Vietnam must improve sea defence in climate change fight

Vietnam will have to upgrade its sea defences to brace for rising ocean levels and stronger typhoons caused by global warming, a senior scientist has said, state media reported Thursday.

The country must spend more than 600 million dollars until 2020 to reinforce and raise sea dykes between central Quang Ngai and southern Kien Giang provinces, the water resources expert said, the official Vietnam News daily reported.

Work is needed on about 520 kilometres (320 miles) of sea dykes and over 320 kilometres of river dykes that are unable to resist flood tides and storms, said Southern Institute of Water Resources director Le Manh Hung.

If sea levels rose by five metres due to a breakup of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, this would impact 16 percent of Vietnam’s land area, second only to the Bahamas out of the 84 countries surveyed, it said.

Most of the impact would be in Vietnam’s ‘rice bowls’ and population and industrial centres — the southern Mekong delta near the largest city and port, Ho Chi Minh City, and the northern Red River delta, site of the capital Hanoi.

Terra Daily