Eat Organic Shrimps, Save Forest, Stock Carbon
A ten footed animal menaces mangrove forest : the shrimp. Shrimp farming is directly competing with mangrove forest, actually more than half Vietnamese mangroves were cleared to accommodate shrimps ponds in the last decades.
In the province of Cà Mau situated in the southern tip of the Mekong delta in Vietnam, shrimps are massively produced. This region, also called the Venice of Vietnam due to its entangled network of rivers, is dominated by mangrove forests. The mangrove is not only a beautiful tropical coastal forest, home for biodiversity; yet it is crucial for the well-being of the local community.
Climate change threatens the people of Cà Mau since the shoreline erodes, saline water spreads more upstream, and extreme events such as cyclone, storms and typhoons occur more frequently. The Vietnam Central Committee for Flood and Storm Control estimated that 1.77 million hectares in the Mekong River Delta will be salinised due to rise of sea water and soil erosion. It represents 45% of the land in the delta. The same organization also measured an increase in the intensity of typhoons particularly in the coastal zone which may potentially affect 80–90 percent of Vietnam’s population.
Mangrove forest can reduce the harm done by climate change as it is a deep rooted physical barrier stabilizing the land, reducing wave speed and providing a shelter to coastal population.
Although the shrimps, a delicacy highly appreciated in Europe and North America particularly in this time of festivities, are a great opportunity for the local economic development.
The SNV, Netherlands Development Organization and the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) are implementing organic shrimp farming in the region of Cà Mau. This project called Mangroves and Markets (MAM) supports and trains shrimp farmers to mangrove ecosystem, organic shrimp farming practices and international organic certification. To obtain the organic certification, farmers need 50 % of their farm to be covered by mangrove forest. The certificate enables farmers to access a high value international market and consequently increase their income.
Thanks to this project, local livelihood was improved, more than ten thousand hectares of mangrove forest were protected from clearance, and about one hundred hectares of mangroves were planted.
This project will still run until 2020 to train as many organic shrimp farmers as possible. You can help conserving mangroves by making the good choices. So which shrimp will you eat for Christmas?
Thank you to Le Dinh Huynh and Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy from SNV Vietnam for the photos
