Climate change and a changing flood pattern create urgent issues for low - lying land such as the Vietnamese Mekong delta. Harmful levels of flooding, drought and extreme weather conditions are increasingly striking rural communities in the delt a. Millions of people living in the area are very poor and the vulnerability is high to a change in the flooding pattern. Political incentives, programs and policies have been introduced in order to adapt to the changes but the complex issues are hard to t ackle. This study tries to understand the impact that flooding pattern has in the Mekong delta area and what the communities do to adopt do their new situation, both on a top down perspective and local coping strategies within the communities. The SRL (S ustainable Rural Livelihood) approach has been used to analyze the conditions. It gives a holistic perspective on societies and highlights that there are several dimensions to a problem. A number of interviews with women and men working on different levels within the field of climate adaption, climate change, rural development, environment and migration were completed.The findings show that the Vietnamese Government has tried to solve the situation through laws and policies but this method has shown not t o be enough. The communities have organized ways of dealing with their own problems but issues are severe and the regional co - operations need to be dealt with seriously. When conditions worsen, what is being done today is not enough to save The Mekong delt a or its people