The worst drought ever recorded in Vietnam is stoking fears of a food
security crisis. In a meeting with government officials next week, researchers
with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT)’s Asia regional
office in Hanoi will unveil maps showing how water scarcity and climate change
may imperil key crops—rice, cassava, maize, coffee, and cashew nuts—across the
country.
"The severity of this year's drought will have a
profound impact on Mekong delta agricultural production,” says Brian Eyler,
deputy director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Stimson Center in
Washington, D.C.
As of mid-March, nearly a million people in central
and southern Vietnam lack access to fresh drinking water, according to a recent United Nations report.
And supplies of rice, the main staple crop, are in jeopardy. Saltwater
intrusion in the Mekong delta has destroyed at least 159,000 hectares of paddy
rice so far, with a further 500,000 hectares at risk before the onset of the
summer monsoon. The Vietnam government has approved $23.3 million in emergency
funds to compensate hard-hit farmers and provide water tanks and other critical
provisions. Meanwhile, the Vietnam Red Cross Society has been mobilized to
provide assistance in provinces where local health clinics are struggling to
deliver essential services due to insufficient freshwater.
Concern is focused on the Mekong River, Southeast
Asia’s longest waterway and the lifeblood of the region. The river originates
on the Tibetan Plateau and flows south through China’s western Yunnan province,
Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam before spilling into the South
China Sea. According to the U.N. report issued last month, “Since the end of
2015, water levels in the lower Mekong River have been at their lowest level
since records began nearly 100 years ago.” The
United Nations estimates that the water level flowing through the
Mekong and its lower tributaries last month was down 30% to 50% compared
with average March levels.
Water levels customarily drop during the dry season,
resulting in saltwater intrusion from the South China Sea. But last year,
because of unusually sparse rainfall, the saltwater intrusion began 2 months
early—tainting groundwater and rice paddies as far as 90 kilometers inland,
according to the United Nations. Most rice growers in the region get at
least two yields annually out of the delta’s fertile soil, Eyler says.
“Typically this time of the year, farmers there will have planted the first
crop,” he says. “But currently most fields are dry and the earth cracked.”
Several factors reduced the Mekong to a trickle this
year, says Leocadio Sebastian, regional program leader for the International
Rice Research Institute’s office in Hanoi. “El Niño contributed to the drought
by reducing rains, and this may be exacerbated by climate change,” he says.
Upstream dams, a perennial concern in Southeast
Asia, have also constricted flow. Under normal flow conditions,
Sebastian says, “the river’s fresh water drives more saline water back to the
sea.” China, which has often come under criticism from environmentalists for
building and financing dams on the Mekong, is now attempting to ameliorate
conditions: It is currently releasing water from a major Mekong dam in Yunnan,
the Jinghong hydropower station, to alleviate shortages downstream, the
state news agency Xinhua reports.
On 12 April, a CIAT research team assembling maps will
brief Vietnamese officials on projected vulnerabilities from climate change.
The bottom line, says CIAT’s Clément Bourgoin, is that “the coastal Mekong
region may become less suitable for some agriculture,” especially rice, because
of warmer summer temperatures and saltwater intrusion from rising sea levels.
Rice varieties with enhanced tolerance to salt and
drought may rescue some farmers, but the use of modified seeds “must be
matched” with good climate modeling, Sebastian says. “Even ‘drought tolerant’
rice doesn’t tolerate the worst possible droughts.”
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