The Mekong delta in Vietnam is a world in itself, the place water and earth intertwine in a primeval dance, making a area of unimaginable fecundity and profound magnificence, a testomony not solely to nature’s bounty but in addition its relentlessness. But, beneath this floor of life and abundance, the Mekong delta is on the entrance strains of a lethal battle in opposition to local weather change and environmental degradation.
A paper revealed in Sustainability 1 in 2020 identified that rising sea ranges and erratic rainfall are inflicting extra frequent and intense floods, even in city areas. And a research in Agricultural Water Administration2 in 2020 confirmed that salt-water intrusion had gone deep into the inland paddy fields as a consequence of rising sea ranges, whereas extended droughts had been turning fertile fields into barren wastelands.
Synthetic canals have modified the face of the Mekong delta. Photograph taken on February 15, 2022, in U Minh Thuong district, Kien Giang province.
| Photograph Credit score:
Chung Le
Salinisation, actually, threatens the very basis of rice cultivation within the delta, thus jeopardising the livelihoods of thousands and thousands. Trendy trade, in the meantime, intrudes with equipment and concrete, money crops and pesticides, factories and large dams, which additional disrupts the delta’s delicate ecological stability.
The delta’s future is additional sophisticated by socio-economic modifications. Urbanisation and industrialisation have elevated the encroachments on agricultural land. Youthful persons are more and more leaving rice cultivation and the delta for alternatives within the cities. The demographic shift is lowering the labour power obtainable for rice farming, which is difficult the sustainability of conventional agricultural practices.
The spine of Vietnam’s meals manufacturing
The beating coronary heart of the delta is the Mekong river, which stretches from the Plateau of Tibet to the South China Sea. The river carves its method from the frozen heights of Tibet, raging and foaming within the upstream gorges, till it reaches the lowlands, the place it slows down, thick and silent, and transforms right into a muddy and implacable maze. The river cradles the delta of Vietnam, transferring like time itself, dragging with it the bones of rulers and forgotten kingdoms, weaving by the land like a lazy serpent, whispering tales of peoples and ancestors lengthy buried below its silt.
An agricultural panorama backdropped by markers of industrialisation within the Mekong delta.
| Photograph Credit score:
Rajesh Daniel
Generations of individuals have reshaped the delta, moulding it to their wants. The coastal mangrove forests are house to shrimp ponds, whereas additional inland, the land is roofed by an countless expanse of rice fields, a shimmering inexperienced and gold mosaic that stretches to the horizon. Dotted throughout this fertile panorama are fruit orchards: durian, pomelo, dragon fruit, jackfruit, rambutan, and mango. In the meantime, canals and rivers criss-cross the delta like lifeblood, sustaining the livelihoods of those that depend upon its water and wetlands.
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Agriculture gives yields in abundance all year long, constituting the spine of Vietnam’s meals manufacturing and contributing considerably to the nation’s standing as one of many world’s main rice, shrimp, fish, and fruit exporters.
The delta’s richness and its folks’s generosity have been captured in many people songs resembling this one:
The wind blows west, the wind
blows east;
Fiddler crabs from the coastal fields
we eat;
Within the river on fish we dine;
To the rice paddies on crabs we feast.
(Translated by My Lê)
Land of abundance
For hundreds of years, the Mekong delta has been a land of abundance, with the wealthy alluvial soils deposited by the river making it a centre of rice cultivation. Also known as Vietnam’s “rice bowl”, its huge and complex community of rivers, canals, and rice fields has not solely sustained the livelihoods of thousands and thousands but in addition performed a pivotal position within the nation’s socio-economic improvement. It is likely one of the most fertile areas on the planet and produces half of Vietnam’s rice, 70 per cent of its aquaculture, and one-third of its gross home product. In 2022-23, the estimated manufacturing of rice within the Mekong delta amounted to round 23.75 million metric tons.3
A shrimp pond is left empty in Ben Tre on the onset of the wet season.
| Photograph Credit score:
Variya Plungwatana
The French colonial interval noticed in depth agricultural improvement within the area, with the development of canals and dikes to manage the water movement and enhance the realm obtainable for rice cultivation. These early tasks laid the groundwork for the delta’s transformation into certainly one of South-East Asia’s best agricultural areas.
The delta’s significance grew additional within the twentieth century. Throughout the Vietnam Struggle (1954-75), it was each a strategic battleground and a key rice provider to the nation. Nevertheless, the struggle’s influence on the area was profound, with widespread destruction of infrastructure and disruption of agricultural practices.
