The Straits Times (Singapore) November 13, 2008 Thursday

A ticking time bomb in Vietnam

David Koh, For The Straits Times Flood control in Vietnam needs urgent attention. Last week, the party secretary of Hanoi city, Mr Pham Quang Nghi, apologised for the insensitive remarks he had made while the city was submerged under a terrible flood. He had accused ordinary Vietnamese of having become too reliant on the state and unable to help themselves. The last time a member of the Vietnamese communist party's Politburo, as Mr Nghi is, had to apologise to the nation was decades ago. His comments are clearly untrue when viewed in the light of all that the Vietnamese people have done for themselves in the past 50 years or so. If they had left everything to the state, the wars against the French and the Americans would not have succeeded. And when socialist practices dragged down the economy after the war, millions of Vietnamese took matters into their own hands and fled in boats. The Vietnamese are clearly a self-reliant people. Mr Nghi was clearly under stress when he made those remarks. He must have been frustrated by the helplessness of the city authorities in the face of the 500mm of rain that poured down on the last day of last month. According to city mayor Nguyen The Thao, the drains in Hanoi can accommodate only 170mm of rain over two days. The coming expansion of the drainage system will increase its capacity to only 360mm. But the flooding was caused by more than heavy rains and a poor drainage system. The lack of enforcement of building regulations and the disappearance of many of the lakes around Hanoi over the last two decades were also contributory factors. If people had not built houses encroaching on the lakes, the lakes would have helped to

drain the rainwater. About 20 people died in the floods, among them students who drowned on their way to school. Hundreds of cars and tens of thousands of motorcycles were soaked in muddy water. Ugly arguments have broken out as to who would be responsible for the damage to cars left in underground carparks. Also, food prices have rocketed. The prices of fresh food, for example, have shot up 10 times. The dyke system that surrounds Hanoi also threatened to give way but the national government mobilised the military to keep the structures in place. But the authorities did not issue flood warnings even though the waters rose to waistlevel in many places. If ordinary Vietnamese had not helped themselves but relied only on the government, more might have died. Hanoi's rapid urbanisation has outstripped the ability of its government to manage the accompanying problems. This story is likely to be repeated if there are huge amounts of rainfall in other cities of Vietnam. Experts have warned that Ho Chi Minh City may face the same fate as Hanoi. The government may now pay more attention to the threat of flooding in cities as a result of what happened in Hanoi, but urban areas are not the only places at risk. The delta is covered by high water flows from the Mekong River for four months every year. A rise in sea levels would mean the delta being submerged for longer periods of time. This will severely affect the ability of the delta to produce rice. According to the International Rice Research Institute, about 52 per cent of Vietnamese rice production comes from the delta. Two-thirds of the population are engaged in agriculture, and rice cultivation takes up 4.2 million ha out of 5.7 million ha of arable land. Former prime minister Vo Van Kiet said in March that around 1.5 to 2 million ha of delta land could be lost to the sea. Failure to take heed of the warning signs and to improve

drainage and flood prevention in the Mekong River delta could have catastrophic results. The writer is a Senior Fellow and Coordinator of Regional Political and Strategic Studies at the Institute of Southeast Asia.