Risky Change? Vietnam’s Urban Flood Risk Governance between Climate Dynamics and Transformation

Vietnam’s cities are not only rapidly transforming along with the country’s politico-economic change but are also recognized as being increasingly exposed to natural hazards and the projected impacts of climate change. Resulting are substantial challenges for urban disaster risk governance which, however, remain poorly understood scientifically and underemphasized politically. Against this background, the paper traces the dynamics in urban vulnerability and explores how the responsibilities and capacities for risk reduction and adaptation are negotiated and shared within the country’s changing political economy. Can Tho City, the demographic and economic centre of the highly flood- and typhoon-prone Mekong Delta, serves as an in-depth case study, drawing on 12 months of empirical research. The findings suggest that the transformation process has not only been yielding ambiguous and socially stratified vulnerability effects amongst urban residents; it has also resulted in significant shifts in the way risk management is framed and attributed. Despite the continued paternalistic rhetoric of the party–state apparatus as care-taker, considerable mismatches between state and non-state adaptation action have been found, potentially undermining the effectiveness of both realms. The findings therefore call for a paradigm shift in Vietnam’s urban disaster risk governance. Future approaches need to go beyond the adjustment of physical infrastructure. Rather, the institutional configuration of risk governance itself needs to be adapted in order to mediate and integrate different types of risk reduction measures. These unfold across the increasingly divergent range of urban actors and their interests in terms of spatial scales, temporal scales, normative motivations and capacities.

充满风险的变革？：气候动态和城市转型之间的越南城市洪水风险治理

关键词：风险治理，城市洪水，适应性，转型，越南。           

越南的城市不仅随着越南的政治经济变化而快速转型， 而且也日益受到自然灾害和气候变化的预期影响的威胁。这为城市灾害的风险治理带来巨大挑战，然而这方面的科学理解极其薄弱，政治上严重重视不足。在此背景下，本文追踪了城市脆弱性的动态结构，并探究了在变动的政治经济学中，降低风险和风险适应方面的责任和能力是如何协商并分担的。芹苴市是极易受洪水和台风影响的湄公河三角洲的人口和经济中心, 本研究利用对其十二个月的经验研究，将其作为深度分析的案例。本研究发现表明，城市转型过程不仅在城市居民中制造出含混不清以及社会分层化的脆弱性效应，而且还导致了风险管理在描述框架和归因上的重大转变。尽管政党国家机器在父权制宣传话语中仍然保持着保护人的形象，国家和非国家的适应性行动二者之间却已经产生了很多的不协调现象，很有可能对这两个行动领域的有效性都造成破坏。这些研究发现因此要求越南城市灾害风险治理中的范式转换。未来的方法需要超越仅仅在物理性基础设施方面的调整。相反，为调节和整合不同类型的降低风险的措施，风险治理的制度性配置本身就需要作出适应性改变。这些变革需要在空间规模、时间规模、规范性动机以及能力等方面日渐分化的城市行动者及其利益之间展开。

Translated from English by Li Guo