Like Long, about 1.1 million people have left the sprawling Mekong Delta in the last decade for opportunities in Vietnamese cities or overseas, as the consequences of environmental hazards, poor government planning and China-built upstream dams have combined to leave delta residents questioning the viability of their futures if they stay in the region and watch the natural riches of the Mekong slowly wither.

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A recently released report by Vietnam’s top policy and economics experts and funded by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry found that the delta has the country’s highest emigration and lowest immigration rate. Its contribution to Vietnam’s GDP has also fallen steeply in the past three decades – going from about 27 per cent in 1990 to 17.7 per cent in 2019. The population of the delta region, which encompasses 13 of Vietnam’s 63 provinces and cities, now numbers 17.1 million.

“The inevitable consequence of this situation is that a labour shortage [in the Delta] is increasingly common, while simultaneously the ageing population has become a more serious issue,” said the report, whose authors included professors from Fulbright University Vietnam and Can Tho University, various business executives and researchers at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The report said that the lack of skilled labour compounded by a slow transition toward more productive industries could lead to the delta’s economy being left behind by the rest of Vietnam.

THE RICE PROBLEM

By 2019, Vietnam’s rice output had climbed to over 43 million tons, with the Mekong Delta producing 50 per cent. The region was also responsible for 60 per cent of the country’s fruit production and 70 per cent of aquaculture products.

But this has come at a cost for the delta’s fertility. In the closed dyke areas, natural flooding – essential to replenish rice fields with alluvia and flush acidic sulphates and other toxins away – no longer occurs. And, with three crops planted per year, the land is not given enough time to recover its natural fertility.

In addition, the overuse of fertilisers and pesticides is rampant in the Mekong Delta, according to a 2017 World Bank report on agricultural pollution in the country. Sluices in the Mekong intended to prevent saltwater intrusion and store fresh water have also led to increased water pollution stemming from accumulated waste, according to a 2018 study led by researchers at Can Tho University.

The illegal mining of sand in the delta – used to make concrete and asphalt – has also been rampant.

Marc Goichot, who leads the WWF’s freshwater initiative in the Mekong, said his organisation has been working with Vietnamese counterparts to promote sustainable sand production in the delta, balancing environmental issues with the growing demand from Vietnam’s construction sector.

“Vietnam needs an alternative to sand mined from the delta,” he said. “When you take sand from the Mekong Delta, somebody on the coast loses their house,” Goichot said, referring to the erosion caused by sand mining.

In the delta, where one or two-storey houses nestle by canals, Vietnamese water culture is on full display. And yet, the residents are also exposed to potential safety risks from river bank erosion, driven by the sand mining, saltwater intrusion and upstream hydropower dams. These man-made activities outpace climate change trends by an order of magnitude and pose greater threats in the short term while exacerbating medium- and long-term climate change impacts, according to research published in the journal Nature in 2019.

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Dr Tran Thi Phung Ha, a sociology professor at Can Tho University, said that what is needed in the region is a better infrastructure plan.

“Investing in development programmes in the delta should have happened 10 years ago,” she said, adding that workers from the region would continue to try to find jobs in industrial estates farther south, since better paid jobs are more difficult to find in the delta.

DAMMING THE ECONOMY

But a lack of infrastructure planning isn’t the only thing holding back growth in the region. For years, 11 cascade-type China-built hydropower dams along the Upper Mekong in China have disrupted river flows and water levels. In 2019, parts of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and the Mekong Delta experienced severe water shortages because of restrictions put in place by China’s dam management team, according to a report by Eyes on Earth, a research and consulting US company that focuses on water issues.

At one point, the river was, on average, about five metres lower than natural, while China’s upstream areas received above-average rainfall for most of the year. Last year, the Mekong Delta suffered a historic drought and record salt intrusion, which experts had blamed on reduced rainfall caused by El Nino and reduced sediment caused by the Chinese dams. In the Mekong, upstream water brings sediments that fertilise downstream lands.

Last month, Thailand threatened to shut down plans for another China-developed dam on the Mekong in neighbouring Laos, citing concerns about the potential environmental effects on its side of the border and disruption of the river’s water flows.

Although the massive Chinese-run dams are seen as the main force sapping the vitality of the Mekong, on which 60 million people depend for their livelihoods, the other 118 hydropower dams lining the banks of the Mekong – about half in Laos, according to the US-funded Mekong Infrastructure Tracker – can also be damaging.

Many studies have shown the economic and ecological costs that come with hydropower on the Mekong, with the dams known to threaten fish populations and disrupt natural river hydrology.

