Vietnamese citizens should learn to adjust to climate change right now.
The change is too big to be prevented.
By 2030, the rainy season will start two weeks later than normal and the rainfall will be around 20 percent less, while flooding can occur two weeks earlier than at present, Prof. Le Anh Tuan from the Institute of Climate Change Research at Can Tho University told a conference last week.
The conference was organized by the Mekong Delta-based university, and the US Geological Survey (USGS) to study climate change impacts on the delta.
“People in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta are familiar with the term ‘living with floods’. I think it’s time we became familiar with “living with climate change,” Tuan said.
He said climate change will bring more draught, floods and typhoons, reduce land and agriculture productivity and thus worsen unemployment and poverty. He also cautioned this would lead to instability.
The Vietnam Southern Institute of Irrigation Planning said at the conference that the current river and coastal dykes will no longer able to contain the high tides when the sea levels rise, leading to increased salinization of rivers.
Infrastructure facilities such as streets and residential areas could also be overtaken by the rising sea, the conference heard.
Speakers at the conference also highlighted similarities between the Mekong and the Mississippi rivers in order to raise public concern about the damage that the former is going to bear from climate change and from building many dykes and dams upstream.
Too many dams and drains were built upstream Mississippi River and dykes built downstream over the past hundred years, according to the US Geological Survey. The constructions have prevented sediment deposits and caused losses of 5,000 square kilometers of sediment.
The ecosystem in the Mississippi Delta and Louisiana coastline has been adversely affected and the money needed to fix it is estimated at 15-20 times the amount used to cause the damage, the USGS said.
The conference heard that upstream dykes and dams on the Mekong River, most of them built by China, will bring similar consequences, diverting the river flow, affecting the ecosystem and the livelihood of local residents.
Several countries have made moves to adapt to climate change by diversifying the ways their coastal residents can make a living, and making use of natural factors to protect the residents.
For example, flooded land can be used to store fresh water and ease draughts while protective forests are planted along the coastline to prevent land erosion.
Residents in the Mekong Delta rely largely and almost directly on nature, so protecting nature will help them a lot in coping with climate change.
Pham Khoi Nguyen, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, said many government programs and policies in the past 10 years have dealt with climate change.
However, none of them seem to be designed to help people survive the many impacts of this phenomenom.
Vietnam’s solutions to deal with climate change have only reached the primary stage. We have no time to lose. Many other urgent steps have to be thought of and action taken as soon as possible.