Both maps simply show what everyone knows: people in the Mekong Delta literally live on the water. In South Vietnam’s An Giang province, almost all land that is not mountainous is protected by a dike. It is “underwater” in the same way that much of Holland is: large swathes of land including Schiphol, the world’s fourteenth-largest airport, are quite literally built under the high-tide mark. In London, almost a million people live below that level. But nobody in Holland, London, or the Mekong Delta needs scuba gear to get around, because humanity has adapted with dikes and flood protection.
