Floodplain agro-ecosystem restoration · Closed-loop farming · Agroecology · Learning hub · Village-based hospitality
Where restoration becomes a way of life. Location: Cam Phu village, Go Noi, a neighbouring connected floodplain landscape and culture with Hoi An heritage town.
Tree planting is only one part of restoration. Restoration is the more systemic work of rebuilding the conditions that allow land—and the people caring for it—to continue.
REwild brings this work together across two nearby areas of land within Cẩm Phú village.
On the river-facing community land, the focus is ecological recovery: rebuilding soil cover, retaining water, establishing diverse vegetation, developing a river-edge buffer and learning which plants and methods can withstand Gò Nổi’s dry heat, heavy rain, seasonal inundation and soil erosion.
At the nearby REwild working farm, restoration enters the productive life of the village. Closed-loop farming and agroecology connect compost, biomass, seeds, plants, animals, food and soil. Learning programmes use the farm as a living classroom. Around this work, village-based hospitality is gradually taking shape through farm-to-table meals, guided sustainability experiences, village stays and longer forms of participation such as co-living and co-working as of an intentional community living.
The two areas are not separate. Ecological restoration and productive farming take place alongside each other. Nursery plants, biomass, practical knowledge and observations move between them. Together, they explore a larger question: can restoring land become part of how a village grows food, builds capability, hosts visitors and sustains local livelihoods?
A farming village shaped by water
Cẩm Phú lies within Gò Nổi, a floodplain landscape formed by the Thu Bồn River.
Water has always shaped life here. Seasonal floods can bring sediment and renewed fertility, but they can also inundate fields, erode riverbanks and disrupt young, vulnerable tree seedlings. The dry season brings the opposite pressure: intense heat, rapid moisture loss and stress for pioneering vegetation.
Farmers have long worked within this changing cycle. Climate change, shifting flood patterns, land-use pressure and changing livelihood expectations are making that work more difficult and less predictable.
Cẩm Phú is also entering a tourism transition. In 2022, the village was officially recognised as a tourism destination. Its agricultural landscape, river, bamboo groves, food and village culture create opportunities for community-based tourism—but recognition alone does not determine who initiates the real work that the land and the culture need, who continues the work when funding and government attention fade, who benefits or what tourism leaves behind.
Tourism can support food producers, hosts, guides, growers and other local services. It can also turn a working landscape into scenery while contributing little to the people and ecological processes that maintain it.
The relevant question is therefore not simply how to bring more visitors to Cẩm Phú. It is whether tourism can strengthen the work already needed to keep the land productive, ecologically functional and locally cared for.
Rewilding as ongoing stewardship
In an inhabited floodplain, rewilding does not mean withdrawing people from the land and waiting for an untouched forest to return. Nor does it mean replacing productive farming with trees.
Here, it means helping ecological functions return within a landscape where people continue to farm and live: better soil cover, greater moisture retention, more diverse vegetation, stronger habitat connections and a river edge that is less exposed.
On the community restoration land, this requires deliberate and repeated work.
Before planting, the team observes slope, flood routes, existing vegetation, sun exposure and dry-season stress. Small water-harvesting pits and biomass basins are tested to slow runoff and retain moisture. Mulch and locally available organic matter protect exposed soil. Nursery work helps the team propagate useful and locally suitable species while observing what survives heat, intense rainfall and temporary inundation.
Along the river edge, the aim is to establish a more diverse vegetated buffer using trees, shrubs, grasses, bamboo and other useful plants with different functions. Some help cover and hold soil; others provide shade, biomass, habitat or better conditions for slower-growing vegetation.
This is not presented as an engineered flood-protection system, nor can a farm-scale intervention prevent flooding across Gò Nổi. Its role is more specific: to improve ecological function and resilience within land that local people can directly manage.
At REwild Farm, the same principles are applied through cultivation.
Compost and plant residues return to the soil. Soil microbes, plants, animals and farmers are designed in a closed loop that is interconnected and supportive to one another. Crops are diversified for food, shade, biomass, habitat and resilience—not yield alone. Seed saving and propagation help retain locally usable planting material and reduce dependence on external inputs. Methods are adjusted as soil, water, weather and available resources change.
This is where the relationship between restoration and livelihood becomes practical. Land care produces food, planting material, knowledge and meaningful work. Farming provides the daily presence required to observe and maintain ecological recovery. Learning builds community stewardship overtime and hospitality may, in turn, create additional income through which that work can continue.
The two areas therefore perform different but complementary roles. One concentrates on rebuilding ecological capacity. The other connects that capacity with productive farming, learning and an emerging hospitality economy.
Together, they form one working landscape—managed through seasons of observation, failure, adjustment and renewed care.
A learning hub for floodplain villages
A floodplain agro-ecosystem is more than farmland beside a river. It is a connected system of seasonal water, soil, riverbank vegetation, crops, biodiversity, organic resources, local knowledge, livelihoods and village institutions. A change in one part affects the others.
Restoring such a system therefore requires more than planting trees or introducing a better farming technique. Communities need the capacity to understand how their own landscape works, test possible responses and keep adjusting as environmental and social conditions change.
Cẩm Phú reflects pressures faced by many river and coastal villages across Central Vietnam. The World Bank identifies the Central Coast as highly exposed to storms, flooding, coastal surges and drought in some areas, while many rural livelihoods remain dependent on rain-fed agriculture. Its more recent climate assessment warns that increasing extreme heat and river-flood risk will place further pressure on livelihoods and ecosystems.
These environmental pressures interact with changing land use, declining farm viability, migration away from land-based work and new forms of tourism and urban development. Knowledge of local seeds, plants, water, soils and seasonal practices may be lost when fewer people have practical reasons to use and pass it on.
The people holding different parts of the solution are also often disconnected. Farmers understand particular fields and seasons. Researchers and technical organisations bring scientific methods. Authorities manage land, water, infrastructure and development vision. Tourism businesses influence how landscapes are valued and financed. Young people may bring new skills and energy but have few practical places to enter the work. Short projects and isolated training sessions rarely enable these groups to observe the same land, learn through several seasons or build a response together.
This is why REwild is being developed as a Floodplain Agro-ecosystem Restoration Learning Hub, rather than simply a demonstration farm or training venue.
The land itself becomes a shared field laboratory. Local practitioners, farmers, young people, students, researchers, authorities and visiting communities can examine real conditions, exchange knowledge and follow what happens after an intervention. They can observe which plants survive dry heat or inundation, how different ground treatments affect moisture and soil cover, what labour and aftercare a method requires, and why an approach that succeeds in one location may fail in another.
The Global Landscapes Forum argues that restoration education must move beyond individual disciplines and tree planting to address ecological, social, cultural and economic functions—and provide opportunities to practise restoration under field conditions.
Sustaining this landscape through restoration, agroecology, learning and a stewardship-based local economy also contributes to Hội An’s wider living heritage. It helps sustain the relationships between river, floodplain, farming villages, local food, knowledge and livelihoods that have long formed the town’s broader cultural setting. This reflects UNESCO’s Historic Urban Landscape approach, which understands heritage as extending beyond historic buildings to include hydrology, land-use patterns, social practices, cultural values and economic processes. REwild is a practical attempt to keep these relationships alive while helping them adapt to changing conditions.