Effects of Flood prevention and flood adaptation policies on
rice production in the Vietnamese Mekong river delta; a
literature based study
(Consulted from: https://www.bestpricevn.com/travelguide/destinations-1/Mekong-Delta-227.html)
By: Floris te Velde 11266465 Miko Balthaus 11201908 Arie Vreeke 11289473 Supervised by: Jaap Rothuizen & Andres Verzijl 23-12-2018
Table of contents
IntroductionResearch approach Theoretical Framework
Research methods and interdisciplinary integration Results
Introduction
With 4800 kilometers in length, the Mekong River is the longest river in Southeast Asia. Annually, the river discharges about 5 x 10^11 m^3 into the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD), of which 85% during the wet season and 15% during the dry season (Le et al., 2006). The Mekong River Delta has a total area of 55000 km^2, with 16000 km^2 belonging to Cambodia, and the other 39000 km^2 belonging to Vietnam. While the river delta in Cambodia is still an almost natural area, the river delta in Vietnam is mostly inhabited, and intensively used for agriculture (Hung et al., 2013).
According to the Statistical Yearbook of Vietnam (2017), 17.738.000 are living in the VMD.
The current and past flood related policies have been focussing on flood prevention, which has had a great impact on the way (rice) agriculture is practiced in the VMD region (Benedikter, 2013). There are multiple reasons why rice production - and thus flood policies - plays such a huge role in this area. Firstly, rice is a crop that is consumed in large amounts by the Vietnamese people. On average, the rice consumption in Vietnam per capita is 191.1 kg a year. That is in contrast to the 57.2 kg per capita per year, which is the worldwide average (OECD-FAO Agricultural outlook, 2015). It is safe to say it is accountable for a significant part of their diet. Secondly, Vietnam is the third largest rice exporter in the world (Wassman et al., 2004) and the Mekong Delta distributes more than 90% of total rice exported from Vietnam (Nguyen & Singh, 2006). Many people are, therefore, dependent on this for their livelihoods as it is an important source of income for the population living in the
Vietnamese Mekong Delta.
Flood prevention made it possible for rice farmers to harvest three crops a year instead of the regular 1 or 2 a year, which caused major economic growth. Moreover, flood prevention structures were built to protect urban areas from flooding and creating more safety from massive floods (Wesselink et al., 2015). Between 1996 and 2000 many of these man made structures were built in order to control the Mekong river (Biggs et al., 2009). However, years later the negative effects of this more protective and control focus started to be discussed by various researchers. Increased soil
degradation, increased salinity, reduced sedimentation, reduced washing out of acids and impaired fisheries are all discussed as consequences from flood prevention. Because of this, researchers have been calling for preservation and even restoration of seasonal floods in the VMD and that policies should thus be focussing on flood adaptation instead of flood prevention (Käkönen, 2008; Marchand, Pham, & Le, 2014; Nguyen, Vo, & Huynh, 2015). In the Netherlands a paradigm shift in policies has already taken place. Water management changed from flood prevention to more adaptive and participatory approach (Ritzema & Van Loon-Steensma, 2015) in order to cope with climate change. The VMD is also a very densely populated delta and the paradigm shift which occurred in the Netherlands might also be good solution in Vietnam.
Therefore, the research question is as follows: What are the social-economical effects of flood adaptation and flood prevention in the VMD? To be able to analyze this question and answer it properly the main question is broken down into two sub questions: What are the different effects of flood prevention and flood adaptation policies on rice production in the VMD? What are the social and economic effects of a change in rice production in the VMD on Vietnam?
In order to answer these questions, three different disciplines - anthropology, economy and social geography - worked together and provided one integrated framework to give a broader
understanding of the consequences of flood policies in the VMD. System thinking by Meadows (2015) is used to integrate the disciplines and give a clear visualisation of how this is done. System thinking will giving an answer to the main question and support our comprehensive analysis. In the next chapter our research approach and in particular system thinking will be explained. Then, background information on the theories about flood prevention and flood adaptation is provided. Next, our research methods and the importance of interdisciplinary integration is discussed. Thereafter, our main empirical findings are explained in the results. Lastly a conclusion and a discussion is provided.
Research approach
A helpful tool to analyse this problem is to make use of system thinking by Meadows (2015).
