Wetlands save water for farmers in Vietnam
Before its rapid development in the 19th century, the Mekong delta was inhabited by a few thousand people taking advantage of its rich natural ecosystems to live. The delta was a large wetland of swamp forest ecosystem full of fauna and flora providing food to its dwellers.
Not much of the wetland is left today, but its few remnants still make people’s lives easier. The wetlands protect the farmers living in its surrounding against droughts and floods, two foes becoming more common with climate change.
In U Minh Thuong, a protected wetland in the southwest of the Mekong delta, farmers forget that water becomes scarcer around them and that climate change can decrease rainfall and threaten their lives.
U Minh Thuong, the last remnant of a green past
In the last 200 years, first the French, the Americans and then the Vietnamese themselves converted the wild and lush wetlands into rice paddies and fruit orchards. The construction of dykes for flood protection, the expansion of waterways, roads and canals for irrigation have severely decreased the area of wetlands.
The conversion of the Mekong delta natural ecosystems into a giant food factory has allowed Vietnam to become the world’s second-largest rice exporter, and the world’s fourth…
