environmental problems in vietnam essay

Climate change in Vietnam: impacts and adaptation

Économiste, Agence française de développement (AFD)

Senior Researcher, Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD)

Researcher, Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD)

Research associate professor, Toulouse School of Economics – École d'Économie de Toulouse

Chargée de recherche sur les impacts du changement climatique, Agence française de développement (AFD)

Associate Professor of climate science, University of Science and Technology of Hanoi

Disclosure statement

Alexis Drogoul's current research projects receive funding from the European Union, the French National Research Agency and ANRS-MIE.

Emmanuel Pannier a reçu des financements de Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Agence Française de Développement, Ambassade de France au Vietnam, Agence National de la Recherche (France).

Manh-Hung Nguyen, Marie-Noëlle Woillez, Thanh Ngo-Duc, and Étienne Espagne do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation FR.

AFD (Agence française de développement) provides funding as a member of The Conversation FR.

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Vietnam is often presented as one of the countries that are most vulnerable to climate change. But what precisely would be the social and economic impacts in the country if the global average temperature increases by 1.5°C, 2°C or even more in the coming decades? Could local drivers of environmental changes worsen these impacts and what could be the policy and endogenous leverages for adaptation?

Recent temperature data for Vietnam show an accelerating warming trend in the recent decades, with an average value of ~0.2°C/decade over the last 40 years and the highest increase in the last decade. Over the same period, the annual rainfall slightly increased by 5.5% on average, but with contrasting trends depending on regions. In addition, sea level is rising, with an average trend of 3.6 mm/year over 1993–2018. A new climate dataset has been built specifically for this report to evaluate more clearly the recent climatic trends over the whole country .

Regarding future climate projections, at the end of the century, temperature is projected to increase from ~1.3°C under a scenario of low greenhouse gases global emissions (scenario RCP2.6) and to ~4.2°C under a high emissions scenario (scenario RCP8.5), with faster increases on the North of the country than in the South. Annual rainfall is projected to increase in most regions as well, but with a different seasonal distribution. This is the result of a bias-correction downscaling technique, that we used to improve the spatial resolution of projections from global climate models. The new downscaled data enable everyone to quantify the changes in climate variables such as temperature and precipitation over the country’s different regions .

Even if it is difficult to reconstruct more long term climate data before the early 20th century for Vietnam, on can rely on proxies for environmental change, or from historical archives, which have their own bias. But this embryonic environmental history already shows that Vietnamese society has long lived in the middle of climate events. What is particularly interesting in Vietnam climate history is the early emergence of political structures that echo the constant need to adapt to or control natural events. Even if the climate issue was not the same as it is today, there were already political responses to climatic hazards that can highlight today’s climate actions as well.

At the forefront of local and global pressures

The Mekong River delta is one of the largest deltas in the world, currently home to 17 million people and supplying more than half of Vietnam’s rice production. The region is facing several threats : some arise from ongoing climate change, and others from human activities in the delta or upstream. Global climate change will drive rising temperature and precipitation changes in the delta, just as in other regions of Vietnam, but the very low elevation of the delta makes it a hotspot for another threat: rising sea level. Indeed, the average altitude of the delta is only about 80 cm above present sea level. Projections of future sea-level rise for the end of the century range between +24 cm to +84 cm, depending on the climate scenario, which means that large parts of the delta could fall below sea-level by the end of the century, or even earlier, should worst-case scenarios of polar ice-sheet destabilization become reality.

However, in the short to mid-term, parts of the delta may fall below sea-level not because of climate change but because of human activities in the delta. The delta is actually losing elevation , at a rate much higher than global sea-level rise. Groundwater over-extraction is driving subsidence, which is the gradual lowering of the land surface because of sediment compaction. Subsidence rates can reach several centimeters per year in some places. The current rate of sea-level rise is about 3.6 mm/year while the rate of subsidence reaches up to 5 cm/year.

