Extreme weather, human error and why the world floods

Since 2007, Gideon Mendel has photographed lives turned upside down by floods. What do his latest images reveal?

" See more images from Gideon Mendel's flood project

Hein Thi Tran's house in southern Vietnam floods several times a year. When she and her husband built it 15 years ago in Number 1 Village, Khanh Hoi, it was protected from the sea by a low dyke. But the land is slowly tilting, the storms in the gulf of Thailand seem to get stronger, and the village's concrete and rock barrier is now regularly topped by waves. She is helpless, she says.

Number 1 village is a slow-motion crash. The seawater that intrudes on the community's paddy fields from the tidal surges makes it impossible to grow rice, water supplies are becoming saltier and, little by little, the village is becoming uninhabitable. Hein Thi Tran can just about live with the waves and erosion now, but in a generation or two, scientists say, much of this part of the Mekong delta may have returned to the sea.