Author(s): Dao Xuan Hoc
Linked Author(s):
Keywords: Living with flood; Inundation
Abstract: Strategy named “Living with flood” in the Mekong River Delta of Vietnam is consistent strategy to accelerate the economic development, practically in agricultural production during the last period. Several residential community clusters and dykes systems have been built in an effort of protecting inhabitants, villages and urban in flooded areas. Local people also built 15000 km of dykes to protect agricultural production (approximately 3000 fields). The State have been handling many challenges cause by several impacts from the sea, upstream, climate change, water management, watershed management, population growth and urbanization. Moreover, land subsidence which is caused by overexploitation of ground water also brought many such difficulties as inundation situation and heavy rain in all 13primary provinces of this delta. Although these urban areas have been protected by surrounding dykes system, the local authorities continue to deal with new problem under the impact of flood. For example, the amount of water storage inside the protected area declined whereas the surrounding water level kept going up remarkably, causing serious flood for adjacent villages. The point is that how we will protect the new surrounding flooded villages; consequently, the vicious cycle of will never end. Thus, the purpose of this study is to meet the immediate requirements and be consistent with the long-term strategy regarding sustainable development of Cuu Long River Delta. In this article, the solution called “Living with flood proactively” will be presented. “Living with flood proactively” means taking full advantages of flood into the farms or exploiting all the benefits brought from flood. However, in the case of extremely peak flood occurring in the delta, it is necessary to control the peak flow in order to avoid both losing inhabitants with their treasure and destroying infrastructures. The point is that construct more dykes in Cuu Long River Delta is not such a good solution now that helps to protect people and treasure under the destroying of flood. The more relevant consideration is that the mentioned strategy will help to save a considerable amount of budget spending on rehabilitate and maintain dyke systems on the farms. In addition, the capital for constructing drainage systems will also be saved. The research brought several worth lessons.
Year: 2014