According to Meadows (2015, p.7): ''A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something.'' A system must consist of elements, interconnections and a purpose. Elements are the easiest to notice since they’re mostly visible things. The
interconnections are the relationships that hold elements together and usually operate through the flow of information. They will be explained in-depth in the results. Information holds systems together and plays a big role in determining how they operate. The purpose is even more difficult to see since this is not explicitly spoken or written and the only way to see the purpose is to observe how the system behaves (Meadows, 2015). Each system has its limits and if these are exceeded, the system may fall apart or behave in a different way. Systems can sometimes adapt to these changes themselves by showing resilience and self organization but this isn’t always the case (Meadows, 2015).
System thinking extends the scope of decisions accessible for solving an issue by widening our reasoning and helping us express issues in new and diverse ways. The standards of systems thinking make us mindful that there are no ideal arrangements; the decisions we make will affect different parts of the system. By envisioning the effect of each trade-off, we can limit its seriousness or even use it to our very own favorable position. System thinking ,thus, enables us to settle on informed decisions, while having to fall back on past scientific studies on the subject to strengthen the
argumentation. System thinking is additionally of value for recounting convincing stories that portray how a system operates. Systems are viable vehicles for distinguishing, portraying, and conveying your comprehension systems, especially in gatherings.
Theoretical framework
In this paper the effects of flood prevention and flood adaptation policies on rice production will be compared. To get a good understanding of the paper these concepts must first be described in detail to show what they mean and how they work.
Flooding keeps the so called ‘engine running’ in the VMD but on the other side it can also be harmful. The delta’s rice production system needs a constant inflow of water and sediments but it also needs some sort of protection against unexpected high waters. This is why there has been a debate for a long time about which control or prevention measures should be implemented. Flood adaptation revolves for a large part about being resilient against floods as a community. The community must be able to deal with the hazardous impacts and reorganize itself when disrupted. In other words, the community must be tolerant to the floods and reorganize itself when physical and socioeconomic disruption takes place. The community doesn’t ‘fight’ against the flooding but accepts that they occur and adapts itself to it. An example of this adaptation is to not be completely
dependent on roads and vehicles but switching to waterborne transportation when the flood has occurred (Liao, 2013).
Flood prevention on the other hand arises from the paradigm that flooding is damaging, thus undesirable, and focuses on stopping it entirely. This flood prevention paradigm is often dominant while its very one-dimensional and doesn’t take all the effects into consideration. It is usually implemented by creating technological systems through the construction of hydraulic engineering works like embankments and dykes. These embankments create relatively flood-free land which makes socio-economic developments possible in environments that would normally be too susceptible to floods. It only has a hydrological objective, ignoring the operation of natural environments. Typically land starts to subside because of soil compaction or the extraction of groundwater which makes protection against high water even more important to sustain the lands. This results in reinforcing and heightening the embankments and may cause a technological and institutional lock-in (van Staveren et al., 2018).
In the Netherlands, a paradigm shift from flood prevention towards adaptation was realized in 2001 which ended the vicious cycle of solely taking action through heightening and strengthening the
embankments after a disaster took place. No longer did they only focus on preventing floods, but potential impacts and risks of flooding were taken into account as well (Ritzema & van
Loon-Steensema, 2017). The new approach was based on three things: : 1) retaining excess water in the field by storing the water on the soil surface and in the soil profile; 2) increasing the storage capacity in the drainage system; 3) enabling controlled removal (Ritzema & Stuyt, 2015).
This reduced outflow of water in periods of heavy rainfall and made it possible to store more water in dry periods. This was beneficial for crop production, the vegetation and it reduced runoff rates. A similar development in the VMD could be beneficial for the area and prevent the issues coming from flood prevention.
A shift from vertical steering mechanisms towards a more horizontal approach could be a good thing as well. The farmers in the VMD had been dealing with the floods before all the flood prevention measures were taken so their knowledge could be useful. For this to be possible, good
communication is essential and this may be a problem in the VMD. To better understand this problem it is important that a distinction between formal and local knowledge is made. Formal knowledge is knowledge produced by formal institutions (e.g. universities, state). Local knowledge is knowledge the actors themself (e.g. farmers) have and is produced and reproduced by experience and the active use of it (Ehlert, 2012). In the results of this paper the differences between these forms of knowledge in the VMD will be explained and analyzed.
