Mekong Delta’s Soc Trang raises climate awareness

Soc Trang is now ready to join four other provinces in the Mekong Delta in a climate change adaptation programme.
Soc Trang is now ready to join four other provinces in the Mekong Delta in a climate change adaptation programme.

The programme, conducted by the Ministry of Agriculture and RuralDevelopment (MARD) with support from the Australian and Germangovernments, will be implemented from 2014 until 2017.

Local and foreign environmental experts who attended a conference onNovember 19 said their evaluation of pilot adaptation practices in SocTrang showed promising results that can be applied elsewhere in theregion.

The project, funded by the German FederalMinistry for Economic Development and Cooperation and implemented by theDeutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit, began in theprovince six years ago.

Klaus Schmitt, ChiefTechnical Advisor of GIZ Soc Trang, said: "The project will wrap up by2014. We can take those solutions that work and upscale them to all fiveprovinces in the Mekong Delta including An Giang, Kien Giang, Ca Mau,Bac Lieu, and Soc Trang."

It's reported that siltdeposition has begun at eroded areas and mangroves grown again afterseveral T-shaped bamboo break-water fences were installed near SocTrang's coastline.

Besides, activities were carriedout to enhance people's awareness of the need to adapt to climatechange as well as measures that could be taken.

"Weneed to raise awareness among people, telling them the benefits theyget from mangrove. We carried out roadshows to do this. We went fromvillage to village to inform people about mangroves and climate change,as held knowledge competitions about climate change among children whowould go back and tell their parents," he said.

It'shard to say what the result of these activities are, but people wholive near the coastline and depend on mangroves for their lives do nothave to go far from the resource, he said.

Le ThanhTri, deputy chairman of the Soc Trang People's Committee, noted thatVietnam is among five countries judged most vulnerable to climate changeand rising sea levels, and the Mekong Delta was among three deltas thatwould suffer the biggest climate change impacts.

Soc Trang and other coastal provinces in Vietnam have been facingdifficulties in applying their new knowledge and experience and lack thefunding to do so, Tri said, adding that the conference was a greatopportunity for the province to discuss issues with internationalorganisations and scientists.

As Vietnam's largestrice basket, the delta needs to have an effective strategy to adapt toclimate change and to ensure sustainable natural resource exploitation,Tri said, adding that there have been achievements in restoring mangroveforests.

The T-shaped fences have helped prevent erosion he added.

The conference, titled "Adaptation to Climate Change in the CoastalZone of Soc Trang Province", was attended by more 200 participants fromVietnamese ministries, government agencies, academics and national andinternational NGOs from Vietnam, Germany, the Philippines and Fiji.

They were keen on sharing experiences and lessons learnt from six years of project implementation in Soc Trang.

Deputy director of the MARD's Irrigation Department Nguyen Van Tinhsaid that he hoped the result of this pilot project would be multipliednationwide.

The two-day event focused on four keytopics of mangrove rehabilitation, mangrove management, IntegratedCoastal Management and erosion protection through bamboo wavebreakers.An extra session on environmental awareness was also held.

On November 18, a day prior to the conference, experts from theVietnamese-German technical cooperation project handed over a geospatialdatabase with historical information to the administration of Soc Trangprovince.

The geospatial database not onlycompiles data from different sources in Vietnam, but also contains mapswhich date back to 1904 and were only available in France.

As shoreline changes can only be understood over long periods of time,the availability of long-term information has special value.

The database now provides decision-makers with historical maps thathelp chart the historical development of the coastline and to identifysuitable and site-specific measures for coastal protection.-VNA

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