Diversification for Climate Resilience Is Saving the Mekong Delta From "Drowning"

Southeast Asia's most fertile agricultural area, which is inhabited by 17 million people, might be completely submerged within a generation.

According to an international team of researchers who highlight alternatives to the region's significant decline of soil particles vital to fortifying delta land, saving the Mekong River Delta requires urgent, coordinated action among regional countries to reduce the effects of upstream dams and effectively manage water and soil particles inside the delta.

The Mekong delta river

(Photo : TANG CHHIN SOTHY/AFP via Getty Images)

It's difficult to believe that a landform the size of the Netherlands with a comparable population might vanish by the end of the century, according to research co-lead author Matt Kondolf, a Professor of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley.

According to research co-lead author Rafael Schmitt, a senior scientist at the Stanford Natural Capital Project, the Mekong Delta is genuinely exceptional in terms of agro-economic significance and regional relevance for food and nutrition security and livelihoods.

Without immediate action, the delta and its inhabitants risk becoming casualties of regional and international changes in the environment, as per ScienceDaily.

The Mekong River sweeps up material from disintegrating uplands in China, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam as it flows from skyscraping Tibetan peaks to the sea.

The Mekong Delta's nutrient-rich silt has accumulated, allowing the lower Mekong area to produce up to 10% of all rice exported globally.

It has also nourished fisheries that provide food for tens of millions of people.

The Mekong Delta, like any river delta, can only persist if it gets a continual supply of sediment from its upstream basin and if water flows can distribute that silt across the low-lying delta surface at a pace equivalent to or higher than global sea-level rise.

Countries in the watershed have erected multiple hydroelectric dams in search of renewable energy, obstructing fish migrations, trapping silt, and reducing downstream flows.

If all of the proposed dams are erected, they will capture 96 percent of the silt that was previously reaching the delta.

Furthermore, as cyclone tracks migrate north, the sediment supply from tropical cyclones, which account for about 32% of the suspended sediment load reaching the delta, is diminishing.

Sediment that reaches the lower Mekong is mined for sand, which is utilized in building and land reclamation.

Over-pumping of groundwater and the construction of high dikes to control floods and allow for high-intensity agriculture worsen the situation.

Climate Resilience Requires Diversification

The Mekong Delta, a significant agricultural and aquaculture center in Vietnam, has it all.

While the Delta has been lauded as a biological treasure and home to one of the most diverse biodiversity systems on the planet, its ecosystems are deteriorating dramatically on many fronts.

Farmers and villages whose livelihoods are at stake

According to Vietnam's agricultural ministry, the Delta loses roughly 500 hectares of land every year due to erosion.

Furthermore, irresponsible coastal land management practices pollute its maze of rivers and canals.

In certain areas, upriver saltwater intrusion has reached four grams per liter, four times greater than tolerance criteria for main crops, producing a regional freshwater scarcity problem.

While climate change and sea-level rise are to blame for some of these changes, direct human influences such as upstream dam construction and over-exploitation of sand and groundwater are also putting a strain on the Delta.

To assist farmers in maintaining these excellent practices once the project is over, the World Bank has also focused on developing an enabling infrastructure network and enhancing regional cooperation to manage a resource that has no frontiers, such as water.

The majority of the project's $387 million expenditure has gone toward new infrastructure and renovating aging facilities.

In the higher floodplains, 61 kilometers of dikes have been restored, and 15 related sluice gates have been installed to better regulate flooding, specifically to collect flood benefits.