The purpose of this study is to conduct an economic valuation of creating a concrete sea dike system as an adaptation measure to counter the impacts of a rise in sea level using a risk cost-benefit analysis framework. It uses an ex-ante approach with risk considerations for storms, floods, and salinity by specifying probability distribution functions in a simulation process, in order to incorporate these risk factors into the analysis. The results showed that the benefits of storms and floods avoided dominated the dike options. The benefit of salinity avoided was also valuable, with annual rice and aquaculture productivity losses avoided of USD 331.25 per ha and USD 915 per ha, respectively. This study evaluated a range of dike options to adapt to climate change in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, showing high levels of benefits compared to costs. The larger in scale the dike system options were, the higher the expected net present values (ENPVs) were. Of the dike alternatives applicable to the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, considering the impacts of sea level rise of storms, floods and raised salinity in soil from flooding, small scale dikes that can subsequently be increased in height should be a priority choice. The sensitivity analyses showed that the ENPVs of dike options were very sensitive with changes in discount rate but were not sensitive with increases in salinized areas at all. The findings provide evidence to support the necessity of the construction of a concrete sea dike system in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, given the context of global climate change.

Groundwater in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta is facing the pollution and it needs to be protected. Searching literature reviews on economic valuation techniques, the contingent valuation method (CVM) has been popularly applied to estimate the economic value of water protection. This approach is based on a hypothetical scenario in which respondents are requested through questionnaires to reveal their maximum willingness to pay (WTP) for the water protection project. The study used the approach of CVM to analyze the households’ motivations and their WTP for the program of groundwater protection in the Mekong Delta. The study performed that the residents in the delta were willing to pay approximately 141,730 VND (US$6.74) per household a year. Groundwater could be an inferior good with the negative income effect found in the demanding for clean groundwater. Respondent’s gender and groundwater-related health risk consideration were factors sensitively affecting the probability of demanding for groundwater protection.

The study investigated the economic value of biodiversity attributes that could provide policy makers reliable information to estimate welfare losses due to biodiversity reductions and analyze the trade-off between biodiversity and economics. To obtain the non-market benefits of biodiversity conservation, an indirect utility function and willingness to pay for biodiversity attributes were applied using the approach of choice modeling with the analysis of multinomial logit model. The study found that Mekong Delta residents accepted their willingness to pay of VND 913 monthly for a 1 % increase in healthy vegetation, VND 360 for an additional mammal species and VND 2,440 to avoid the welfare losses of 100 local farmers.

The total economic value of biodiversity provides policy-makers reliable information to estimate welfare losses caused by biodiversity reductions and perform cost-benefit analysis of biodiversity conservation projects. Searching literature reviews on economic-valuation techniques, the contingent valuation (CV) method has been popularly applied to estimate the economic value of biodiversity. This approach is based on a hypothetical scenario in which respondents are requested through questionnaires to reveal their maximum willingness to pay (WTP) for biodiversity conservation. The article used CV to study the Mekong Delta urban households’ preferences and their willingness to pay for the program of biodiversity conservation in U Minh Thuong National Park, one of the largest peat swamp forests in Vietnam. Logistic regression was used to predict the probability of respondents willing to pay for the conservation program. The mean WTP was calculated approximately VND16,510 ($0.78) per household per month for all respondents and about VND31,520 ($1.49) after excluding the protest zero and scenario rejecting respondents. Aggregately, Mekong Delta urban residents agreed to contribute about $10.97 million annually for the project of biodiversity conservation.