The average rate of
urban residents who have tap water is around 70 percent in Vietnam, according
to a workshop on March 21.

Tran Thi Hue city from
the Agency for Water Resources reported to the workshop entitled “Water for
Urban Development” in the central province
of Ninh Thuan that only several cities
in Vietnam
have 80 percent of the population with access to clean water.

According to Hue, Vietnam
has 755 cities, totaling nearly 26 million people, accounting for 30 percent of
the country’s population. With high population density, fast urbanization
speed, high economic growth and the improvement of living standards, the need
for water in cities is also on the rise.

On average,
Vietnamese cities consume around 8 million cubic meters a day, including water
for production. Around 70 percent of the urban population has tapped water.

Deputy Minister of
Natural Resources and Environment Nguyen Thai Lai said that the requirement for
clean water in cities has grown for 38 percent in recent years due to the
migration of rural people to cities, the growth of population is higher than
the development of infrastructure. Vietnam needs foreign assistance to
improve the life quality of urban people.

“The country
will become urbanized within a few decades. If we don’t have a proper plan to
manage, distribute and efficiently use water resources, it will cause major
environmental problems,” Lai said.

In the capital city
of Hanoi, the second biggest city in Vietnam,
with 6.5 million people, the city has four water works which provide nearly
700,000 cubic meters per day. The majority of the city’s water came from
underground reserves, and only a small percentage came from the surface.
Overexploitation of underground reserves would have a massive effect on the
city’s strata, and cause depressions on construction sites and in urban areas. Hanoi authorities have a
goal to minimize the exploitation of underground water by 2020 in areas where
water has high concentrations of ammonia and polluted organic substances.

In Vietnam’s biggest city, HCM City,
overexploitation of underground water is also an issue. According to the local
Natural Resources and Environment Department, more than 200,000 wells tapped
into the city’s underground water reserves, seven times more than in 2010.
Between them, those wells pumped 600,000 cubic meters per day, nearly double
the permitted amount. Many households and companies preferred to use well water
rather than tap water because it cost less. Out of 14 industrial zones in the
city, only three were reported to use tap water for manufacturing and seven
used a combination of both tap and well water.

The department also
reported on subterranean activity caused by the overexploitation of underground
water that had affected Tan Binh, Tan Tao and Vinh Loc industrial parks.

Meanwhile, the
water loss rate reached a record 40.32 percent in 2010. Out of 1.5 million
cubic meters of water produced everyday by the city’s water companies, about
600,000 cubic meters of water were lost. It blames high water pressure for the
increased number of leaks and broken pipes. There are hundreds of water pipes
in the city that were laid before 1975.

“It’s
time for Vietnam to evaluate the water footprint for each product and set an
environmental fee,” Dr Che Dinh Ly, deputy head of the HCM City – National
University’s Environment and Natural Resources Institute.

Water footprint or
“embodied water” is how much water is used to make a product or grow
a crop. Studies around the world show that surprising quantities of water are
used to make many products. For example Australia’s cotton-growing industry
has come under heavy criticism for how much water it uses.

Ly said to produce
one kilogramme of rice, farmers need 2,700-3,400 liters of water, 4,000 litres
for 1 kilo of sugar, 5,900 liters for 1 kilo of pork chops.

Ly suggested the
Government should consider a new master plan for coffee and pepper cultivation
in Central Highland provinces because of the massive amounts of water they
required.

“Water has
been overused for coffee and pepper for several decades. If this continues, a
drought could destroy the whole industry. Forests must be protected to maintain
water resources in dry season,” Ly said, adding that seacooking processing
was another area where water could be recycled.

Professor Nguyen
Viet Ky, head of the Geology Faculty at the HCM City University of Technology,
said rain water tanks should be built to make up for water shortages.

“HCM City
has a plain geography with a dense population of streams and small rivers so
rain water can be swept away quickly. This will make it easy to store rain
water,” he said.

This is the first
time experts from the Asia-Pacific region have gathered in Vietnam to discuss methods for
dealing with one of the most pressing global issues of the time - security of
water resources.

The discussion was
held as part of the first session of the Council for Security Co-operation in
the Asia-Pacific Study Group on Water Resources Security, which began in Hanoi on March 22.

Experts were set to
hold talks on the actual use and management of water resources in the region,
and examine related security impacts in multiple sectors in concerned
countries.

They are expected
to put forward concrete proposals to promote co-operation among countries in
the region to ensure water resources security, which requires joint, proactive
solutions from both developed and developing countries throughout the world.

In Southeast Asia, where the world’s largest rice granaries
are located, the majority of the population depends largely on water resources
taken from rivers and lakes, many of which have suffered serious damage by
nature as well as human activity.

The damage has not
only threatened water resources security but also created complex security
concerns for nations that are directly concerned and posed challenges to the
future of sustainable development in Southeast Asia.

At the meetings,
study groups will discuss concrete measures to promote regional co-operation
and compile the group’s Memorandum of Understanding for approval in official
diplomatic channels.

PV