After 1975, the delta underwent a outstanding restoration, aided by authorities insurance policies that promoted agricultural intensification and modernisation. New farming programs had been developed, together with intensive water administration programs consisting of canals, dikes, and sluices. A 2009 paper within the journal Water Alternate options described the delta as a “hydraulic society”.4
Value of success
Earlier than 1975, the irrigation system within the space was underdeveloped, and rice cultivation was severely affected by salt-water intrusion. Farmers planted just one rice crop a 12 months through the wet season. However from 1975 to 1980, the federal government constructed canals and small dams, thus lowering the realm affected by salt-water intrusion and permitting farmers to domesticate a second crop. Below stress to extend rice manufacturing, many farmers even started planting a 3rd crop. With the adoption of high-yielding rice varieties and the growth of hydraulic irrigation programs, Vietnam, as soon as a web rice importer, turned one of many world’s largest exporters, with the delta area producing over half the nation’s complete rice output.
Le Thi Trinh, who lives in a coastal village in Soc Trang province, broke her leg whereas fetching freshwater for her household through the 2024 drought.
| Photograph Credit score:
Variya Plungwatana
But, this success has come at a price. The intensification of agriculture has put immense stress on the delta’s pure programs. The growth of rice monoculture and the large-scale irrigation tasks have disrupted the pure movement of water and sediment throughout the delta. Wetlands and mangroves, which as soon as supplied essential ecosystem providers resembling flood management and water purification, had been transformed into aquaculture land. The lack of pure buffers has slowly made the delta extra weak to environmental shocks, setting the stage for as we speak’s challenges.
Various current research, resembling one in Climate and Local weather Extremes in 20175, have described the rising severity and frequency of droughts as one of the vital seen impacts of local weather change within the Mekong delta. In 2024, The Diplomat information outlet reported that, as international temperatures rise, the area has been experiencing longer and extra intense dry seasons, with 2024 being one other record-setting dry season.
Lives affected
In Soc Trang province, Le Thi Trinh, a 59-year-old resident of Huynh Ky coastal village, described the cruel actuality of life in a area the place water shortage is turning into the norm: “This 12 months, the water has been salty for a very long time and tastes very dangerous.” The household has acquired a faucet and pipes from a charity, nevertheless it can’t afford the motor pump wanted to make use of groundwater.
Nguyen Ngoc Sen voices the pervasive worry of the folks of Mekong delta. “It’s okay to be hungry however not thirsty, not parched.” she says.
| Photograph Credit score:
Mona Jamriangrada
Trinh lives in a family of seven, which includes her aged husband, their son, his spouse, and three grandchildren. They work as employed labourers and rely partly on fishing. However dangerous climate and low tides restrict their fishing exercise, affecting their revenue. Trinh makes use of the faucet water supplied by the federal government but in addition collects rainwater every time doable. Throughout a earlier water scarcity, she injured her knee whereas fetching water. Her harm required the implantation of metallic plates and has worsened due to the calls for of her day by day life, and she or he dreads the wet season ending in December. “I’m afraid of operating out of water once more as a result of this 12 months there may be such a shortage.”
Whereas the magnitude of the drought varies yearly, it’s exacerbated by the decreased movement within the Mekong because of the dams constructed upstream in China and Laos. The dams entice sediment and cut back the amount of freshwater that reaches the delta, deepening water shortages and rising soil salinity.
Rising salinity
The 2024 dry season recorded the bottom hydropower releases in three years, as reported by the Stimson Heart’s Mekong Dam Monitor. This was largely attributed to the drought in China within the 2023 moist season. With a lot of the decrease basin experiencing drought within the first three weeks of June, China’s water restrictions worsened the already essential scenario within the decrease Mekong.
Rising sea ranges are maybe probably the most ominous menace posed by international warming, and the low-lying Mekong delta is especially weak, as a 2015 research in Nature Local weather Change exhibits.6
Even a modest rise in sea ranges can result in widespread flooding, lack of agricultural land, and displacement of communities. The mixture of sea stage rise and subsidence—the place the land subsides as a consequence of groundwater depletion and sediment compaction—implies that the delta is successfully sinking at an alarming fee.
Le Thi Kim Chi and her household have been utilizing salt water within the six months of drought yearly.
| Photograph Credit score:
Variya Plungwatana
This isn’t only a menace to agriculture but in addition poses important dangers to infrastructure and settlements. The Mekong delta loses 300–500 hectares of land every year to landslides. Lots of the delta’s roads, bridges, and houses are constructed on land that’s now liable to flooding. As the ocean enters additional inland, these constructions have turn into more and more weak to storm surges and coastal erosion. The price of defending or relocating this infrastructure can be monumental.
