Excessive exploitation of rivers and lakes in Vietnam has pushed down water levels and polluted water resources of local communities, according to regional experts, who want the government to better enforce regulation of waterways.
The problem is mostly evident in the central and south of the country where waterways are increasingly used for farming and to generate power. “At the moment, water exploitation of rivers is over the limit—especially for hydropower plants—which has lowered the level of Vietnam’s rivers,” said Lam Thi Thu Suu, a coordinator with Vietnam Rivers Network (VRN), a consortium of NGOs, academics and government officials monitoring the country’s waterways.
“Pollution in the downstream sections of the rivers has made the situation worse for local communities,” Suu, who is also with Vietnam’s Center for Social Research and Development, told RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Vietnam’s river network includes 13 major river systems covering an area of around 10,000 square kilometers (3,860 square miles). International water resource organizations recommend limiting exploitation of Vietnam’s rivers to a maximum of 30 percent of their flow.
But according to a report by the official Voice of Vietnam online journal, most of Vietnam’s central provinces are exploiting more than 50 percent of their rivers’ flow, while Ninh Thuan province, in southern Vietnam, exploits as much of 80 percent of flow. The excessive exploitation, mostly for agricultural use and energy production, has seriously degraded water resources in the basins of Vietnam’s major rivers, such as the Red River, the Thai Binh River, and the Dong Nai River, the report said.