Research methods and interdisciplinary integration
In the paper the effects of flood prevention and flood adaptation will be looked at from three
different perspectives: Economy, social geography and anthropology. Since the problem has influence on a massive scale, a multidisciplinary perspective is needed to describe it in its entirety.
Ecological issues have consequences on the economy and this on its turn on the livelihoods of people.
With the use of system thinking the connections between certain disciplines should become more clear. It will help with visualizing these relations, especially when two variables indirectly influence each other through other variables. These relations may be hard to understand when they are only described in words but with the system it should be easier to see these connections.
With the use of a literature research, information and data will be gathered on the topic. Academic literature will be used for to provide secondary information. The general data needed is data that explains when and where these floods occur and how this has changed over the years to get a general understanding of the problem. Information about consequences of the flood prevention measures on the economy and economic growth are needed to get an idea on the long term effects. Information on migration flows, what causes these migration flows and the consequences of
migration in the delta needs to be gathered as well. Data on the cultural background of rice
production in the VMD needs to be gathered for a better understanding of its importance to the local inhabitants. How has the rice production been? How has it changed? How have people adapted to the changes?
The data found was first analyzed individually by every discipline in a disciplinary analysis. The disciplinary perspectives are combined and visualized in this paper through the use of system thinking.
Results
The system used to answer and analyze the research questions is shown in figure 1. In this paragraph, the system will be explained step by step. It will become clear how the three different disciplines (Economy, Social Geography, Anthropology) connect to each other and how they are integrated into one system. General theories concerning the three different disciplines will be explained and they will be used to analyze the specific case study.
As south east Asian countries are developing, their way of production is changing. Population growth and large scale capitalistic economies cause countries to become more institutionalized resulting in socio-cultural changes (Sugden & Punch, 2014). People will have to adapt to their changing
environment. This can cause problems in developing countries as the states formal knowledge changes and becomes more dominant and can intervene with traditional/local knowledge that people have been using for the past centuries (Ehlert, 2012).
Delta systems (like the VMD) are highly dynamic and the way people deal with delta’s is constantly changing. For this paper, delta’s are considered to be interconnected systems in which the effects of different factors on the hydraulic infrastructure of a delta are analyzed. Both large scale organized policy plans (building dikes to prevent floods) and local initiatives (e.g. pesticide and fertilizer use of farmers), have effect on the hydraulic infrastructure in a Delta (van Staveren, 2017). The problem is that the organizations making the larger policy plans are usually disconnected from the local actors, and knowledge between them is not well communicated.
During her research in the VMD, Ehlert (2012) discovered that while the comity of flood and storm control (CFSC) (formal knowledge/state) in Vietnam seemed to think about the flood season as something that should be prepared for with ‘possible emergency planning’, the local farmers
themselves couldn’t really give a clear answer on how they prepared for the upcoming flood season. It seems that while CFSC perceived the flood as an extraordinary event, the local population
perceived it as a very common phenomenon (Ehlert, 2012). Using adapted research methods Ehlert was able to discover the tacit aspects of local knowledge. Tacit knowledge is the knowledge people are so used to using in everyday life that it seems natural or instinctive to them.
Tacit knowledge is hard to share with institutes outside one’s own community because it’s not perceived as knowledge by the one holding it, even if local farmers get the chance to join in with the policy makers, they won’t realize the amounts of knowledge they have and won’t be able to share it accordingly. This has resulted in dominant policies based on formal knowledge. This can cause problems as formal knowledge and local knowledge in Vietnam differ from each other in some critical aspects. While the formal knowledge of local farmers is based around the existence of floods – by adapting to them and using them in their agricultural cycle – the states formal knowledge has been focussing on preventing these floods, ignoring the fact that this renders a large part of the local knowledge useless. This can result in the loss of tacit knowledge as it is not materialized and the only way it is reproduced in a community is by actively using the knowledge (Ehlert, 2012).