Then there may be the difficulty of aquifer depletion, which has contributed to land subsidence throughout the Mekong delta for many years, accelerating the sinking of the delta to an unprecedented fee of 18 centimetres over the past 25 years. And, as a 2017 paper in Environmental Analysis Letters confirmed, the sinking is linked to groundwater extraction.7
Highlights
- The fertile Mekong delta area of Vietnam is adversely affected by local weather
- Salt-water intrusion has gone deep into the inland paddy fields as a consequence of rising sea ranges
- Extended droughts are turning fertile fields into barren wastelands and threatening agricultural yield and the lives of the individuals who depend upon the delta for his or her livelihood.
The sinking accelerates seawater intrusion into the delta’s freshwater programs, which worsens the issue of salinisation and results in lack of arable land. In some areas, the ocean advances by a number of metres every year, swallowing up rice fields and forcing communities to relocate.
Since transferring in along with her husband in An Dien Commune, Ben Tre province, Le Thi Kim Chi, 33, has needed to depend on salty water for all her day by day wants, together with ingesting and cooking. For 13 years, Chi has put up with itchy and sticky pores and skin after bathing. It impacts the style of meals, making even freshly cooked rice style salty. Their scenario will in all probability worsen if sea ranges proceed to rise.
Le Van Tai, Deputy Head of Agriculture and Rural Growth, Thanh Phu District, Ben Tre Province.
| Photograph Credit score:
Mona Jamriangrada
Salinisation can also be attributable to intense drought, which results in better focus of salt within the soil. This is likely one of the most urgent challenges within the Mekong delta, and it makes rising rice tough and generally even inconceivable in lots of areas. As soon as-productive rice fields are more and more being deserted.8
Furthermore, in keeping with a 2021 research in Science of The Whole Atmosphere, 45 per cent of the agricultural land within the Mekong delta now experiences salinity ranges effectively above 4 g/l, the typical higher tolerance for rice crops.9
Some farmers we met throughout our go to talked about the droughts of 2002 and 2010, and a “historic drought” in 2016, when salinity intrusion was as much as 70 km inland from the coast (in contrast with non-drought years, when the intrusion is simply as much as 10 km from the coast). In 2020, it reached 40 km inland and lingered longer than anticipated; 2,40,000 hectares of rice crop was destroyed. Vietnamese farmers at the moment are practising an intercropping, rotational mannequin known as “shrimp-on-rice” (con tôm ôm cây lúa in Vietnamese)—a brand new variation of the shrimp-rice rotational mannequin hailed as a local weather adaptation answer to saltwater intrusion within the delta.10
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Many farmers have moved from rice to solely farming shrimp because it fetches increased income. Le Van Chon, Chi’s husband, stated that even shrimp farming was more and more tough due to illness and environmental elements. “Right here, if we develop rice, we now have sufficient to eat. Shrimp farming is successful or a miss; some years are profitable, others are usually not.”
The Vietnam authorities has launched many initiatives to mitigate the influence of local weather change within the Mekong delta, together with new irrigation programs like Alternate Wetting and Drying Irrigation in rice fields, drip irrigation for fruit orchards, and distributed water storage options utilizing small ponds, dead-end canals, and residential gardens, together with drought-resistant rice varieties, and the restoration of mangroves and wetlands. Nevertheless, the dimensions of the problem is huge, and these measures alone is probably not sufficient to reverse the injury. In November 2017, the federal government launched Decision 120, dubbed the “Thuan Thien” Decision, that means “nature-based” decision. A key technique is the event of climate-resilient agriculture, which incorporates salt-tolerant rice varieties and crop diversification to scale back rice monoculture.11
Even for this, water administration is essential. Ung Van Dang, who heads the Water Assets-Minerals Division at Soc Trang Division of Pure Assets and Atmosphere, stated: “It’s important to have a particular analysis of water assets within the area and develop long-term, sustainable options for its use.”
Le Van Tai, Deputy Head of Agriculture and Rural Growth, Thanh Phu District, Ben Tre Province, Vietnam, stated: “The district has 5 water crops with a mixed capability of 740 cubic metres per hour, serving round 18,000 households. Pipeline programs are put in throughout communes. Investments have helped deal with some native points.” He stated analysis into salt-water intrusion was below method and hoped for extra help to boost public consciousness and safeguard water assets.