In addition, the delta also faces increasing saline water intrusions in surface waters during the dry season, with negative impacts on agriculture and aquaculture. The phenomenon is mainly driven by riverbed level erosion , caused by sediment starvation from upstream dams and sand mining. In the coming decades, riverbed erosion actually appears as the greatest factor which could drive large increases in saline water intrusions. In a worst-case scenario, areas affected by salt intrusion could increase by nearly 40% by midcentury, decreasing fresh water availability and the area suitable for rice cropping during dry season. In these extreme scenarios, we found that about 140,000 ha (10%) of current winter-spring rice cropping area would no longer be suitable for rice cultivation.

Thus, controlling groundwater extraction and sand mining appear as the most efficient mitigation measures to limit elevation loss and saline water intrusions in the coming decades. On the ground however, farmers can partly adjust their techniques, but they would also face the dire necessity to switch crop or even migrate when yields become too low… In the end, adaptation strategies always combine a mix of endogenous decisions and governmental decisions that interact and influence each other .

Socio-economic impacts at the national level

At the national level, it is possible to estimate the impact of climate variability on some key social aspects and economic sectors. For instance, using monthly data on mortality rate during the 2000-2018 period, we find robust evidence on the effect of extreme temperature, in particular cold and heat waves on mortality. Climate change would also affect the prevalence of many infectious diseases. But health is just the most extreme aspect of the potential impact of climate change on Vietnamese society and households.

Indeed, households could also be affected in their daily life at work. Using the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey, we find that one additional day that has temperature higher than 33 Celsius degree causes a decline in income, as well as escalated income inequality as low-income families suffered a loss of 1.51% more than other groups. Using the Labor Force Survey, we find that a 1°C rise in temperature leads to a 0.5% expansion in gender hourly wages gap. On the demand side of the labor market, using the Vietnam Enterprise Survey, our research shows that an increase in temperature would reduce firms’ revenue, total factor productivity, output, and size.

In the energy sector, as temperature increases, demand for electricity rises. It is estimated that a 1 degree Celcius increase would raise residential electricity consumption by about 5% and firm electricity consumption by 4%. In addition, energy using fossil fuels releases more pollutant emissions. On the supply side, our study focuses on the hydropower sector and water flow in main river basins in Vietnam. Most climate forecasts say that increased precipitation will enable hydropower production to rise in the future. However, more variability in rainfall during a year will need more investment in bigger water reservoirs to store water for hydropower generation.

These impacts on some key economic sectors of the Vietnamese economy build up an aggregate direct damage over Vietnam of ~4.5% for a 1.5°C increase in global average temperatures, and ~6.7% GDP loss for a 2°C increase in global average temperature. Of course, economic sectors are not autonomous from each other or from the rest of the world. They interact through intermediate consumptions, exports and imports, but also through the financial interlinkages with the rest of the world and more broadly the decisions of the financial sector. By plugging the direct damages into a macroeconomic model, i.e. mainly the impacts on rice, the energy sector, labor productivity, technical change, but also mortality and health, we estimated that on average, the macroeconomic damages are 30% higher than the direct damages. This result shows how crucial it is to not just stop at the sectoral level but also to understand how macroeconomic linkages might amplify the climate impacts.

Adaptation strategies as development strategies

At the level of the Mekong region, local adaptation decisions are insufficient. Cooperation over the use of water is central to the region adaptation and mitigation capacity. Transboundary governance becomes part of the urgent need to move toward a just transition and with the general principle that water is a basic need and right of every Mekong inhabitant. The recent Mekong River Commission initiative called “proactive regional planning” could play an integrative role, via joint mitigation investment projects and adaptation measures between countries, actors, and sectors.

For decades, Vietnam has been working to improve the country’s adaptation policy framework. As a result, significant progress has been made to strengthen community resilience and adaptive capacity, reduce natural disaster risks, and limit climate change impacts. However, vulnerability and risk issues have not been adequately reflected in climate change adaptation and disaster prevention strategies, particularly in infrastructure development, due to a lack of appropriate evaluation and decision-support tools. Meanwhile financing and international aid is lagging behind.

