“…In line with the greater Mekong Basin, the VMD sustainable development is being challenged by many natural disasters, especially the recent intensification of sea-level rise and salinity intrusion [2-5, 10, Since the 1980s, the VMD rice-focused agriculture has been substantially supported by the government by investing in irrigation infrastructures. Moreover, socio-economic development plans that place rice production in a pivotal position have also been institutionalized consistently at local, provincial and national levels [1,4,7]. Nevertheless, Tran et al 2018 [17], amongst others, have started to notify multiple pitfalls of the rice-focused monoculture model under the increasingly uncertain environmental conditions due to climate change, especially against the intrusion of saline water [1-5, 10,11,16].…”