A LETTER FROM VIETNAM: TOWARD GREEN RESILIENCE
by Jalel Sager

"Vietnam is not a country, but an aggregate of individual dreams."

On the balcony of a traditional Vietnamese nha san house, overlooking a beautifully tended garden, the words float, a revelation. Spring breeze filters through the night sky, easing them into the back of my mind for future works, speeches. For the next day's remarks to a group of architects and building professionals in Ho Chi Minh City.

Traditional houses, updated with glass and concrete footings, bound the garden. The speaker is a wise man. A Japanese-Vietnamese who studied architecture in college, with a sensibility formed by both countries. Nguyen Tri Dung sits across from me and says he created this 1 hectare garden—perhaps the largest private green space in Ho Chi Minh City, where the opportunity cost for this expanse of paths and trees is likely in the millions of dollars—to demonstrate Vietnam's ancient fusion of architecture and site planning. And to show his visitors, mostly businessmen from Japan and around the world, his dream. To show them that he understands.

Understands what?

ZEN AND THE ART OF CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION
Vietnam is drowning in concrete and water. By the year 2050, the expected rise in global sea level will have inundated much of Ho Chi Minh City. No one talks or thinks about this much, as its enormity overwhelms most conversations. Still, the waters rise. The rains intensify. And once a week in HCMC, flood waters a metre high creep up onto the streets, cut into slapping waves by cars and buses that plow through them.

According to Ho Long Phi, the deputy director of HCMC's flood control commission, this is not due to rising seas—not yet. Under darkening skies at an HCMC café, our coffees pushed to the side and long forgotten, he points to a series of graphs showing the rise in river levels and in rainfall. "It is higher rainfall," he says. "And urbanisation." By the latter he means concrete. Low-lying areas long used for drainage of HCMC's rivers are being filled and capped with concrete. Embankments narrow rivers and canals. With routes to flow and drain increasingly limited, the water gathers on the streets.

Current proposals call for HCMC to fight the water with increasingly complex polder systems, which reclaim and protect submerged land with dykes and pumps. Ho Long Phi has another idea. "Control the urban planning," he says, sketching out a rough plan showing open spaces and retaining pools around buildings. "Decrease the impermeable surfaces. Then add a better drainage system and maybe pump water into aquifers." That may work for the next 20 years or so. But when the seas rise a metre? Will it be enough?

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Jalel Sager has lived in Hanoi since 2006 and is the founding director of the Vietnam Green Building Council. Prior to that he worked as a freelance writer for eight years, which culminated in a concentration in ecological economics and design, as well as sustainable architecture. In fall 2009 Jalel will join the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California-Berkeley to study green urban resilience and climate change adaptation.

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