It should be clear however that major challenges will not be only addressed by increasing financing as some adaptation projects or even policies do not clearly contribute to reducing risks and vulnerabilities. Just as adaptation is the result of complex interactions between planned policies and individual choices, it is the complex interplay between official climate change finance and local social dynamics that shapes the structure of adaptation funding. In a region such as the Mekong Delta, people have been adapting to changing conditions for centuries and continue to do so even in the absence of policy incentives or constraints, as evidenced by the major land-use changes that have taken place over the past two decades.

It is therefore necessary to consider approaches and decision support models that take into account both spontaneous and planned adaptation , as both are sources of innovation or major changes in system dynamics. There is also an urgent need to develop and implement comprehensive planning, monitoring and evaluation systems for adaptation and more generally to mainstream adaptation into the whole development planning and budgeting processes of the country.

Adaptation to the inevitable impacts of climate change is thus a matter of development strategy for Vietnam, in parallel with its own ambitious contribution to the necessary emission reduction efforts announced at COP26.

This article was co-written by Frédéric Thomas (CNRS, laboratoire MIVEGEC), Thi Phuong Linh Huynh (IRD), Toan Thuy Le (CESBIO), Thi Thu Ha Nguyen (LASTA), Truong Toan Nguyen (University of Queensland), Tu Anh Nguyen (IMHEN), Frédéric Thomas (IRD), Chi Quang Truong (CTU), Quoc Thanh Vo (CTU), and Canh Toan Vu (ISET).

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The Vietnamese Struggle with Climate Change

Located centimeters above sea level is the agricultural epicenter of the world’s sixth largest producer of rice and fourth largest aquaculture economy, which faces a challenge of global proportions.

The Mekong Delta, the southernmost region of Vietnam, is fighting one of the most severe effects of climate change in the world today. Rising sea levels and increasingly sporadic weather patterns are straining the economically vital lowland, which is threatening the survival of the major agricultural industries that made up 15.3 percent of the national GDP in 2017. If action is not taken to counteract the literal rising tide of climate change, then the people of the Mekong will incur significant economic and social damages and may even become displaced by the incapacity to live where they once called home.

Past Action

With such a vital part of Vietnam and greater Southeast Asia facing such a growing threat, a resolution was passed in 2017 by the Vietnamese government to domestically accommodate the changing region. It is called Resolution 120, and it has planned on “actively responding to climate change,” and “enhancing the management of natural resources and environmental protection.” Goals included increasing forest coverage to nine percent from the 2017 level of 4.3 percent and increasing the amount of high tech, sustainable agriculture practices to 80 percent of all production by 2050.

Furthermore, the national government of Vietnam formally recognized the threats of climate change on the Mekong Delta by stating: “Sustainable development of the Mekong Delta is of the interests of the nation.” Given the international community’s inability to limit carbon emissions, the declaration of the Vietnamese government about the local importance of sustainable development could perhaps serve as an important model of domestic actions that could be taken around the globe.

The resolution also emphasizes water resources as the core issue that should drive policy development for the Mekong as the water systems are the drivers of the region’s economy. For example, one concrete action currently functioning is an organization of the different ecosystems that live alongside the rice paddies and fisheries. Known as the Territory Space Organization (translated from Vietnamese), the policy splits the land into specific purposes depending on the local ecosystem, which enables a more streamlined and organized approach to sustainable development. Under the collaboration of several ministries of the national government and the National Committee on Climate Change, the Vietnamese national government has taken climate change very seriously.

Looking Ahead

Today, there have been continued efforts to protect the Mekong Delta, its industries, and, most importantly, its people. A total of US$1.6 billion under Resolution 120 have been used on activities in the delta, and earlier this year, the World Bank convened for the Mekong Delta Conference on June 19. The Conference underscored stronger institutional administration by the international community for the success of Resolution 120. As such Ousmane Dione, World Bank Country Director for Vietnam, declared that an additional US$880 million had been committed to helping the resolution’s implementation.

Later in his speech to the Vietnamese Congress, Dione decreed, “Efficient mobilization and use of financial resources has to be prioritized.” This serves as a call from the international community that the Vietnamese government needs to step up the funding for its sustainable development. Specifically the Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, who holds the discretion of the Ministry of Finance’s distribution of funds for the Mekong Delta, is the individual most accountable for the success of these projects in the coming years.

