The government has established national and local committees for prevention and relief as well as for prevention and mitigation of flood damage. People of Vietnam also have experience with floods that should be incorporated into planning. Some of the solutions to damages include better adaptation to flooding and flood prevention. Adaptation means cultivating flooding rice and appropriate varieties of rice that can survive flooding. Preventative measures can include canal and dyke systems, arrangements to pump water out, and elevated housing. Some problems and proposed solutions are that even with high development potential, the Mekong River Delta remains one of the poorest regions of the country, especially in remote areas. GDP of some delta areas is only half of the national average.

Human resources and education are an issue as well for the delta area. In the Mekong region, 45% of the labor force is illiterate and has only primary school education. The area has 47 vocational schools but only one university to serve 16 million people. There is a very urgent need to provide more education and vocational training in the delta.

Improving the sustainability of agriculture is a concern for this region as well. Natural resources management is directly related to the skills of a community as they effect locally appropriate technology use. Lack of skills and understanding contributes to pressure on environmental resources, including water resources. Environmental degradation in the region is caused primarily by pollution from bio-production and by excess use of chemical fertilizers.

The Mekong River Delta can no longer be described as a “natural system”. It is better described as a “production system,” and the elements of this system include forestry, rainfall rice, flooding rice, irrigated rice and gardens.

Ultimately water resources in Vietnam are deeply intertwined with a variety of environmental and human resource issues in the Mekong River Delta. Water resources in Vietnam are also closely tied to water resources in Laos, which shares the Mekong River.

Nicolaas van Zalinge, Chief Technical Advisor, Mekong River Commission

Mr. Van Zalange, spoke briefly to make the point that fisheries in Cambodia are vital to food security, employment and the national economy. Household surveys in Cambodia show that fish consumption is very high and that production on the order of 500,000 tons of fish per year is a significant source of income and sustenance for Khmers. Dams built since the 1950s have depleted water levels to a degree that cannot be mitigated through management, flood control and further dam building. In areas of Laos, too, fish provides 70-80% of protein intake, so water levels and potential effects of dams are relevant there as well.

One of the first queries from the audience observed that fish catches declined dramatically in 1998 and 1999, and wondered whether that decline was primarily due to expanded dam building and lowered water levels, rampant habitat destruction, or destructive use of illegal fishing methods that cause long term damage to the reproductive systems of surviving fish (i.e. electricity). Van Zalange declined to choose one as the most destructive, but argued that dams and irrigation have a long term effect on catches, while habitat destruction amplifies these effects and over fishing hurts population stocks. These factors combine to threaten fisheries.