According to experts, Vietnam is not a country with advantages of water resources, because more than 60 percent of water on the surface of Vietnam originates from other countries. Therefore, tasks of protecting and planning water resources are crucial to Vietnam’s Government, especially in the current context when serious climate changes are affecting negatively on this valuable natural resources.
At the conference evaluating results of Phase I and progress of Phase II of project titled “Improving planning management capacity and general survey of groundwater resources”, which was jointly held by the Center for Planning and Water Resources Survey (Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment) and the Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources of Federal Republic of German (BGR), Mr Jens Boehme, Project Chief Advisor said, implementation of phase I gained initial success. It has established 10 automatic monitoring stations of groundwater resources in Nam Dinh province. Important data gained from those stations will be a base for supervising, managing strictly groundwater resources, which will support simulation and forecasting the resources. Also in the project framework, 2 training courses on exploiting the ArcGis software in the field of managing water resources were given to the staff of Center of Planning and Survey of Water Resources and Offices of Natural Resources and Environment of the project.
The project is financed by the Government of Federal Republic of Germany, and is implemented in Hanoi and Ha Nam, Nam Dinh, Quang Ngai, Soc Trang with the aim of improving capacity of protecting groundwater resources.
According to Dr Pham Quy Nhan, Deputy Director of Centre of Planning and Water Resources Survey (Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment), in the coming time, Board of Coordinators will continue implementing Phase II of the project to improve capacity of protecting groundwater resources in Hanoi, Ha Nam, Quang Ngai, Soc Trang.
Dr Nhan also warned that according to many reports of domestic and foreign scientists, although total annual volume of surface water in Vietnam exceeds international standards, water is not distributed equally between seasons. The dry season of Vietnam is usually long so water volume at that time accounts only 30 percent of the whole year. Therefore, in this season, almost half of 16 major river basins suffer irregular or total lack of water. Regarding groundwater resources only, Vietnam is possessing high quality and abundant resources. However in many places, especially in large cities with a large population, resources are seriously exploited and reducing sharply. Especially in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city, groundwater level has reduced to an alarming one, 30 meters lower than natural water level. Similar situation is also occurring in the Central Highlands and some provinces of the Mekong river delta. “If current concentrated exploitation keeps occurring, several aquifers of Vietnam will only survive for a short time,” said Dr Nhan.
Therefore, according to Dr Nhan, in order to manage as well as exploit effectively the extremely valuable resources, departments and sectors must cooperate together. Accordingly, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Developments, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment should agree to establish a unit to manage water resources. Moreover, they must enhance, supplement a network of investigating, monitoring water resources, including both surface water and groundwater; conduct assessment of water resources in river basins, regions and the whole country, in order to elaborate a sustainable national water resources development strategy.
Anh Phuong
Vietnamese