While Vietnam’s current plans are necessary for the survival of the people in the Mekong Delta and the region’s economy, the reality is that they are left cleaning up a mess someone else made. Despite their minuscule carbon footprints, it is the people who are most vulnerable — like the small rice farmer in the Mekong — that are most vulnerable to our quickly changing climate. More frequent and severe extreme weather, significant flooding, and drought are displacing innocent people. Vietnam had the 27th largest carbon footprint in 2017, accounting for .59 percent of total fossil CO2 emissions that year. Its impact on the global greenhouse effect is a drop in the bucket of climate change with such a small output of carbon such that the only real control the Vietnamese government and people have exists in their capabilities to adapt to whatever the rising global temperature causes. The future of the small, Vietnamese rice farmer’s home lies more in the hands of our world’s largest governments and corporations than in his own.

Nick Nocita

Nick is the Chief of Staff for the HIR. He is interested in environmental justice and human rights law. He has previously written about corrupt humanitarian aid and the politicization of the Olympics.

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Environment and Narrative in Vietnam

• © 2024
• Ursula K. Heise 0 ,
• Chi P. Pham 1

Department of English, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

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Institute of Literature, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, Hanoi, Vietnam

• Demonstrates the complex history of national stewardship and ecological management in Vietnam
• Seeks to build a knowledge on ecological crises and environmental cultures of South East Asia
• Contributes interdisciplinary research from anthropologists, art historians, and scholars of language and literature

Part of the book series: Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment (LCE)

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Table of contents (14 chapters)

Front matter, introduction: environment and narrative in vietnam.

• Ursula K. Heise, Chi P. Pham

Theoretical Foundations

Protected area narratives in vietnam: an anthropological and mesological approach.

• Christian Culas

Indigenous and Spiritual Narratives of the Environment

Legends of forest spirits in the central vietnamese highlands.

• Thi Kim Ngan Nguyen

Tai Narrative, Ritual, and Discourses of the Environment in North Central Vietnam

• Achariya Choowonglert

Animal Mercy Release, Environmental Conservation, and the Media in Vietnam

• Mai Hoàng Thạch

War Narratives and the Environment

Narratives of the natural world in vietnamese postwar movies (1986–2020).

• Cam-Giang Hoang

Ecopedagogy, War Memories, and Sensory Experiences of Nature in Contemporary Vietnamese Children’s Literature

• Montira Rato

Đỉnh Q. Lê’s The Pure Land and Ecological Phantoms: Levitating Sarcophagi, Submerged Spirits

• Conor Lauesen

Communism, Global Markets, and the Environment

Civil war, socialism’s underworld, and the environment, ecologies of coffee sustainability in the central highlands.

• Sarah G. Grant

Environmental Literature in Vietnam

Environmental travel narratives in the magazine nam phong.

• Nguyen Phuong Ngoc

Gender and Environment in Nguyễn Ngọc Tư’s Narratives

• Kim Lan Cao

When the City Speaks Up: Nature, City, and Identity in Lê Minh Hà’s Phố vẫn gió

• Trần Tịnh Vy

Political Dimensions in Vietnamese Ecofiction

Chi P. Pham

• Literature and the Environment
• environmental crises
• Vietnam literature
• South Asian Literature
• environmental humanities
• environmental cultures
• nation-building

About this book

Environment and Narrative in Vietnam  brings together essays about Vietnam’s natural environments and environmental crises from the perspective of culture, with particular attention to narrative templates that have shaped perceptions and interactions with nature on the part of different communities. The essays in this volume explore theoretical problems in the assessment of ecological stewardship and attitudes toward nature across cultures. They focus on both majority (Kinh) and ethnic minority narratives about nature and seek to outline how different ideas of modernization, from the French colonial project to the Marxist understanding of nature on the part of the Communist government, have shaped perceptions, policies, and activism regarding the environment. The essays also highlight the tensions and confluences between nationalist nation-building projects and economic integration into global markets for environmental thinking over the last half-century, and they analyze how texts from literary fiction to contemporary news media represent different environmental cultures in Vietnam. Taken together, the essays in Environment and Narrative in Vietnam begin to fill a significant gap in the understanding of environmental cultures in Asia and in the Environmental Humanities. This is an open access book.

