Duong Van Ni has developed a warning system for farmers to flag encroaching salinity in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. As American bombs rained down on the flooded rice fields of the Mekong River Delta, an adolescent Duong Van Ni would submerge himself in the water to avoid detection, breathing through a lotus stem. “That’s how I survived,” Ni says. “I want to teach people that the environment is our friend and will always help us if we protect it.” Now, far removed from surviving on a bowl of rice a day during the American war in Vietnam, Ni is a respected professor of ecological and environmental studies at Can Tho University. Every month, Ni, 63, teaches 10 days and spends the rest of the time on field trips across the Mekong Delta. He visits three to four families a day to discuss solutions tailored to specific environmental challenges. | 