Brian Eyler, director of the Southeast Asia programme at the Stimson Centre, a Washington-based think tank and author of Last Days of the Mighty Mekong, said the failure to safeguard the Mekong Delta cannot be pinned entirely on China.

“This triple threat of dams, unsustainable local planning, and climate change is driving migration out of the delta at unprecedented rates,” he said. “There’s no simple causal factor.”

In late 2017, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc acknowledged the roles of both upstream dams and intensified domestic production activities as well as climate change in hampering the delta’s well-being, when the government passed Resolution 120 on Sustainable and Climate-Resilient Development of the Mekong Delta, tasking ministries and local governments to carry out several missions in pursuit of the goal.

Le Hoang Thanh, a celebrity farmer who lives on the outskirts of Can Tho, is trying to raise awareness among local communities of how to achieve self-sufficiency amid the myriad challenges.

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Known as Uncle Hai Thanh in the delta, the 72-year-old teaches locals about polyculture – the simultaneous cultivation of different crops or animals – techniques he said he learned from Can Tho University researchers and then modified to suit local conditions.

On Thanh’s half-hectare plot of land, every branch of the jackfruit, durian, mango and other fruit trees he grows are filled with new buds. A few steps away, hundreds of chickens make themselves heard. He said he uses no outside pesticides or fertilisers on his crops, and his farm looks like a model for what other farms in the delta could look like if their various elements were unified in a harmonious relationship.

Two ponds on his property attest to this. They are covered with water lettuce, the optimal food source for the snails he has added to the ponds to make an organic whole. While many farmers in the delta typically collect their earnings once every few months, Thanh sells the snails to local restaurants, earning 8 million dong (US$347) a month from this activity alone – about double the average monthly salary of a wage earner in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s biggest city.

“The people in the delta have been favoured by nature so much,” he said. “They plant a tree, it bears fruits. They drop a fish in a pond, it grows,” he said.

But the natural richness of the delta has faded because of pollution, climate change and other issues – problems he said the farmers did not see coming, and now they struggle to adopt new technologies because of their dependence on old habits and a lack of financing.

Experts at Fulbright University Vietnam and Can Tho University said that because public resources have been concentrated on rice and other traditional agricultural production for so long, a shift to more productive industries like renewable energy has been slow in the making, despite the region possessing abundant potential for wind and solar power.

They also said that improved transport connectivity in the region would help attract more tourists and investors and lead to an expansion of economic activities. 

As of 2019, there were over 55,000 businesses in the delta, or about 11 per cent of the country’s total, while the area only has 5 per cent of the country’s total highway length, effectively limiting economic activities in the region.

MASTER PLAN

The delta has also attracted significant foreign attention, specifically from the Netherlands, which has centuries of experience in managing its own water resources through its latticework of canals. Last month, the Netherlands and Vietnam launched a bilateral initiative – The Netherlands-Vietnam Business Platform for the Mekong Delta – to stimulate development in the region through public-private partnerships.

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It was the latest example of the Netherlands’ involvement in the delta, which dates back to 2013, when it co-wrote the Mekong Delta Plan in conjunction with the Vietnamese government. That plan suggested a move toward industrialisation within the delta’s agricultural sector, combined with dynamic land use, improved interprovincial and cross-sectoral collaboration as well as other measures to help assure an environmentally sustainable future.

The government’s regional integrated master plan for the delta now includes elements from both the recent venture and the 2013 plan, which is expected to be submitted for final approval by the end of this year.

Dr Le Anh Tuan, a senior lecturer with the Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources at Can Tho University, said that while the government’s plans for the delta set a policy foundation for provincial leaders there, they still require a road map for carrying out the plans and the budget to implement them.

Tuan said that to carry the plan through, the Vietnamese government needs to organise a coordinating body with sound knowledge about the delta as a whole so that it can act as a “conductor of the choir’’ in leading stakeholders involved in the mission to elevate the region’s growth.

Meanwhile, residents of the Mekong Delta region like 37-year-old Bui Thu Thao, who was raised in the town of Long Xuyen, are eager to stay in the area and contribute to its development and prosperity, despite the many challenges and uncertainties.

Thao, who has nearly a decade of experience working in the social services sector, is considering launching a project with her friends to teach skill-development courses – including leadership and relationship-building skills – to local students, with her goal being to build up the confidence levels and versatility of young people in the delta.

Every now and then, though, Thao said she feels sad when she is reminded of the fact that many of her friends have left the area, either for work or because of marriage.

But, she said, she had finally come to terms with this simple fact of life in the delta.

“I have to accept it because everyone needs to have a better life,” she said.