ZEF participates in research in the Vietnam Mekong Delta on water information management

The Center for Development Research (ZEF) of the University of Bonn will be a research partner in the recently set up project on “Water-related Information System for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam” (WISDOM). The project will be funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with an amount of 611,815 Euro for a period of three years until April 2010.

WISDOM is a German-Vietnamese initiative comprising eighteen institutions based in Germany and Vietnam. In Germany the project is being coordinated by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) and in Vietnam by the Southern Institute of Water Resources Research. The main objective of WISDOM is to improve the understanding of the complex ecologic, hydrologic, economic, and social relationships in the Delta as well as the optimisation of flood forecasting and warning systems. ZEF will do research on how to overcome gaps in the water-related information flow among research institutions of different disciplines and between these information generating agencies and decision making authorities.

Another priority of the research conducted by ZEF is the analysis of the socio-economic impact of water and resource management in the region. There is a need to understand the diversity of livelihoods and livelihood strategies in the region and how they are being shaped by both environmental and demographic changes as well as by the ongoing political and institutional transformation process.

ZEF’s project partners are the Southern Institute of Social Sciences (SISS) in Ho Chi Minh City, the Institute of Development Economics Research (IDR) at the University of Economics HCMC, and the Mekong Delta R&D Institute (MDI) at Can Tho University.

From ZEF side the project is led by Prof. Dr. Solvay Gerke, Director at ZEF. Project Coordinator is Dr. Gabi Waibel (e-mail: gwaibel@uni-bonn.de).