Popularly described since the time of French colonization as two rice baskets at opposing ends of a pole, Vietnam’s socio-ecology is strongly structured by the fertile deltas of the Mekong River in the south and the Red River in the north. Like Bangladesh, these deltaic landscapes are acutely vulnerable to climate change hazards such as floods, droughts, sea level rise, and tropical storms. A variety of government, foreign, and multilateral development agencies are therefore actively exploring investment opportunities to buttress Vietnam’s water infrastructure against climate change. However, my research in Bangladesh indicates that foreign climate finance for the country’s flood management infrastructure is destabilizing rather than protecting critical socio-ecological systems (Annals of the AAG 2020).

In this work, I evaluate climate finance as a vehicle for climate justice through an analysis of climate change adaptation programs in the Ganges and Mekong Deltas. Hundreds of billions of dollars of climate finance are being mobilized to help developing countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh adapt to climate change threats. However, the lack of definitional clarity means that climate finance is often disbursed not as grants but as loans with attendant interest, and some programs have been criticized for prioritizing the goals of donor countries and financial institutions over those of the target populations. Meanwhile, insufficient adaptation funding at the international level has led to climate-impacted communities finding themselves in competition with each other for essential financial resources, with dire consequences for vulnerability reduction (Development and Change 2023). This project received early support from a Multi-Country Research Fellowship by the Council of American Overseas Research Centers and the Institute for Human Geography.