Editors and Affiliations

Ursula K. Heise

About the editors

Ursula K. Heise  is holds the Marcia H. Howard Term Chair in Literary Studies. She is co-founder and Director of the Lab for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS) at UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. Her research and teaching focus on contemporary literature and the environmental humanities; environmental literature, arts, and cultures in the Americas, Germany, Japan, and Spain; literature and science; science fiction; and narrative theory. She is co-editor of Literatures, Cultures and the Environment series for Palgrave Macmillan.

Chi P. Pham  is a Tenured Researcher at the Institute of Literature, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, Hanoi. She received her first Ph.D. degree in Literary Theory in Vietnam and her second Ph.D. degree in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Riverside (USA). She is the secretary of the Association   for the Study of Literature and Ecology in ASEAN (ASLE-ASEAN).

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Environment and Narrative in Vietnam

Editors : Ursula K. Heise, Chi P. Pham

Series Title : Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41184-7

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan Cham

eBook Packages : Literature, Cultural and Media Studies , Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-031-41183-0 Published: 30 January 2024

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-031-41186-1 Due: 01 March 2024

eBook ISBN : 978-3-031-41184-7 Published: 29 January 2024

Series ISSN : 2946-3157

Series E-ISSN : 2946-3165

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XVI, 351

Number of Illustrations : 15 b/w illustrations

Topics : Literary Theory , Asian Literature , History, general , Environmental Communication

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Country report vietnam 2021 - environmental policy in vietnam.

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The second issue of the Country Report takes a critical look at the environmental situation and policy in Vietnam. The first part deals with some basic factors for environmental policy in Vietnam, including the framework conditions for them such as their anchoring in the political system, the way political conflicts are negotiated in Vietnam, environmental awareness and behaviour among Vietnamese people. In the second part, a few selected more closely: Climate policy, environmental protection in industry and agriculture sectors, nature conservation, the problems of the rapidly growing large cities and the way Vietnam cooperates with other countries to tackle environmental issues...

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Addressing Environmental Pollution

Vietnam is among five countries in the world that account for nearly 60% of the ocean’s plastic pollution. Plastic pollution exacerbates the impacts of climate change as it harms marine life, disrupting life-sustaining ecosystems. Vietnam’s rapid growth has also caused various environmental pollution challenges, largely spurred by agriculture, transportation, and industrial production. USAID supports Vietnam to address these challenges in targeted areas through a collective impact approach while demonstrating benefits to public health, employment, and sustainable economic growth. 

• USAID Reducing Pollution strengthens networks of local organizations, government, private sector, and academic institutions working together to reduce environmental pollution. [2021-2026, $11,300,000] 
• Collective Action for Water Conservation forms a community of concerned stakeholders and supports them to raise public awareness, collect data, and advocate for better local water conservation practices to reduce water pollution. [2020-2023, $1,500,000]
• Local Solutions for Plastic Pollution supports three cities to create and carry out action plans to reduce plastic pollution. [2020-2023, $1,600,000] 
• Vietnam Action Against Plastic Pollution creates inclusive circular economies together with local and national governments, communities, and the private sector to reduce plastic pollution at its source.  [2022-2027, $23,400,000]

Biodiversity Conservation

Reducing pollution, usaid biodiversity conservation, vietnam climate change country profile, related updates, earth day 2024 message from usaid/vietnam mission director aler grubbs.

• April 19, 2024

USAID Collaborates with Major Vietnamese Grocery Store Chain to Reduce Plastic Pollution

Usaid reduces plastic waste in vietnam’s hospitals.

