Despite choosing a location on a sandbank deep within the river, planting trees, and building embankments to prevent erosion, Mr. Tran Quang Vinh ( An Giang ) still lost half of his factory to the Mekong River.
Mr. Vinh silently looked at the 160 m embankment that had crumbled like foam, then looked at the ruined 1.2 ha factory of the Hoa Binh Food Processing Enterprise, not knowing what to prepare for the future. In 15 years of building his career in the West, he had used many measures to cope with landslides, but they were still not enough.
The landslide in mid-May caused the three-room workers’ dormitory to sink deeply and had to be demolished. Half of the 1,300-square-meter warehouse collapsed, leaving behind ripped corrugated iron sheets and twisted, deformed purlins.
The results of decades of building went down the drain in the blink of an eye, causing a loss of more than ten billion VND. As a result, 100 workers had to stop production for several days to restore the factory. For each day off, the lost revenue was equivalent to 200 tons of rice.
Mr. Vinh's workshop is among 136 houses damaged by landslides in the Mekong Delta over the past six months. 145 landslides since the beginning of the year have cost the delta region more than 30 billion VND, along with 1.7 km of dikes and 1.5 km of roads. Even before the rainy season – the peak of the landslide season – five provinces – Long An , An Giang, Dong Thap, Vinh Long, and Bac Lieu – have declared a state of emergency in 10 riverside and coastal areas.
These losses are just the tip of the iceberg. Each landslide leaves behind lingering concerns for both residents and businesses in this river region.
Run from the sky but can not avoid landslide
Recalling 2008, when he came to Cho Moi to survey the location on the bank of Hau River to set up a rice mill, Mr. Vinh calculated and looked for the safest place. Seeing an alluvial land a few dozen meters away from the river bank, convenient for transporting large-scale goods by ship, and located in a place where the water flowed smoothly, he decided to level the land and build a warehouse.
Everything went as planned for the next 12 years, until the river in front of the factory became more turbulent, and the alluvial plain gradually disappeared. An Giang became one of the areas with the highest risk of landslides in the Mekong Delta. To protect the factory area, he had a series of mangrove piles driven in, then coconut piles, before building a concrete embankment. The cost exceeded 10 billion VND.
After Tet (Lunar New Year), before the rainy season arrived, he heard that a village on the opposite bank of the river (My Hoa Hung, Long Xuyen City) had lost thousands of square meters of its fish ponds due to landslides. Seeing signs of the mangrove trees in front of the factory also collapsing, the 59-year-old man sensed something was wrong. He immediately hired someone to use a "monitoring machine" to scan the riverbank around the factory, believing he had anticipated all the risks, until the landslide actually occurred.
"No one thought the riverbank would collapse right there," he said, explaining that when checked, no frog jaws were found and the foot of the bank below the river was not hollow.
After the landslide, the "hungry" water continued to silently erode the banks, occasionally "devouring" large chunks, and it was unknown when it would swallow the rest of the factory. Many new cracks began to appear on the cement floor 20 meters from the landslide site. As a precaution, Mr. Vinh had the entire warehouse and machinery dismantled. A section of the rice conveyor belt had already been swept away by the river, and he didn't want to lose any more.
More than 200 km downstream from An Giang, Truong Phuc Seafood Company Limited (Canh Dien Hamlet, Long Dien Tay, Dong Hai District, Bac Lieu) is in the same situation.
"In just six years, we have suffered two landslides," said Deputy Director Hua Hong An while busy cleaning up the devastation at the factory after a landslide at the beginning of the rainy season.
In just 7 months, the number of landslides in Bac Lieu has doubled compared to the same period last year, causing 119 houses to collapse and damaging thousands of hectares of shrimp and fish ponds.
A native of Bac Lieu with 37 years of experience in aquaculture, Mr. An said that in the 1990s, the riverbank was so far away that when the tide receded, a yard large enough for village boys to play soccer was revealed. The river section passing the factory was only 100 meters wide at that time, gentle. Now, the river is twice as wide, with turbulent water flowing.
When he bought the land to build the factory, he carefully built a dike about 50 meters from the riverbank, to guard against strong winds and waves. Unexpectedly, the landslide on the night of June 9 swallowed up the entire 1,200 square meter dike and surrounding wall. The prefabricated factory and the backup wastewater treatment tank were also damaged.
Mr. Vinh and Mr. An are typical of a class of businessmen in the Mekong Delta region who are struggling to live with the unpredictable changes of natural disasters. Spending billions of dong to build embankments but the danger is still lurking, these businesses are struggling to find ways to survive, with no time to think about development.
"Doing business in the Mekong Delta is difficult in every way; there's no escaping disaster," Mr. Vinh said, "we have to face so many paradoxes."
According to Mr. Vinh, despite being surrounded by waterways, transporting goods is not easy. Businesses wanting convenient trade with large ships have to build warehouses and factories along the riverbanks, but they worry about erosion. The river and canal system spans nearly 28,000 km, but the infrastructure on both banks is inadequate, and excessive activity will create large waves, accelerating the erosion process.
While businesses are struggling to find ways to live with the erosion, many communities that have lived along the river their entire lives are now drifting and scattered, struggling to find a livelihood after the river "starved" and ate away at its banks.
Life is unstable and slippery
In his old house nestled beside the Cai Vung River – a small tributary of the Tien River – Mr. Nguyen Van Thom (45 years old, from An Giang province) looks at the numerous cracks on the walls, trying to distinguish which ones are newly appeared. The 100-square-meter house, the result of over 20 years of hard work, is now abandoned. On the old wall, the words "hundred years of happiness" are covered by a thick layer of dust, reminding the 45-year-old man of the happy days his family spent living by the river.
