BPP Partnership Impact Series: Creating sustainable livelihoods through climate-adaptive crops
Since its launch, the Business Partnerships Platform (BPP) has worked with ambitious partners to deliver meaningful, lasting change in communities across the world. The BPP Partnership Impact Series celebrates the outcomes and lessons from our partnerships, highlighting their contributions to inclusive economic growth, resilience and sustainable development.
Our Climate Adaptation partnerships in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta focused on practical, market-based approaches that help communities adapt to climate change while strengthening livelihoods and ecosystems. This partnership transformed climate-affected coastal farms in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta into a sustainable bulrush value chain that restores ecosystems and creates resilient livelihoods.
Climate-adaptive bulrush farming creating resilient livelihoods in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta
Vietnam’s Mekong Delta is the country’s most vital agricultural region, producing nearly half of its food and supporting millions of livelihoods. Coastal saline areas, however, are increasingly exposed to climate change. Rising sea levels, water management, and saline intrusion are making rice farming less viable, while intensive production practices have also degraded soils and water systems.
This partnership supported the scale-up of an integrated bulrush-shrimp model that transforms climate-affected and low-productivity rice and aquaculture landscapes into more resilient production systems. Bulrush (scirpus litoralis) is a native, salt-tolerant grass that grows well in shrimp ponds and saline soils. It helps improve water quality and stabilise soil. It also creates new economic value through a growing market for natural-material homewares made from bulrush fibre.
By linking climate-resilient and community-based production with skills training and market development, the partnership established a commercially viable bulrush value chain that strengthens ecosystems and expands inclusive livelihood opportunities. With a strong focus on training and employing women, older people, ethnic minority communities and people with disabilities, it shows how climate challenges can be turned into opportunities that generate jobs and income while restoring resilience in the Mekong Delta.
About the partnership
The partnership brought together the Mekong Conservancy Foundation, Vietnam Homewares Corporation and the Australian Government to build and scale an inclusive bulrush value chain across Vietnam’s coastal Mekong Delta.
Implemented in Cần Thơ City, An Giang and Cà Mau, the project combined integrated bulrush-shrimp farming with community-based training, processing and storage infrastructure, product development, and market engagement. The partnership supported decentralised producer networks, including community cooperatives and producer groups, to strengthen supply chain coordination, quality assurance and equitable participation.
Through an integrated bulrush-shrimp model, the partnership rehabilitated saline‑intruded landscapes into cultivable systems and connected them to market demand, enabling households to earn steady, home‑based incomes.
Highlights
Highlights from the BPP partnership included:
- Scaling climate resilient bulrush cultivation: Expanded bulrush cultivation to 7,298 hectares in Cần Thơ City, An Giang and Cà Mau, exceeding the 2,500-hectare target for scale-up.
- Demonstrating bulrush-shrimp integration: Established 60 hectares of integrated bulrush–shrimp demonstration farms, supporting learning and adoption across the region.
- Strengthening inclusive skills and jobs: Over 9,400 participants were trained in weaving via decentralised micro-classes and a train-the-trainer model, with women making up 91 percent of trainees. At project completion, 3,500 participants remained actively engaged in weaving.
- Delivering commercial output: Manufactured over 810,000 export-quality bulrush homeware products, surpassing its original goal of 700,000.
- Boosting household incomes: Supported 3,585 households to secure improved income streams, with reported earnings of around AUD150-300 per month.
- Building enabling infrastructure: Delivered around 12,000 m² of greenhouse drying and storage capacity to stabilise supply, protect quality during rainy seasons and reduce climate risk.
- Linking community production to international markets: Connected four community-based cooperatives and 150+ producer groups with 9 international markets including United States, United Kingdom, Australia, France, Canada, Mexico, South Africa and many others.
With the foundations now in place, cooperatives and producer groups will drive the next phase, expanding bulrush livelihoods and market reach across saline-affected areas.
View the full partnership impact story below or download here.
