Slow water: can we tame urban floods by going with the flow?

As we face increased flooding, China’s sponge cities are taking a new course. But can they steer the country away from concrete megadams?

Written by Erica Gies, read by Andrew McGregor and produced by Tony Onuchukwu. The executive producers were Max Sanderson and Isabelle Roughol.

the guardian – Fri 17 Jun 2022 05.00 BST

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WEIHUI, CHINA - JULY 26: Aerial view of rescue team using inflatable rafts evacuate residents from flooded area after heavy downpour, on July 26, 2021 in Weihui, Xinjiang City, Henan Province of China.
 Photograph: China News Service/Getty Images

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Conserving the floods in the Mekong Delta: A story from the Vietnam component of the Integrated Planning to Implement the CBD Strategic Plan and Increase Ecosystem Resilience to Climate Change project

International Union for Conversation of Nature

Intensive rice production is the predominant cause for the loss of biodiversity and resilience to climate change in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. Today, less than 5% of the natural wetlands of the Delta remain. In order to intensively grow rice in the upper-delta deep flood zone, traditional low dyke systems that have supported 2 rice crops in a year while allowing floods to enter the dyke system in the flood season, have been converted into high dykes that displace the floods so that a third rice crop can be grown.

Consensus building at the second Mekong Delta Forum, June 2016 © IUCN Viet Nam Photo: Consensus building at the second Mekong Delta Forum, June 2016 © IUCN Viet Nam
Diversified lotus farming systems as flood retention areas © IUCN Viet Nam Photo: Diversified lotus farming systems as flood retention areas © IUCN Viet Nam
This costly hard infrastructure has disrupted the natural flood pulse of the Mekong Delta and reduced the amount of wetlands with devastating impacts on the aquatic biodiversity that underpins the fisheries livelihoods of particularly poor people, and the loss of sediment replenishment necessary for agricultural sustainability. Tiếp tục đọc “Conserving the floods in the Mekong Delta: A story from the Vietnam component of the Integrated Planning to Implement the CBD Strategic Plan and Increase Ecosystem Resilience to Climate Change project”