Few regions of the world are as threatened by climate change as the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. Rising sea levels are already transforming much of the area into a predominantly brackish environment, which is increasingly beset by alternating flood and drought conditions. Local and regional development pressures—groundwater depletion, uncoordinated land and water use changes, upstream dam developments—combine to create a complicated nexus of sustainability challenges. With deltas in general identified as highly vulnerable to climate change, Dutch actors and expertise have come to play an increasingly prominent role in adaptation efforts in many of the world’s major delta regions. Strategies and approaches for which the Netherlands is renowned are being translated through “delta plans” to guide transformations to sustainability in Vietnam, Bangladesh, and elsewhere. As in any development intervention, however, translating knowledge from one context to another is far from politically neutral. Few scholars have addressed the political implications of translating knowledge for the sake of guiding climate change adaptation, however, or just how this works in practice. This dissertation addresses this gap by asking: How is knowledge translated across levels of governance to influence local social-ecological change in transnational climate change adaptation initiatives? By examining the politics of translation involved in governing climate change adaptation in the Mekong Delta, this project investigates how knowledge and power interact with local social and material conditions to shape the trajectory of climate adaptation in a particular locale. To answer this question, ethnographic research was conducted over approximately 20 months from 2016 to 2018, at sites spanning multiple levels of governance: the Netherlands, Vietnam, and a coastal province of the Mekong Delta. The research focused on actors at each of these levels and the interactions between them: planners and policymakers in the Netherlands and Vietnam; intermediary actors and organizations that broker and translate knowledge across governance levels; and farmers in the Mekong Delta, who draw on socio-material networks to translate knowledge into livelihood and land-use changes. Findings indicate challenges, opportunities, and political dynamics at stake in the translation of knowledge shaping the trajectory of climate change adaptation.
