emerging at the national level, and where past “community-based” approaches have often been characterized by top-down government direction rather than genuine shared authority.
The case study offers valuable lessons for urban climate resilience practitioners working at the intersection of flood risk management, community empowerment, and local governance in rapidly urbanizing, climate-vulnerable cities across Southeast Asia. It highlights both the potential and the limitations of co-management in contexts where trust between communities and the state is fragile, regulatory frameworks are underdeveloped, and urban development pressures continuously threaten the boundary conditions of local interventions.