Participation in climate adaptation in the Lower Vam Co River Basin in Vietnam 1

This chapter describes a participatory planning process to develop a climate change adaptation strategy for the Lower Vam Co River Basin in Long An province in Vietnam under an 18-month pilot project (September 2011 to April 2013). Given the Vietnamese culture and context, this could not be done in the same way as in Western cultures. This chapter addresses the extent to which action research methods can be applied in a non-Western culture such as Vietnam, taking into account cultural differences and possible ways to bridge these. We start with a problem statement, followed by a description of the kind of action research applied and the empirical study conducted.