Vietnam's Mekong Delta is sinking, but innovations offer hope

A ribbon of water runs alongside Ho Van Hong's star-apple and durian trees, just wide enough for the farmer's blue canoe to glide by. He scoops from the channel to water his orchard in the heart of the Mekong Delta. The grove has been reincarnated from its past life as a rice paddy, one that his family began tilling before the Vietnam War ended in 1975.

The Mekong Delta is under threat. The land is sinking, eroding away and losing nutrients. So Hong's family diversified into fruit, ditching the rice monoculture to cope with depleted soil and other environmental incursions on Vietnam, a fertile country whose exports feed people in more than 100 nations.