In the VMD, agricultural land has to be protected against unexpected high floods - resulting in flood prevention policies - while at the same time an inflow of water and sediment is needed in order to keep the soil fertile (van Staveren, 2017). Because of the dominant flood prevention policies, the
agricultural land does not get the fertile sediment it needs and salinization is occurring due to the absence of sufficient water to wash out the soil (Wesselink, 2015). This is visualized in the system in figure 1. Different forms of knowledge and thus the way agriculture is practised in the VMD is connected with the overall yield in the VMD. While flood prevention has a direct positive effect on the yield - as shown with the + arrow - figure 1 shows that it will also have a negative effect on the yield. As floods go down, the soil gets less nutrients and more salinization occurs which causes a decrease in the overall yield.
In 1986, a flood prevention policy became dominant in Vietnam which massively increased the amount of rice being exported because the flood prevention policies made it possible to grow three rice crops a year (van Staveren et al., 2018). Pesticide use in rice fields has also been steadily
increasing in Vietnam. In 1996, 65% of the total pesticides used in Vietnam were applied in the VMD and insecticides were used by 85% of rice growers in the VMD (Dung & Dung, 1999). Because of these changes pest outbreaks went down and it became easier to grow the crop. All these changes are seen as the main reasons for the rapid economic growth in both the VMD and Vietnam which made living standards two-thirds higher and placed Vietnam in the top 10 fastest developing countries (Dollar et al., 2004).
A the system shows, a flood prevention policy will eventually cause a decrease in overall yield as salinization increases and the nutrient in the soil decrease. A decrease in yield could be devastating for the inhabitants of the VMD. They are extremely reliant on rice production to make a living as 95% of the inhabitants rely on it as a source of income (GSOVN, 2016). Vietnam is world’s third largest rice exporter and the VMD is responsible for around 50% of the annual production (Wassman et al., 2014). 90% of the entire yield from the VMD is exported (Nguyen & Singh, 2006) which means that decreases in yields could even have a national impact. If the soils deteriorate too much, farmers are likely to have difficulty making a living from growing rice since they won’t be able to have stable yields anymore and possibly no yields at all. Farmers in the VMD have tried to grow other crops like vegetables and fruits but this didn’t go well because there’s a lack of markets for this (Maclean, 2002). This shows that it will be difficult for them to find an alternative crop to make a living from so they may be forced to migrate to other regions in search of other jobs since they won’t have the ability to be food secure anymore. Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for a healthy and active life. The concept of food security consists of four pillars which are: availability, access, utilization and stability (FAO, 1996)
Since 90% of the rice produced in the Mekong Delta is exported (Nguyen & Singh, 2006) and not used for meeting domestic demands, a decrease in production wouldn’t be directly related to food availability. It could still cause problems for the 95% of the people in the Mekong Delta that depend on the crop (GSOVN, 2016) as a source of income. These people could struggle earning a steady income to meet their own demands. A decrease in rice yields would mainly have an impact on the pillars of food stability and food access. Food stability refers to people that lose their access to the resources they need to consume enough food, either because they can’t overcome income shocks or because they lack reserves to smooth consumption. A common cause for unsteady access is climate variability which is also the case in the Mekong Delta.
Food access is about the entitlement people have to acquire enough resources to be able to buy adequate food (Schmidhuber & Tubiello, 2007). In the VMD people will lose access to food since less rice is being produced which results in less quantities available on food markets
Now that the system is explained the subquestion introduced in the introduction will be answered. What are the different effects of flood prevention and flood adaptation on rice production?
An important difference between flood adaptation and flood prevention is the effect it has on the floods itself. While flood prevention policies prevent the floods from happening, flood adaptation policies based around the existence of these floods. This will go together with different flood related policies (e.g. controlled flooding). To answer what the difference effects of flood adaptation and flood prevention in the VMD the effects of floods on the VMD’s environment are analyzed. As explained above, the absence of floods makes it possible to harvest three rice crops a year making the annual yield higher. However the absence of floods has different effects on the environment. Without the floods the soils don’t get sufficient nutrients and sediments to maintain their fertility, and in the coastal areas there is a lot of intrusion of seawater as the floods don’t drive the seawater back (van Staveren, 2017). This will cause the soil to deteriorate and will eventually result in a decrease in annual yield as the deteriorating soils won’t be able to maintain the current high yields (van Staveren, 2017). Another occurring problem is that the flood-free land obtained by flood prevention is subsiding due to a lack of sediment while the river beds themselves can’t lose their sediment anymore and become higher. This results in having to take increased measurements against high water. This will eventually cause a technological lock-in as policy makers run out of options due to the increasing difference between land and water (Lach et al., 2005).
