Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam, is heavily endangered by the impacts of climate change. In recent policies the Vietnamese government mainly focuses on technical approaches to adapt to and to mitigate the risks of climate change. It can be foreseen that there will be impacts far beyond the solutions offered by technology. In this working paper, the author Steffen Rohkohl addresses the social impacts of climate change in the Mekong Delta region. His findings draw special attention to the risks for the poor population and show that the recent economic development in Vietnam, being caught in the neoliberal paradigm of growth and a financialisation of common goods, may lead to an intensification of the social impacts of climate change.