Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Le Cong Thanh and Finnish Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Antti Kurvinen co-chaired a seminar in Hanoi on October 11 discussing solutions to respond to climate change.
The excessive exploitation of groundwater in many areas has led to serious deterioration, land subsidence, and the risk of depletion of water resources, according to experts.
Vietnam has set a goal of building and maintaining a national water resource monitoring system and another system to forecast flooding, drought, saltwater intrusion and rising sea water level by 2030.
Land subsidence in Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta has ranged from 0.1 to 81 centimetres in the last 10 years, according to the Water Resources Management Department at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has approved a programme on searching for underground water resources to supply mountainous areas and areas facing shortages of water.
A shortage of fresh water and severe saline intrusion have seriously affected the lives of tens of thousands of people in the Mekong Delta province of Tra Vinh.
The Mekong Delta region is sinking between 2 and 5cm per year, Lao Dong newspaper reported, citing source from the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ).
The Prime Minister has agreed an investment plan for a project to intensify the protection of underground water in Vietnam, phase II, using non-refundable official development assistance (ODA) of the German government.
Ho Chi Minh City’s authorities plan to reduce the exploitation of groundwater from now to 2025 to prevent land subsidence and protect residents’ health.
Hanoi has paid more attention to collecting and treating packaging of plant protection products and veterinary medicines after use in an effort to reduce risks of pollution for water resources and soil and drive green, clean and sustainable agriculture.
The Mekong Delta province of Long An plans to invest more than 17 trillion VND (748 million USD) by 2030, or some 1.21 trillion VND (53.2 million USD) each year on average, to construct water works to supply clean water to the localit’s entire 1.5 million population.
The Sai Gon Water Corporation (Sawaco) has submitted a funding proposal to build underground water tanks that will replace seven unused water towers in HCM City.
The People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City announced on January 20 that the city has fulfilled the target of supplying clean water to all of its 1.9 million households.
A multitude of areas of cajuput forest in the Mekong Delta province of Ca Mau are at high risk of catching fire, posing a range of challenges for firefighting work in the locality.
Environment
