Vietnamese scientists say\u00a0climate change will probably exacerbate existing ecological problems in the Mekong delta, such as water pollution,\u00a0salinity intrusion,\u00a0loss of aquatic biodiversity and rising susceptibility to flooding.<\/p>\n
Their concerns echo a 2006 warning<\/a> by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the Mekong River Delta and two others \u2014 the Ganga and the Nile \u2014 are particularly susceptible to rising sea levels.<\/p>\n The delta region<\/a> – a low-lying area in southern Vietnam dotted with paddy fields and shrimp farms – is home to an estimated 17 million Vietnamese, yielding not only rice but also a third of the country\u2019s GDP.<\/p>\n It is also among Vietnam’s poorest areas, and environmental restoration projects in the region are often a low priority for officials busy trying to kickstart a slumping economy.<\/p>\n “They’ve made some progress, but because of the economic crisis, investment capital is a serious problem,”\u00a0said Tran Minh Khoi, director of the\u00a0Center for Water Quality and Environment, a government institute in Ho Chi Minh City that\u00a0monitors water quality in the Mekong Delta.<\/p>\n The problems are rooted in the large-scale expansion of rice production in the Mekong Delta, which now produces roughly half of the country’s rice.<\/p>\n In the 1990s, the Vietnamese government began the widespread construction<\/a> of sluice gates,\u00a0high dikes\u00a0and other irrigation measures that were designed to control the Mekong River’s natural flood pulses for the sake of boosting rice cultivation.\u00a0While the measures have helped Vietnam become one of the world’s top three rice exporters,\u00a0they have also altered the Mekong’s alluvial flood pulse and changed its ecological balance.<\/p>\n For example, rice farming in the upstream regions of the delta discharges effluents that cause eutrophication of freshwater systems and damages fish populations, according to a recent study<\/a> by a team of scientists from Can Tho University. And because so many of the delta’s soils are naturally acidic, converting them to rice fields has increased the mobility of heavy metals like arsenic and cadmium.<\/p>\n Le Anh Tuan, a professor at the university’s college of environment and natural resources, said the overuse of fertilisers and pesticides by many Mekong Delta farmers only exacerbates those problems.<\/p>\n “Native fish species will be lost, and biodiversity will be degraded,” he said. “And the consequences may be worse with climate change.”<\/p>\n The construction of high dikes in the delta’s upper reaches has also correlated directly with an increased risk of flooding in Can Tho, one of the delta’s largest cities, according to research<\/a> by Hideto Fujii, a researcher at the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences.<\/p>\n According to Fujii,\u00a0upstream dikes store a large amount of water that can be dangerous when dikes break. That was evident in 2011 when heavy floods in the delta province of An Giang broke through dikes and caused damage in downstream areas, he said.<\/p>\n And when seasonal floods subside, fresh danger surfaces in the form of saline intrusion.<\/p>\n Because the Mekong is a tidal river, it has a flood pulse in which saline water from the South China Sea travels up its tributaries during the February-to-April dry season.\u00a0But the construction of so much irrigation infrastructure, coupled with heavy water use in upstream provinces, has in many cases reduced seaward flows of freshwater \u2014 and allowed more saline water to travel in the other direction.<\/p>\n A slew of\u00a0controversial hydropower dams proposed for stretches of the Mekong River in China, Laos and Cambodia would only heighten the risk of more saline intrusion in the delta, according to<\/a> Dao Trong Tu, senior advisor to the Vietnam Rivers Network<\/a>, a Vietnamese NGO.<\/p>\n “In the Mekong Delta we have very dense canal system, so if water intrudes it impacts agricultural production very much,” he said. “It’s a big impact.”<\/p>\n Several governments and international donors have recently identified climate change as a central priority in Vietnam, and there are several ongoing projects aimed at mapping the extent of the delta’s environmental problems and devise solutions.<\/p>\n The German and Australian governments, for instance, are promoting<\/a> climate-adaptation measures in the Mekong Delta, and the Dutch government has partnered with local researchers to develop a 100-year plan<\/a> for sustainable growth in the region.\u00a0The first version of the plan, released in 2012, suggests closing off branches of the Mekong River in the dry season to prevent further saline intrusion.<\/p>\n On a recent trip to the Mekong region<\/a> in December ,US Secretary of State John Kerry said<\/span>\u00a0that the US will give US$17 million for a new American-led project<\/a> to help Vietnamese communities\u00a0adapt to climate change and\u00a0“reverse” environmental problems. He said the project will be administered by the US Agency for International Development.<\/p>\n “Vietnam is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world when it comes to climate change,” Kerry said. “And we will see very serious impacts if we don\u2019t change course today.”<\/p>\n But there are considerable obstacles. Here\u2019s one challenge — though demand for freshwater is increasing across the Mekong Delta, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has largely resisted calls from Vietnamese scientists to alter its ambitious agricultural production targets<\/a>, which scientists say are ecologically unsustainable and sorely outdated.<\/p>\n According to Tung Phung Duc, director the Mekong Development Research Institute<\/a> in Hanoi, a central problem is that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) exert significant control over Vietnam’s nearly US$4 billion rice-export industry<\/a> and are resistant to reforms that would cut into their profits.<\/p>\n “We don’t have a problem with food security,” he said. “There are a lot of SOEs in the agriculture sector, and I think it’s better (for the government) to sell them.”<\/p>\n And in the southern reaches of the Mekong Delta, the creation in recent years of coastal shrimp farms has led to “severe losses” of mangrove forests, according to a January study<\/a> by a\u00a0team of German and Vietnamese scientists. Shrimp exports from Vietnam are now worth US$2.8 billion per year<\/a>, according to the state-controlled media, but scientists say the loss of mangroves is problematic because the trees have historically been a natural defense against storms along the delta’s 600 kilometre coastline<\/p>\n And as the shrimp industry grows, conflicts are deepening between shrimp and rice farmers, according to\u00a0Tran Minh Khoi. He said shrimp farming uses a mix of fresh and brackish water, and the conflicts typically arise when the practice prevents rice farmers from getting the freshwater they require.<\/p>\n The conflicts, Khoi added, are likely to worsen as sea levels rise and demand for freshwater increases.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Scientists say climate change will have grave impact on Vietnam\u2019s Mekong Delta, a region already battling pollution, salinity and flooding <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1719,"featured_media":20015730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[761],"tags":[519,50040317,20000155,50040707],"hashtags":[],"country":[20028207],"class_list":["post-20007391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate","tag-climate-impacts","tag-farming","tag-mekong","tag-the-third-pole","country-vietnam"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLarge-scale rice production causes soil pollution<\/b><\/h2>\n
International funds pour in to tackle climate change<\/b><\/h2>\n
Shrimp industry causes fresh conflict<\/b><\/h2>\n