• February 23, 2024

USAID Expands Environmental Education in the Mekong Delta

• January 26, 2024

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Addressing Environmental Pollution in Vietnam

BOSTON, Massachusetts — On November 15, 2022, USAID and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Vietnam (MONRE) announced the launch of Reducing Pollution, a five-year environmental project with an $11.3 million budget. Winrock International, one of USAID’s nonprofit partners, implemented the Reducing Pollution plan to address environmental pollution in Vietnam.

Memorandum of Understanding

The Reducing Pollution project is the product of USAID and Vietnam’s Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) from January 2022. According to USAID, the MoU and the Reducing Pollution project directly address “air quality management; integrated water resource management and water security; conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity” and several other environmental factors.

To effectively address Vietnam’s most pressing environmental challenges, USAID will depend on the combined input from the Government of Vietnam, social and community organizations, the public and private sectors and local residents. In addition to creating economic and social opportunities for the citizens of Vietnam, this project has the potential to assist people in poverty and their overall well-being.

The Effects of Environmental Pollution on Vietnam’s Poor

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 60,000 people in Vietnam died from air pollution-related diseases in 2016. Vietnam has dangerous levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), which can reach the deep areas of the lungs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) define fine particulate matter as tiny bits “ of solids or liquids that are in the air ,” which can be natural substances like soil or dust, or “secondary sources” that let off toxic gasses, such as industrial plants and construction sites. Some of the leading causes of Vietnam’s air pollution include transportation, agriculture and waste management.

Due to social, economic and geographical factors, risks associated with air pollution primarily affect people in poverty. One study in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam found that poor adults and children had higher exposure to unhealthy particle matter across two districts. Another study found that higher particulate matter in the dry season led to an increase in children hospitalized with acute lower respiratory infections.

Not only are Vietnam’s poor more exposed to poor environmental conditions, but according to the Poverty-Environment Partnership , “they have lower resistance to infection; they pay more for environmental health services; and when they fall ill, they lose income and even their jobs.”

Environmental pollution in Vietnam also impacts the economy. The World Bank estimates that Vietnam loses an annual 5% of its GDP due to the effects of air pollution. To address all of these issues effectively, the Reducing Pollution project aims to engage and consult with ordinary Vietnamese citizens who face the dangers of air pollution on an everyday basis.

Vietnam Takes the Lead

To combat environmental pollution in Vietnam, the Reducing Pollution plan emphasizes the efforts and experiences of local residents. While USAID will help fund and assist with Vietnam’s Reducing Pollution efforts, local Vietnamese organizations will be at the forefront of the project and its initiatives.

USAID stated that it would “make grants to a local organization to serve as the ‘backbone’ for each collective impact initiative.” Local leaders will be encouraged to educate other residents in Vietnam about the issue of air pollution and promote behavior change at an individual level.

At the launch event, Minister Tran Hong Ha stated that the Reducing Pollution project aimed “to address multi-sector pollution and mobilize the participation of different stakeholders for environmental protection.”

With local actors utilizing a variety of perspectives to assist in decision-making, Reducing Pollution may help reduce the life-threatening effects of air pollution on lower socioeconomic communities and the general population.

– Anna Lee Photo: Unsplash

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In Vietnam, farmers reduce methane emissions by changing how they grow rice

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LONG AN, Vietnam (AP) — There is one thing that distinguishes 60-year-old Vo Van Van’s rice fields from a mosaic of thousands of other emerald fields across Long An province in southern Vietnam’s Mekong Delta: It isn’t entirely flooded.

That and the giant drone, its wingspan similar to that of an eagle, chuffing high above as it rains organic fertilizer onto the knee-high rice seedlings billowing below.

Using less water and using a drone to fertilize are new techniques that Van is trying and Vietnam hopes will help solve a paradox at the heart of growing rice: The finicky crop isn’t just vulnerable to climate change but also contributes uniquely to it.

Rice must be grown separately from other crops and seedlings have to be individually planted in flooded fields; backbreaking, dirty work requiring a lot of labor and water that generates a lot of methane, a potent planet-warming gas that can trap more than 80-times more heat in the atmosphere in the short term than carbon dioxide.