For generations, his family had made a living fishing on the river, but for the past two decades, their lives had become increasingly difficult. From a time when simply casting a net would yield a bountiful harvest of several dozen kilograms of fish and shrimp, the trawler now had to travel further and further. Some days, he would return with an empty net. Having lost money on fuel, he decided to sell the trawler, buy a wooden boat, and switch to transporting rice for hire for the locals.
In 2001, the house began to erode. The hamlets along the Cai Vung River (Long Son Ward, Tan Chau Town) became dangerous erosion hotspots, requiring annual monitoring. Neighbors gradually thinned out. Mr. Tran's family, lacking land for relocation, remained in their home for six years. Every day, they lived in fear, watching the water lap against the base of their house.
In 2007, his family moved away from the river for the first time, resettling under a government program, nearly 2 kilometers away from their old home. Although he regretted it, he knew he had to leave the place he had been attached to for a decade.
Since moving to a new place far from the riverbank, he had to sell his rice boat and switch to making a living by selling ceramics and porcelain. His brother also left his hometown and went to Ho Chi Minh City to make a living. Mr. Thom's family's life on the river ended. He did not want to leave, but had no other choice.
"It's a pity to give up, but to keep it is... death," he said.
Mr. Thom is just one of millions of people facing an uncertain future as they search for a new place to live and a new source of livelihood.
According to incomplete statistics, the Mekong Delta has nearly 500,000 households that need to be relocated to avoid landslides, of which tens of thousands are in urgent need. Since 2015, the government has only resettled about 4% - more than 21,606 households with a total cost of 1,773 billion VND.
Relocating entire landslide-prone areas remains difficult for localities due to lack of funding, land funds, and solutions to livelihood problems while the number of landslides is increasing.
For example, An Giang has asked the central government for 1,400 billion VND in subsidies for many years to urgently relocate 5,300 households. In the distant future, it will be about 20,000 households, which means it needs about 7,000 billion VND, equivalent to the province's domestic revenue in 2022.
After more than four years as Vice Chairman of An Giang Province, in charge of agriculture, Mr. Tran Anh Thu has become accustomed to having to sign decisions declaring a state of emergency every time the rainy season comes.
As a master of soil science and having worked for a long time as Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of the province, Mr. Thu is clearly aware of the increasing level of landslides in upstream provinces such as An Giang and Dong Thap.
"The number and scale of landslides are increasing compared to 20 years ago and spreading to small canals where many households live, causing increasingly greater damage," he said.
Erosion
Landslides are the final and most visible manifestation of a previous destructive process, when the Mekong Delta fell into a state of alluvial starvation.
This delta region is shouldering the responsibility of food security for the whole country, providing 50% of rice production and 70% of aquatic products. However, this "rice pot" is increasingly depleted. Landslides not only erode the land, but also "erode" the economy of the Mekong Delta.
“In a large river basin like the Mekong, everything is interconnected. Losses in one sector can ripple across many other sectors,” said Marc Goichot, Freshwater Programme Manager for WWF Asia-Pacific.
According to this expert, all economic sectors are partly dependent on the river. Deepening of riverbeds affects agriculture, fisheries, water quality and infrastructure. Reduced alluvium, or sand and gravel, also causes riverbank erosion, leading to land loss, house collapses and infrastructure collapse.
The 2020 and 2022 annual reports on the Mekong Delta by VCCI Can Tho and the Fulbright School of Public Policy and Management indicate that, three decades since Doi Moi, the economic role of the Mekong Delta compared to the whole country is gradually decreasing, the lowest among the four key economic regions.
Looking back to 1990, Ho Chi Minh City’s gross domestic product (GDP) was only two-thirds of the Mekong Delta’s. Two decades later, this ratio has reversed, despite the delta’s population being nearly double that of Ho Chi Minh City and its rich resources.
Dr. Vu Thanh Tu Anh, head of the research team, noted that while the region faces economic difficulties, investment resources are also very modest. The Mekong Delta is the region with the lowest foreign investment attraction in the country. Public investment resources have also been neglected in the Mekong Delta for many years, especially in the construction of transportation infrastructure. As a result, intra-regional road networks, as well as inter-regional connectivity, are very weak, thus making it unattractive to investors.
Struggling to adapt to natural disasters, without motivation from external capital sources, businesses are facing even more difficulties. The business density in the Mekong Delta in 2021 was only 3.53 businesses per 1,000 working-age people, while the national average was 8.32 businesses.
"The only way for people and businesses to adapt to climate change and natural disasters is to address the core issue causing the delta's decline in resilience," said Goichot, emphasizing the importance of sand in rivers and coastlines as a protective shield for the delta against water and climate hazards.
However, how to adapt is still a question for Mr. Vinh, owner of Hoa Binh Food Processing Enterprise (An Giang).
More than three months have passed since the landslide, and the business remains in a dilemma. The river continues to erode the banks, but the owner cannot construct an embankment because the flood season is approaching and they will have to wait until the dry season – the following year. Relocating the factory is also impossible as most of the equipment is bulky and cannot be moved via the provincial road because the bridge system cannot withstand the load. Meanwhile, the riverbank is eroding, preventing ships from entering.
"We can only wait and hope the river calms down," said the director of Hoa Binh Enterprise.
Hoang Nam - Thu Hang - Ngoc Tai
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