Sunday, August 23, 2009

Mekong Delta under-prepared for climate change impacts

Thanhnien News (Vietnam): As a low-lying area with a big population, experts have predicted the delta will be among the hardest hit by climate change. Natural disasters last year left 134 dead and missing in the delta, damaged more than 5,300 houses, 30,474 hectares of rice fields and 11,265 hectares of fish and shrimp farms. Forty-six fishing boats were sunk and 92 others damaged.

Landslides caused the erosion of 100 hectares of land, knocked down 40 houses and forced 700 families to move. Authorities are looking for places to move thousands of threatened houses in the coming years.

The Central Hydrometeorology Forecast Center has warned of abnormal weather during this year’s storm season, which kicked off earlier than usual in late April. The storms and land erosion along river banks so far signal a harsh season, the center said. Changes in weather patterns in the Mekong Delta have confirmed forecasts about climate change….

A view of the Mekong, shot by Thang Nguyen, Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So what actually happened in the Vietnamese part of the Mekong delta in 2009? - nothing much and the flood was average. So why publish such wild speculation when it damages credibility.

But there are real issues in the medium to long term and some unusual storms elsewhere in 2009.