Vietnamplus

Thanks to favourable weather and quality shallot seeds, farmers on Quang Ngai province’s Ly Son Island are enjoying a bumper crop.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has warned that northern localities are facing water shortages as reservoirs are drying up.

Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) detected at least 18,895 hotspots of forest and land fires in Southeast Asia and Papua New Guinea over the past two weeks.

Recent prolonged drought has caused serious water shortages for nearly 55,000 people in Binh Dinh province. The province has urged units to help affected people overcome the issue.

A water shortage in central Quang Nam province’s Hoi An city is greatly affecting the lives of thousands of locals and tourists.

The south central province of Binh Dinh is experiencing its most serious drought in the last 15 years, with 4,000 households and 3,400ha of crops lacking water.

Prolonged hot weather in the central region has caused low water levels in reservoirs and dams, seriously affecting agricultural production and the daily lives of local residents.

Facing water shortages, farmers in the Mekong Delta province of Tien Giang have grown corn on nearly 2,000ha of rice fields for the 2018-19 winter-spring crop.

The Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands) provinces should speed up the use of efficient irrigation technologies to mitigate the effects of droughts and water shortages, Nguyen Van Tinh, General Director of the Directorate of Water Resources, has said.

Saltwater intrusion in the Mekong Delta is expected to increase between April 28 and May 6 as the volume of water flowing southward from the Mekong River will decline, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Irrigation Department.

Like other provinces in the Central Highlands, Dak Lak is currently in the middle of the peak dry season.

Many families in Hong Linh commune in Ha Tinh province still keep water pipes running from mountain creeks. Others in the province’s Thuan Loc commune prefer to use their wells, just in case tap water dries up.

According to the National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting, there are still complex developments in the remit of natural disasters in 2019 due to the impact of El Nino phenomenon.

Cambodia’s Ministry of Environment has told its rice farmers to refrain from planting crops as the country is in the midst of a drought heightened by record temperatures due to this year’s El Nino phenomenon.

The Central Highlands (Tay Nguyen) region would be affected by the El Nino phenomenon this year, Tran Trung Thanh, said Deputy Director of Hydro-Meteorological Station in the region.

With a growing population, increasing demand for water and the negative impacts of climate change, Vietnam faces major challenges in ensuring water security.

Lower water levels in reservoirs and barren farmland can be easily seen in many parts of the south-central and Central Highlands region even though it is the rainy season.

In an attempt to improve health for local residents, more than 400,000 household toilets and more than 235,000 water supply works have been set up in a total of 21 mountainous provinces of northern, Central Highlands and south-central regions in the past two years.

Experts outlined challenges and made policy recommendations to enhance the use of advanced technology in agriculture during a seminar on approaching Agriculture 4.0 held by the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) in Hanoi on November 9.

Vietnam’s northern region harvested some 5.6 million tonnes of rice during the summer-autumn crop, up more than 320,000 tonnes from the same period last year, heard a recent conference.