The Deltas’ Dealings with Uncertainty (DoUbT) research project studies deltas in South and Southeast Asia. These deltas are dynamic and densely populated environments characterized by agricultural intensification, rapid urbanisation and vulnerability to the effects of climate change.This research project is funded by the Dutch, UK, French and Japanese national funding organizations for the period 2016-2019.

This project has 3 workpackages (see the project’s main website): 1) Situating global delta-knowledge networks in relation to other global knowledge network; 2) Historical perspectives on travels of Western delta technosciences; and 3) Understanding embedded present day delta knowledges and practices.

This website specifically focuses on the third workpackage, which aims to understand how delta’s rural environments are shaped through local level agricultural and water management knowledges and practices; development projects; national strategies, programs, and policies; and the complex ways these interplay.

We are conducting research in the Upper Mekong Delta in Cambodia, the Chao Phraya and Upper Bang Pakong deltas in Thailand and the Ayeyarwady delta in Myanmar. We  adopt an interdisciplinary approach that links agricultural economics, irrigation studies, physical and human geography, political ecology and anthropology of development. Research is co-designed implemented by researchers from CIRAD and IRD, higher education Institutes (e.g. the Royal University of Agriculture in Phnom Penh) and Non Governmental Organizations (e.g., Thailand Water Partnership in Thailand) in two of the case study countries.

The main contribution of WP3 to the overall project is “to ground” the research conducted in the other WPs, which largely deals with transversal issues and themes. It does so by providing insights on “what practically happens in the deltas”: WP3 unravels ‘delta management in practice’ and highlights points of confluence and divergence with the dynamics and contents of western knowledge generation and travels studied in WP1 and WP3.