Water Governance Under Renovation? Concepts and Practices of IWRM in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam

The objective of this chapter is to explore Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) practices in Vietnam. Based on intensive empirical research in the Mekong Delta, the daily reality of water resources management is investigated in several sub-sectors. It will be shown that water management practices deviate to a large extent from the existing legal frameworks, policies and strategies commonly based on IWRM principles. It will be argued that the gap between official policy and actual practices is not the outcome of lacking capacity or resource scarcity, as often assumed in donor and government reports. Rather, it is a result of the peculiar structural features of the contemporary state in Vietnam.