Another aspect that has to be taken into account is that the acceptance of scientific knowledge by the farmers. As explained above Deltas are highly dynamic systems and; outside of what the state policies are, the decisions of local actors in how they perceive and use the dominant policy also has a large impact on the delta (van Staveren, 2017). With the introduction of flood prevention policies the floods in the VMD were reduced and a lot of the local knowledge was rendered useless; more scientific knowledge had to be used to adapt to these changes (Ehlert, 2012). Scientific knowledge seems to be quite easily accepted by farmers, however the general good of the VMD is not taken into account by local actors; scientific knowledge seems to be only accepted if it is perceived as problem solving for the farmers own/village land (Marzano, 2009). Flood prevention policies have different hydrological effects on different areas in the VMD and as farmers are only concerned with the land of their own village, they might hinder other villages in their way of living. A good example are the shrimp farms. Some farmers use their lands in the dry seasons as shrimp farms. For this they let their lands flood with salt water so they can breed shrimp (Tong, 2004). This, however, causes increased salinization and for some farmers/villages who don’t have the means to invest in such a project this means that their land will be degrading faster without them having the advantage of shrimp. Because the farmers are working as individual actors/groups, and the flood prevention policies have caused a big change in the way local actors have to deal with their soils (Ehlert, 2012), in overall the soils are deteriorating faster as farmers are only concerned with the land of their own village (Marzano, 2009).
So to conclude: Flood prevention has a direct positive effect on the yield, making it possible to harvest three rice crops a year instead of two. However it causes a deterioration in the soil meaning that in the long term the overall rice yield will go down. Also there is a risk of a technological lock-inn as rivers are becoming higher. Another problem is that farmers deal in different ways with their new environment causing the soils to deteriorate even faster. Flood adaptation will result in only being able to have two rice yield a year as new policies and knowledge will have to be found (e.g.
farmers will have to adapt to less new knowledge as they have been adapting to floods for centuries. Which - as explained above - will have a positive effect on the quality of the soil.
What are the social and economic effects of a change in rice production in the VMD on Vietnam? The policy reforms combined with the way rice was produced excessively in the Mekong Delta these last decades was to a great extent responsible for the rapid economic growth in Vietnam. This economic growth was great for the country and was the cause for, among other things, improved health care and a major poverty reduction. The fact that Vietnam is very dependent on rice
production in the Mekong Delta for economic advance may turn out to be its downfall since there’s no other form of agriculture that could immediately replace it. The national impact a major decrease in rice production in the Mekong Delta would have is a big decline in export and because of this, a decrease in economic growth. As explained above agriculture accounts for 30% of Vietnam's total earnings (Wassman et al., 2014) and the Mekong Delta accounts for 50% of total rice production of which 90% is being exported (Nguyen & Singh, 2006). No exact calculation of loss in total earnings can be made but these numbers give an idea of the impact it would have on the national economy. The regional impact will result in lots of people being forced to find other forms of income because rice yields won’t be consistent enough. The food security of these people will decline because their food stability and access to food will be reduced. If the soil quality deteriorates, less rice will be able to be grown so the farmers will experience income shocks which will be difficult to overcome and could make them lose access to the resource needed (money) to acquire adequate food. Their buying power will decrease and food prices may rise since less rice will be available on the local markets, even if this is only 10% of rice produced in the Mekong Delta. This may force them to migrate to other regions in search of other forms of income (Dun, 2011) which could prove to be drastic for the local economy. As the inhabitants of the VMD are so reliant on rice production, changes in rice production could be of major issue for the region. Alternative livelihoods are mostly unavailable. Some farmers made a change to shrimp fishing activities, however, that option is not very economically and environmentally sustainable (Be et al., 1999). In the study by Dun (2011) Vietnamese Mekong delta migrants, who migrated to nearby cities such as Phnom Penh, were interviewed and asked what the causes for migration were. Main findings were that livelihoods became under stress due to crop loss and by lack of alternatives. This is a quote from a 38 year old female from the An Giang Province (Dun 2011, p. 211): ''I could not grow and harvest crops. Life was therefore very miserable. Besides my family did not know what else we could do other than growing rice and fishing. So we came here to find another livelihood.''This is quote from one farmer migrant, but in the study many of these cases came forward. So to conclude: because of change in rice production, incomes and livelihoods both become stressed as rice farmers are greatly dependent on rice production and alternative livelihoods are unavailable in the area. This results in less food- and social security, which causes the quality of livelihoods to go down. As seen in the study by Dun (2011) farmers who experience lower livelihood qualities not rarely end up migrating outward of the area.
