Mangrove loss in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta is closely associated with brackish-water aquaculture expansion and livelihood vulnerability. In Ca Mau Province, coastal mangrove degradation coincides with shoreline retreat, heightened storm exposure, and reduced nearshore ecosystem services. The central decision problem for provincial and district authorities, including DARD-level enforcement units and commune-level People’s Committees, is how to select and sequence a feasible policy package that reduces erosion risk while sustaining shrimp-based livelihoods and managing distributional impacts across resource-dependent groups. This practice and policy analysis synthesises secondary evidence through a targeted desk review and uses causal loop diagramming to make feedback mechanisms explicit and connect the evidence base to policy leverage points. The synthesis highlights a reinforcing pathway in which shrimp market incentives contribute to mangrove clearing, which increases erosion exposure and undermines fisheries-related income, thereby intensifying pressure for further conversion. Three instruments are appraised for feasibility and risk in relation to the decision trade-off between near-term livelihood viability and longer-term coastal protection, shoreline stabilisation with assisted natural regeneration in protective belts, zoning with adaptive compliance in integrated shrimp-mangrove systems, and community-based co-management with benefit sharing supported by performance-linked payments verified through remote monitoring. The study proposes an integrated package that treats co-management as the institutional core, supported by rights clarification, transparent financing, and a minimum monitoring dataset. The contribution is a systems-informed decision framework intended to support policy-design appraisal and plausibility assessment, rather than estimating intervention effect sizes.
Le et al. (Thu,) studied this question.