A worker surveys Vo Van Van’s rice fields after spraying fertilizer over the fields using a drone in Long An province in southern Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

It’s a problem unique to growing rice, as inundated fields stop oxygen from entering the soil, creating the conditions for methane-producing bacteria. Rice paddies contribute 8% of all human-made methane in the atmosphere, according to a 2023 Food and Agriculture Organization report .

Vietnam is the world’s third-largest rice exporter, and the staple importance to Vietnamese culture is palpable in the Mekong Delta. The fertile patchwork of green fields crisscrossed by silvery waterways has helped stave off famine since the Vietnam War ended in 1975. Rice isn’t just the mainstay of most meals , it is considered a gift from the gods and continues to be venerated.

It is molded into noodles and sheets and fermented into wine. In busy markets, motorcyclists lug 10-kilogram (22-pound) bags to their homes. Barges haul mountains of the grain up and down the Mekong River. Rice kernels are then dried and hulled by machines before they’re packed for sale in factories, lined from floor to ceiling with sacks of rice.

Rice shop owner Vo Tan Nha and his wife eat bowls of rice for lunch in their shop in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Van has been working with one of Vietnam’s largest rice exporters, the Loc Troi Group, for the past two years and is using a different method of irrigation known as alternate wetting and drying, or AWD. This requires less water than traditional farming since his paddy fields aren’t continuously submerged. They also produce less methane.

Using the drone to fertilize the crops saves on labor costs. With climate shocks pushing a migration to cities , Van said that it’s harder to find people to work the farms. It also ensures precise amounts of fertilizers are applied. Too much fertilizer causes the soil to release Earth-warming nitrogen gases.

Workers scoop paddy rice into the mouth of a vacuum tube on a boat for processing at Hoang Minh Nhat, a rice export company in Can Tho, Vietnam, on Friday, Jan. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

A worker carries a bag of rice at a warehouse in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024. AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Once crops are harvested, Van no longer burns the rice stubble — a major cause of air pollution in Vietnam and in its neighbors, as well as Thailand and India . Instead, it’s collected by the Loc Troi Group for sale to other companies that use it as livestock feed and for growing straw mushrooms, a popular addition to stir-fries.

Van benefits in various ways. His costs are down while his farm yield is the same. Using organic fertilizer enables him to sell to European markets where customers are willing to pay a premium for organic rice. Best of all, he has time to tend to his own garden.

“I am growing jackfruit and coconut,” he said.

A security guard walks across a warehouse packed with bags of rice packaged for shipment at Hoang Minh Nhat, a rice export company in Can Tho, Vietnam, Friday, Jan. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Loc Troi Group CEO Nguyen Duy Thuan said that those methods enable farmers to use 40% less rice seed and 30% less water. Costs for pesticides, fertilizer and labor also are lower. Thuan said Loc Troi — which exports to more than 40 countries including in Europe, Africa, the United States and Japan — is working with farmers to expand acreage using its methods from the current 100 hectares to 300,000 hectares.

That’s a long way from Vietnam’s own target of growing “high quality, low emission rice” on 1 million hectares of farmland, an area more than six times the size of London, by 2030. Vietnamese officials estimate that would reduce production costs by a fifth and increase farmers’ profits by more than $600 million, according to the state media outlet Vietnam News.

Vietnam recognized early on that it had to reconfigure its rice sector. It was the largest rice exporter, ahead of both India and Thailand, to sign a 2021 pledge to reduce methane emissions at the annual United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

Restaurant owner Hien Ky prepares fried rice in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Each year, the industry suffers losses of over $400 million, according to recent research by Vietnam’s Water Resources Science Institute . This is worrying, not just for the country but for the world.

The Mekong Delta, where 90% of Vietnam’s exported rice is farmed, is one of the world’s regions most vulnerable to climate change. A U.N. climate change report in 2022 warned of heavier flooding in the wet season and droughts in the dry season . Scores of dams built upstream in China and Laos have reduced the river’s flow and the amount of sediment that it carries downriver to the sea. The sea level is rising and turning the river’s lower reaches salty. And unsustainable levels of groundwater pumping and sand mining for construction have added to the problems.