Conclusion & discussion
In this paper the effects of flood prevention policies and flood adaptation policies are analyzed through the use of a system. The two sub questions answered in the previous section bring us to the main question of this paper - What are the socio-economic effects of flood prevention and flood adaptation policies on the Vietnam Mekong Delta? - which can now be answered.
The different forms of knowledge (local and formal knowledge) and the effects they have on the system are described. Formal knowledge has been focussing on flood prevention while local knowledge is based around flood adaptation (Ehlert, 2012). While the dominant flood prevention policies have resulted in a large economic growth they also caused degradation of the soils (van Staveren, 2017). If no changes are made in the flood prevention measures, the quality of the soils is expected to deteriorate more because it needs a substantial inflow of water and sediments to be sustainable. This will result in a decrease in rice production and exportation leading to a decrease in economic growth (van Staveren, 2017). On a regional level, the large amount of people that are dependent on rice will experience shocks in their income while the price of rice will rise due to the decline in availability. These processes will result in a decline in food and social security and the local economy will suffer as well. ( Schmidhuber & Tubiello, 2007). This may result in forced migration which will only make the situation worse as the land needs farmers to farm the lands. Also as farmers are migrating local knowledge will be lost as local knowledge is reproduced by actively using it (Ehlert, 2012).
A change in flood prevention towards flood adaptation may be the answer since the soils will be seasonally flooded again which will help maintain the quality. If flood prevention measures are changed, it won’t be possible anymore to grow three rice crops a year anymore so production will have to decrease anyway but this is arguably a better scenario than not being able to grow rice consistently at all. Moving to a more ''living with floods'' idea through flood adaptation might be the solution. This way the economy won’t grow as fast as it did before since only two rice crops can be grown but it will be a more stable and sustainable growth over time. In the long term this will be much better for both the VMD and Vietnam itself if no alternative solutions to the degradation of soils in the VMD are found.
A change from flood prevention to flood adaptation will demand some drastic changes in the way the VMD is organized at the moment. To make this change possible, a paradigm shift must happen. Right now the dominant paradigm sees floods as dangerous but this doesn’t take all the effects into consideration. Flood adaptation views floods as something natural and you should adapt to it. Since these paradigms are complete opposites, a shift will be difficult to realize which is why controlled flooding might be a good alternative. Controlled flooding arises from viewing floods as environmentally valuable and is described by van Staveren et al. (2018, p. 3) as: ‘The facilitated overflow of (seasonal) flood water over or through river embankments.’ Its implemented by
designating areas of flood retention or diversion routes to safeguard downstream areas. The aim is to spread out flood peak discharge over a larger area to lower the peak water levels which is a primarily hydrological objective. Besides that, it also has an agro-environmental objective involving the
facilitated intake of seasonal water containing sediments and nutrients which benefits the agricultural production as well as the natural environment (van Staveren et al., 2018).
Controlled flooding is some sort of midway between flood prevention and adaptation and will be easier to implement.
This research is based around thee social or socio-economic disciplines. The issue of the Vietnamese Mekong delta, however, regards many other factors and actors such as biophysical changes and policy changes. In further research additional GIS (geographical information systems) data would be helpful to illustrate the problem better and to create a bigger picture of the deterioration of the soils due to flood prevention.
The addition of the exact ecological consequences would improve this paper as well because we didn’t really go into detail on this part of the subject. Also, data on migration and the expected migration patterns would be a good addition as well to get a better image on the effects that it may have on other regions as well since they have to accommodate the migrated people.
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