Mangrove project to protect residents from storm surges

Pham Thai Lien, 50, used to cut down trees in the mangrove forest near her home, trading the wood for rice or using it as firewood. Now, she spends the "hunger months" of April, May and June, when there is very little local farm work, planting trees in the mangrove forests along the coastline of the Mekong Delta province of Soc Trang under a project run by GTZ, the German development agency and local officials.

"The project provides jobs for landless people here in the hunger period, and ensures our source of fish and crabs from the forest mud flats," she told IRIN.

"I'm afraid that without the forests, the destruction of the storm of 1997 could happen again," she added, referring to Typhoon Linda, the worst to hit southern Vietnam in 100 years. The high seas and flooding a reported 435 people and left thousands of fishermen missing and almost 80,000 homes destroyed.

Local officials say the mangrove forests can help protect coastal communities from the increasingly frequent, severe and unpredictable storms forecast as a result of climate change.

Citing a study by Yoshihiro Mazda, from the School of Marine Science and Technology at Tokai University, Japan, Ly Hoa Khuong, the coordinator of the project to protect the biodiversity and people in Soc Trang's coastal zone, told IRIN: "With a five-year-old 1,500-metre-wide forest belt, a one-metre wave can be reduced to 0.05 metres by the time it gets to the landside of the forest."

Photo: GTZ

A fisherman near a mangrove restoration project. The mangrove forests are essential to reduce the effects of storm surge and provide a habitat for fish and other wildlife

The World Bank's Global Monitoring Report 2008 estimates that Vietnam would be most affected by a 1m rise in sea level caused by melting ice at the earth's poles, predicting that the nation would lose 28 percent of its wetlands and 10 percent of its GDP. The Bank warns that global warming could lead to a sea level rise of 1-3m this century, and may increase by 5m if the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melt suddenly.

About 74 percent of Vietnam's 80 million people live in the low-lying coastal areas potentially at risk from rising sea levels and storms, warns a report, Rapid Assessment of Extent and Impact of Sea Level Rise in Vietnam, by the International Centre for Environmental Management (ICEM), a research and consulting organisation based in Australia and Vietnam.

It estimates 85 percent of the flooding caused by a potential 1m sea level rise would take place in the Mekong River Delta, where close to 1.5 million or 90 percent of the country's affected poor live.

"The pressure of higher peaks in Mekong River flood waters combined with rising sea levels will make all 12 provinces especially vulnerable to worsening floods," says the report's author, Jeremy Carew-Reid, adding that the number of poor people in the region is expected to grow. "Part of the projected increase in the poor comes from their migration into the area. These poor immigrants will have less local knowledge, support networks and experience with flood and storm events than existing residents. Adaptation will be more difficult for them."

In Soc Trang, GTZ, provincial authorities and a growing number of local people are continuing to restore some of the thousands of hectares of mangrove forest lost to shrimp farming in the 1980s and 1990s. But Khuong says he is concerned about erosion along an 18km stretch of coastline, where there is very little mangrove forest left. He says communities there were hard hit by a storm in 1992 that killed several people and swept away homes and crops.

Photo: GTZ

Maturing mangrove forests along the coast of Soc Trang Province

"We're really concerned about Vinh Chau town as erosion along the coast there happens every year," he told IRIN. "If the land is eroded it's difficult for us to plant the mangrove forest," he says, suggesting artificial wave-breaking barriers such as the tube-shaped sand bags used in Malaysia, as a solution.

The Vietnamese government is drawing up a national programme to help Vietnam mitigate and adapt to climate change. An initial draft, which includes assessment of the impacts and a suggested timeframe for action, is being considered by the ministries and is due to be submitted to the prime minister this year. In 2007, the president ordered that every ministry come up with climate change preparation and mitigation initiatives.

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