Incense, placed in a cup of rice, burns on an altar outside a restaurant to seek prosperity in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

A group of people fills the sidewalk outside a restaurant as they share dishes made from rice in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Changing centuries-old forms of rice farming is expensive, and even though methane is a more potent cause of global warming than carbon dioxide, it only receives 2% of climate financing, Ajay Banga, the World Bank’s president, told the U.N. climate summit in Dubai last year.

Combating methane emissions is the “one rare, clear area” where low-cost, effective and replicable solutions exist, Banga said. The World Bank is supporting Vietnam’s efforts and has begun helping the Indonesian government to expand climate resilient farming as a part of more than a dozen projects to reduce methane worldwide.

The hope is that more countries will follow, though there is no “one-size-fits-all,” said Lewis H. Ziska, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University. “The one commonality is that water is needed,” he said, adding that different methods of planting and irrigation can help manage water better.

Growing more genetically diverse rice varieties would also help because some are more resilient to excess heat or require less water, while others might even emit less methane, he said.

Nguyen Van Nhut, director of the rice export company Hoang Minh Nhat, said its suppliers are using varieties of rice that can thrive even when the water is briny and the heat is extreme.

Now, the business is adapting to the unseasonal rains that make it harder to dry the rice, adding to risks from mold or insect damage. Typically, rice is dried in the sun immediately after harvest, but Nhut said his company has drying facilities in their packaging factory and also will install machinery to dry the grains closer to the fields.

“We don’t know which month is the rainy season, like we did before,” he said.

A farmer sprays fertilizer onto the rice fields in Long An province in southern Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

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Bài mẫu Speaking band 8 – Describe an environmental issue in your country

Describe an environmental issue in your country.

An environmental issue là một chủ đề lạ trong Speaking, vậy chúng ta cùng thực hành nhé

Hãy cùng nghe cô Trương Thu Hương – Academic Manager của SYM English phân tích chủ đề này nhé

Phân tích cách triển khai

Sample answer (band 8.0).

Today I’d like to tell you about a pressing environmental issue in my country Vietnam.

It’s air pollution, especially in big cities where there are large volumes of vehicles. This issue is getting more serious in recent years and has become one of the top priorities of the Vietnamese government.

In the case of air pollution in Vietnam, the government has declared state of alert . Thick fog over the past few months turned out to be polluted air. The consequence is very alarming : the number of respiratory cases has rocketed; a growing number of elderly people is complaining of the worse air they breathe in everyday.

Air pollution can cause long-term effects on humans’ nerves, brain, kidneys, liver and other organs. Other health issues such as heart disease and lung cancer would be worrying.

In my opinion, there are two steps that can be taken to alleviate this problem.

Firstly, public transport and eco-friendly vehicles should be encouraged, and prices of motorcycles should be raised to discourage citizens from using them regularly. By doing that, the amount of smoke coming from vehicles would be greatly reduced.

Secondly, citizens should be provided with guidelines on caring for health, particularly wearing masks on a daily basis, rinsing noses and gargle with salt water after being exposed to exhaust emitted from vehicles’fumes.

That’s all I want to say.

Từ vựng hay trong bài

• Be pressing : nhức nhối (vấn đề)
• Top priority (ies) : ưu tiên hàng đầu
• State of alert : tình trạng báo động
• Be alarming : ở mức báo động
• Be respiratory : thuộc về hô hấp
• To breathe in st : hít vào cái gì
• To alleviate : giảm nhẹ vấn đề
• Be eco-friendly : thân thiện với môi trường
• To rinse : rửa sạch
• To gargle: súc miệng
• Exhaust : khí thải (từ xe cộ)

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SYM English chúc bạn học IELTS thật tốt bài mẫu Describe an environmental issue in your country nhé

Ms. Trương Thu Hương – Academic Manager

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Environmental issues that received the highest attention among people in Vietnam 2021

Most concerned environmental issues among people in vietnam in 2021.

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February 2021

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Original question: “Please choose the environmental issues that you are concerned about?”.

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