Hanoi (VNA) – The MekongDelta region, home to about 18 million people, is Vietnam’s largest agriculturehub. However, the region faces serious erosion in river and sea banks due toclimate change and human factors.

According to the VietnamInstitute of Meteorology, Hydrology and Climate Change, 38 percent of the MekongDelta’s land surface may be submerged by seawater in 2100, mostly because of humanimpacts.

Currently, the region has 406eroded dyke sections with a total length of 891km. Some dangerous areas include70m of Vam Nao river’s bank in Cho Moi district, An Giang province where 18houses fell into the river and another 91 were damaged. Another case is the600m of the Tien River bank in Binh Thanh commune, Thanh Binh district of DongThap where 108 households were forced to evacuate and another 119 were partlyaffected.

An Giang has been one of thelocalities hit hardest by erosion. Major erosion incidents in 2010, 2012 and2014 across the province caused serious damage to the locality’s infrastructurewhen hundreds of metres of roads collapsed into rivers.

The provincial Department of NaturalResources and Environment reported that the province has 51 erosion prone areaswith a total length of about 162,550m, threatening 20,000 households.

The province saw 15 cases ofriver bank erosion in the first five months of 2017 with a total length of1,224m, affecting 170 houses including 18 which completely collapsed.

Meanwhile, in Bac Lieu province,more than 800m of sea dykes were broken in Dong Hai district. In Ca Mau, roadsalong O Ro canal in Ngoc Hien were destroyed, threatening the Dat Mui borderpost and local households.

Erosion has also reduced forestareas in the Mekong Delta by 10 percent or 28,387 hectares.

A survey by the Vietnam Instituteof Meteorology, Hydrology and Climate Change and the Vietnam Institute of Geosciencesand Mineral Resources under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmentshowed that hydropower plant dams in the upstream Mekong River are one of themain causes of erosion in the Mekong Delta, as they keep mud and sand, leadingto a lack of mud and sand downstream.

To Van Truong, an independentexpert on water resources, said high risks of erosion in the Mekong Deltaregion can be seen through obvious changes in hydrology in the region as wellas human impacts.

At the same time, aquaculturefarming in coastal localities without planning has seriously affected mangrove forests,causing ecological imbalance and erosion in many regions, while illegalconstruction that encroaches rivers and hinder flood flow is another factor.

Sand exploitation in rivers isone of the most serious reasons behind the change of the flow, stressed Truong.

In mid-May, Deputy Prime MinisterTrinh Dinh Dung and Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Tran Hong Ha leda Government working group on a tour to inspect erosion in a number of MekongDelta localities.

Deputy PM Dung said that solutionshave been applied in a temporary and passive manner due to a lack of reliablescientific research on the issue. He called on ministries to propose systematicmeasures to respond to landslides.

He urged ministries and sectorsto focus on erosion alerts and forecasts, while helping evacuated people stabilisetheir lives.

Chairman of the An Giang People’sCommittee Vuong Binh Thanh asked for 820 billion VND to move households fromerosion affected areas and build settlements for them.

Measures to adjust river flow arecrucial, along with strict management over sand exploitation in rivers, hesaid.-VNA