Dry season droughts have become increasingly severe in Vietnam in recent years. Freshwater may become especially scarce this year, as the annual monsoon is expected to be shorter than normal due to the influence of La Ni\u00f1a<\/a>. This adds to the pressures of climate change, decades of mainstream dam development on the Mekong from China to Cambodia, and bad agricultural practices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cClimate change is causing more frequent extreme events, such as the droughts of 2016 and 2020,\u201d says Nguyen Huu Thien, an independent expert on the Mekong Delta based in the city of Can Tho. \u201cOn top of that, you have upstream hydropower. Normally, this would not impact water quantity because dams do not consume water. However, when you have a drought year and very little water is flowing down, reservoirs on tributaries and the mainstream Mekong must fill in order to power dams.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While there are no mainstream Mekong dams in Vietnam, China has 11 operational dams on its section of the Mekong, known as the Lancang. A further 11 mainstream dams are in various stages of planning and completion through Laos and Cambodia, many of which involve Chinese investment and construction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 12 Vietnamese provinces that comprise the Mekong Delta are not uniform, Thien notes. Upstream provinces such as Dong Thap have more access to freshwater, while those closer to the East Sea \u2013 like Ben Tre \u2013 struggle to stop saltwater from flowing upstream. The Ca Mau peninsula, in southernmost Vietnam, is not connected to the Mekong\u2019s watershed, so is much more saline than the rest of the delta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn 2009, a strategic environment assessment that I worked on found that each dam on the mainstream has a retention time of about three days for the smallest, to 18 days for the biggest,\u201d Thien said. \u201cSo it takes a long time for water to pass through a series of dams, and there\u2019s nothing you can do about that in the Mekong Delta.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n As the damming and development of the Mekong has taken on international stakes, downstream countries have demanded more information from China. This led to an October 2020 agreement<\/a> in which China agreed to share year-round hydrological data with the Mekong River Commission<\/a> (MRC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n An entirely advisory body of transboundary governance for water resources. It was set up in 1995 between Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. It provides research, surveys and coordination of development on the management of water-related resources in the Lower Mekong Basin. China is an MRC Dialogue Partner, not a member of the body.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n However, the Mekong Dam Monitor, an initiative from the Stimson Center, Eyes on Earth and the Chino Cienega Foundation, has detected several recent hydropower releases with no prior warning<\/a> from the Chinese government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1989, Vietnam began exporting rice, a major development for a country that had been struggling to feed its population. In the decades since, government policy has driven farmers to pursue three annual rice crops, instead of two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This has turned the country into a global rice powerhouse, while also causing severe ecological damage. Dykes and other structures have been built to control the flow of water, while farmers have stripped their soil of nutrients in the pursuit of a third crop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe were driven by the rice-first policy for a long time, and we automatically took saline and brackish water as enemies to fight, so we built structures to try and maintain freshwater areas,\u201d Thien explains, placing substantial blame for the delta\u2019s dry season struggles on Vietnam\u2019s agricultural policies over the last 30 years. \u201cThis expanded the freshwater \u2018kingdom\u2019 into the territory of the saline water kingdom. But in the dry season, you don\u2019t have enough force to maintain your rule, so you make yourself vulnerable in the context of climate change.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\nChanging the delta<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Mekong](\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Mekong-dams-finalArtboard-2.svg\")
<\/div>Rice-first policy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n