Ngan lives in a village called Ri in the remote highlands of Vietnam's Thanh Hoa province. It's beautiful. Everywhere you look is green-green-green, from the forested limestone mountains that look like the humps of long dead dragons to the flat sheets of emerald rice fields that shimmer in the sun.
Well-fed women smile out from under their hats as they pull in their catch of fish, shrimp and crabs from the mangrove forest. The simple images are in an educational booklet on the benefits of mangroves, with tips on how to grow seedlings.
Everywhere in the world people care for and try to preserve the things they value.
What is considered valuable is relative to the socio-cultural context, and often things that are of great significance and deeply precious for some individuals and groups are not for others. There are things and places that are priceless because they refer to our identity and our sense of being and belonging.
