Farmers have managed to turn adversity into opportunity by adapting to salinity intrusion with a shrimp-rice farming model in the island district of Tan Phu Dong.
Amid the severe impacts of climate change and sea level rise, especially in the Mekong Delta region, there are three key pillars for Vietnam to base itself on in designing policies to tackle the problem, Dr. Tran Huu Hiep underlined in his recent article run on Saigon Giai phong newspaper.
The Mekong Delta is seeing increasing saltwater intrusion caused by high tides this week, with salinity boundary of 4 g/l likely to penetrate up to 65km upstream, according the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Directorate of Water Resources.
New initiatives, smart production concepts, new farming models, digitisation, more efficient logistics and a greater focus on circular agriculture and responsibility for the environment will be highlights for this year, said David Whitehead, head of the Vietnam Business Forum (VBF) Agri-Business Working Group at the annual VBF dialogue in Hanoi on February 18.
The Mekong Delta region is forecast to suffer more severe saltwater intrusion than the average in many years from the start of February, but not as hard as the 2019-2020 dry season, according to Phung Tien Dung, head of the Hydrological Forecasting Department for the Central, Central Highlands and Southern Regions under the National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting.
Nguyen Kim Anh, a young female Vietnamese PhD holder of the Institute of Geography under the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, has just won the “The most downloaded paper award 2021” award from The Progress in Earth and Planetary Science (PEPS), a journal of the Japan Geoscience Union.
To cope with drought and saltwater intrusion, the southern province of Ben Tre has come up with a range of different solutions. The province has also encouraged local people to store rain and tap water for production and daily needs.
Kien Giang, the country’s largest rice producer, has more than 7,140ha of ‘mua’ rice crop damaged by 30-70 percent because of salinity, according to the province’s Plant Cultivation and Protection Sub-department.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) has recently proposed an aid package worth 515.3 billion VND (22 million USD) to deal with drought and saltwater intrusion in 2020.
Many farmers raising giant river prawns in the Mekong Delta province of Ben Tre are facing losses due to saltwater intrusion, which is decimating the crustaceans.
With over 4 million ha of land, the Mekong Delta is home to nearly 20 million people and the largest rice production hub of Vietnam, but it is also facing historic water scarcity.
Saltwater intrusion on the Mekong River will abate gradually but still be at high levels. The phenomenon is forecast to remain strong on some distributaries until early May.
The central city has begun construction of a steel dam – the second of its kind – on the lower Cam Le River to reduce salinity and deal with serious water shortages in the dry season this year.
Though saltwater intrusion in the Mekong Delta was predicted to come earlier and with higher level of salinity than that recorded in the 2015-2016 dry season, the damages to farming areas are expected to be less serious as authorities and farmers have taken measures to cope with the situation in the 2019-2020 dry season.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) has forecast saltwater intrusion for 10 of the 13 provincial-level localities in the Mekong Delta this dry season, and the phenomenon has already appeared in eight so far.
Although locals in the central city of Da Nang are now having water supply in a rotary fashion, they still face the risk of a relapse of water shortage as the salinity in input water for Cau Do waterwork – one of the major water plants of the city – has increased sharply.
Salinity and droughts will come earlier and be more severe than in the 2018-2019 dry season in the Mekong Delta, according to the National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting.
Salinity and droughts will come earlier and be more severe than in the 2018-2019 dry season in the Mekong Delta, according to Hoang Phuc Lam, Vice Director of the National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting.
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