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Long-term vision and short-term planning should be the twin planks on which the
Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta should base its adaptation to climate change, Dutch
experts said at a workshop yesterday, March 31.
 | | Heavy rain
causes flooding in HCM City’s District 7. Rapid growth and uncontrolled urban
development has been blamed for the situation. (Photo: VNS) | It would be unwise to
make big investments in impact mitigating projects like dykes when the actual
phenomena could not be predicted with high accuracy, they said.
The two-day workshop,
titled “Towards a Mekong Delta Plan”, brought together policy-makers and
hundreds of experts from the two countries in the presence of Dutch Crown Prince
Williem-Alexander, who has been on an official visit to the country.
Workshop participants
discussed different options to optimise plans for the Delta relating to many
areas including the predicted rise in sea levels, salinity intrusion, drought,
insufficient supply of fresh water, agricultural and aquaculture production as
well as urban development.
Various scenarios and
solutions were discussed based on a “design table” application developed by the
Dutch. The design table presented three-dimensional images of the Delta that
changed in response to different input data.
The design table
session was an interactive spatial planning exercise that sought to help key
Vietnamese decision makers “map out scenarios for the future of the Mekong Delta
in relation to climate change adaptation,” organisers said.
The Dutch side gave a
design table to their Vietnamese counterparts at the workshop as a present.
“In the long term,
many things will remain unclear,” said Prof L. O. Fresco of the University of
Amsterdam.
“We do not know by
how much the sea levels will rise and water discharge will increase,” she said. | Is the
City sinking? The combination of increasing rains and higher
river and sea levels threatens to sink HCM City which needs more
international co-operation to cope with it, another workshop heard
yesterday, March 31. Speaking at the Water Management and
Socio-Economic Development Plan for HCM City Region seminar, Trinh Cong Van
of the Water Resources University said: “Very fast growth, uncontrolled
urban development, overloading of existing utility systems - drainage,
sewerage, roads, and garbage collection - are man-made causes for the
situation.” Following a study of the city’s drainage and
sewerage systems in 1999 – 2000, the Japan International Cooperation Agency
(JICA) made several recommendations to cope with climate change. They
included repairs to drainage pipes and laying of new ones, major canal
improvement, drainage improvement in low-lying areas by setting up pumping
stations and building ponds and dykes. JICA said the measures had to be implemented
immediately. “Unfortunately, every major project in the
downtown area has been delayed,” Van said. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural
Development wants to build a dyke system along the west bank of Sai Gon
River and connect it with Vam Co River dyke to cope with heavy rains, high
flood tides, and storms. Construction of barrages at the mouth of
channels and detention ponds in low-lying areas are suggested by the
Ministry’s experts along with improvements to the entire canal system.
| So planners for the Delta should take a
step-by-step approach, she recommended.
“It would be wasteful
to spend a lot of money to build expensive dykes if sea levels do not rise as
much as predicted,” she said.
“Sometimes we cannot
change things back,” she added.
Speaking to Viet Nam
News on the sidelines of the workshop, deputy minister of Agriculture and Rural
Development Dao Xuan Hoc said the step-by-step approach was a good idea.
It would allow
authorities to have updated statistics on hand to develop the most accurate and
appropriate plans, he added.
“We should have a
vision for the next 50 years, then we get back to where we are now to develop
strategies for every five years,” he said.
Hoc also remarked
that the Dutch approach to climate change was “strong” compared to the
Vietnamese, which he felt was “more moderate.”
He explained, “For
generations, people in the Delta have adapted to rather than avoided floods.”
Nguyen Ngoc Anh, dean
of the Southern Institute of Water Resources Planning, said that it was not a
sustainable option to drain all the floodwaters from the Delta’s rivers to
protect rice crops.
“Intensive farming
leads to high accumulation of fertilisers and pesticides that need to be flushed
out by the annual floods,” he explained.
On the other hand,
rice crops have now been shortened from 90 to just 70 days, allowing farmers
ample time to wash their fields with fresh water before sowing a new crop.
“Farmers should be
more flexible in timing their crops based on weather forecasts,” Anh said.
‘Living with the
floods’
According to the
institute’s flood-management plan, the delta is divided into zones of deep,
middle and shallow flooding that sustain one, two and three rice crops within a
year.
However, in order to
safeguard the delta’s big cities, “living with the floods” is not a good choice,
given that they can cause huge damage to industrial zones, Hoc said.
“So here, flood
control, not regulation, is preferable,” he added.
Anh of the Water
Resources Planning Institute noted that cooking security for both the country and
the world should be taken into account in formulating and implementing urban
development plans.
“The Government
requires around 1.8 million hectares for rice crops in the region,” he said.
Regarding sea-level
rise and salinity intrusion, he felt that sluices should be built at just three,
rather than all eight estuaries of Mekong River.
“The Ham Luong, Co
Chien and Cung Hau Estuaries together account for 38 per cent of water flow of
all Mekong tributaries,” he said, “Retention of fresh water in these tributaries
will be enough to irrigate a large part of the Delta.”
However, the biggest
difficulty in climate change planning for the Mekong Delta was to address
different, and sometimes conflicting priorities at the same time, said Dr
Fresco.
The different
functions of water needed to be taken into account, including agriculture,
fisheries and ecosystem, she said. “It’s also the same
in the Netherlands,” she added, noting that Viet Nam could learn from Dutch
experience in this regard. “Ministries have to
work together and cannot take one-dimensional solutions,” she said.
VietNamNet/Viet
Nam News | 
