Land use, Livelihood, and Legislation: An Agent-based Model to Investigate the Impacts of a Policy Regime Switch on the Vietnamese Mekong Delta in the Context of Climate Change

Abstract

The Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD), known as the "rice bowl" of Vietnam and one of the world’s leading producers and exporters of agricultural products, is under threats from climate change. However, the current agricultural policies of the region are rife with clashing objectives and incompatible interventions, which make them generally ill-equipped to confront the challenges that climate change poses. This regretful inefficacy is in part the result of inadequate policy assessment methodologies that fail to capture the interconnected relationships between the human and the environmental systems as well as the resultant consequences. To help address this knowledge gap and facilitate policy formulation, we propose an agent-based model (ABM) that (i) integrates the human and the environmental systems, (ii) can account for complexity and unintended consequences, and (iii) is modular and flexible. The model is used to investigate the impact of a policy regime switch in the context of climate change. Specifically, the model considers how a switch away from the non-structural measures of the rice-first agenda would affect land-use choices of farmers in the Soc Trang Province while taking heed of the worsening saltwater intrusion. The results suggest that while not every measure is of equal potency, renouncing fully the rice-first agenda would have a negative impact on food security and the environment of the region in the face of severe saltwater intrusion.