Existential menace
In Ben Tre Province, Nguyen Ngoc Sen expressed the worry that haunts the delta’s communities: “Now it’s the wet season so we will use water freely. When the dry season returns, when the water is salty, we save water and don’t dare to waste it. The whole lot that lives should depend on water. It’s okay to be hungry however not thirsty, not parched.”
Vietnam’s Mekong delta faces an existential menace, with local weather change threatening to disrupt the lives of thousands and thousands and alter the panorama irreversibly. A storied previous is intersecting with a quickly altering current to redefine the way forward for the area.
The challenges could also be Vietnam’s to beat, however the outcomes could have far-reaching implications for all of us.
Rajesh Daniel and My Lê are with the Stockholm Atmosphere Institute (SEI) Asia Centre, Thailand.
Notes and references
1 Hanh, P.T.T., & Furukawa, T. (2020). “Influence of local weather change on flooding in Mekong delta: Case research of city Can Tho.” Sustainability, 12(1), 1-17
2 Eslami, H., Hoang, L. P., Bregt, A. Ok., Hoekstra, A. Y., & van Vliet, M. T. (2020). “Local weather change impacts on water availability and salinity intrusion within the Mekong delta: Implications for rice manufacturing.” Agricultural Water Administration, 241, 1063363 [Nguyen, H. N., Le, T. V. H., & Vu, L. H. (2019). “Sustainable agricultural development in the Mekong delta: Challenges and solutions.” Sustainable Development and Agriculture, 3(2), 45-58; Also: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1196121/vietnam-mekong-delta-rice-production/
3 Nguyen, H. N., Le, T. V. H., & Vu, L. H. (2019). “Sustainable agricultural development in the Mekong delta: Challenges and solutions.” Sustainable Development and Agriculture, 3(2), 45-58; Also: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1196121/vietnam-mekong-delta-rice-production/
4 Evers, H.‐D. and Benedikter, S. (2009). Hydraulic bureaucracy in a modern hydraulic society–Strategic group formation in the Mekong delta, Vietnam, p. 426. Water Alternatives 2(3): 416‐439
5 Madusanka T., Sridhar, V. (2017). “Characterization of future drought conditions in the Lower Mekong River Basin.” Weather and Climate Extremes, Volume 17, 2017, Pp. 47-58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2017.07.004. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212094717300518. p. 55 In Vietnam, the Mekong delta region experienced drought conditions during the majority of 1992 (Shaw and Nguyen, 2011a). p. 56 The spatial maps of relative differences (%) show an increase of 20-year and 50-year return period drought severity in the Mekong delta. Also: Mekong delta faces severe drought, salinity concerns. June 01, 2024
6 Smajgl, A., Toan, T. Q., Nhan, D. K., Ward, J., Trung, N. H., Tri, L. Q., Tri, V. P. D., & Vu, P. T. (2015).“Responding to rising sea levels in the Mekong delta.” Nature Climate Change, 5(2), 167-174
7 Minderhoud, P. S. J., Erkens, G., Pham, V. H., Bui, V. T., Erban, L. E., & Stouthamer, E. (2017). “Impacts of 25 years of groundwater extraction on subsidence in the Mekong delta, Vietnam”. Environmental Research Letters. This paper analyses the rapid subsidence in the Mekong delta due to groundwater extraction, using satellite data and groundwater modeling. The study found subsidence rates of 1-3 cm per year. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aa7146.
8 Renaud, F.G., Le, T.T.H., Lindener, C. et al (2015). Resilience and shifts in agro-ecosystems facing increasing sea-level rise and salinity intrusion in Ben Tre Province, Mekong delta. Climatic Change 133, 69–84 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1113-4
9 Ho Huu Loc, Mindy Low Lixian, Edward Park, Tran Duc Dung, Sangam Shrestha, Yong-Jin Yoon (2021). How the saline water intrusion has reshaped the agricultural landscape of the Vietnamese Mekong delta, a review. Science of The Total Environment, Volume 794, 2021, 148651. ISSN 0048-9697. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148651. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969721037232]
10 Kruse, J. et al. (2020). Land use change from everlasting rice to alternating rice-shrimp or everlasting shrimp within the coastal Mekong delta, Vietnam: Adjustments within the nutrient standing and binding types. Science of The Whole Atmosphere, Quantity 703, 2020, 134758. ISSN 0048-9697. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134758. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969719347497
11 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7075592/
