Disasters in Vietnam

Disasters are severe unforeseen hazards that continuously threaten the lives of the Vietnamese people. Massive losses caused by disasters have left deep impressions in their memories. Storms and floods are the disasters that effect the largest areas and cause the greatest loss to human life, property, and agriculture production. Other disasters that cause major loss to human life and property, but in smaller areas and over shorter periods of time, are whirlwinds, flashfloods, landslides, and storm-surges. Drought, inundation, and salt-water intrusion are disasters that usually occur over a large area, affect agriculture production, degrade the ecological environment, but do not directly affect human life.

Man-made disasters (not including the disaster of war) includes construction failures, fires, explosions, chemical spills, radioactivity releases and oil-spills. These kinds of disasters, which are often caused by environmental accidents, occur less frequently in Vietnam than natural disasters and are often directly attributable to human intervention. However, man-made disasters can be effectively mitigated if preparedness activities are appropriately planned organized, and implemented.

1. Geography and Topography
Vietnam is located in monsoon humid tropics along the eastern side of Indo-Chinese peninsula from its northern border with Yunnan and Guangxi provinces to the Gulf of Thailand, Gulf of Tonkin, and South China Sea. China, Laos, and Cambodia have border with Vietnam.

Vietnam has a land area of about 332,600 square kilometres and a sea area of about one million square kilometres. The country can be divided into seven areas that have different geographical features, climatic features, natural resources, environmental and ecological features, economic development stages, and disaster specific conditions. These seven areas are 1) the mountainous and the midland areas of Northern Vietnam, 2) the Red River Delta, 3) the North of Central Vietnam, 4) the South of Central Vietnam, 5) the Central highlands, 6) the East of Southern Vietnam, and 7) the Mekong River Delta. The country can also be divided into 5 geographical zones; the mountainous zone, the midland zone, the plain zone, the coastal zone, and the sea zone.

Vietnam has an estimated total population of 79,939,014 as at July 2001 with around 30 million people living in poverty. Of the number of poor people, 85% are in rural areas and 79% of the poor work in agriculture. Transformation of the agriculture and rural sector from poverty to development therefore is at the heart of the country's development plan. However, the task faces enormous challenges considering the fact that the country experiences annual and recurring natural disasters. The findings of UNDP in its poverty study pointed out that "natural disasters constitute a major cause of poverty and vulnerability in Vietnam". The poverty alleviation strategy would then require a reduction of the rural and agriculture sector's vulnerability to natural disasters.

Environmental degradation due to years of war, neglect and over exploitation threatens the very livelihood of the rural poor and indigenous communities. Disasters such as flooding contribute to soil erosion and silting of rivers that aggravate the existing fragile ecosystem in the country and put an enormous strain on people's need for immediate sources of livelihood.

The lack of off-farm employment contributes to high rate of rural under-employment resulting in migration to cities. Unplanned population growth in cities puts pressure on development of residential, commercial and service zones in flood prone areas. The majority of the country's population lives in the Red River Delta, in central coastal areas and in the lower Mekong River Delta where storms, flood and flashflood are mostly often and severe. In year 2001 itself, disasters took 462 lives and affected a population of over 1.8 million.

2. Disasters and Their Impact on the Environment and Communities
Disasters in Vietnam that occur over the largest area, and cause the most severe damage are water disasters or water-related disasters such as storms, floods, inundation, drought, salt water intrusion, storm surge, landslides, and flash floods. There are three distinctly different regions of the country with different predominant types of water or water-related disasters, and with historically different methods of water disaster mitigation and management.

In the Northern part of the country, within the Red River Basin shared with China, and in the Red River - Thai Binh River Delta, large and rapid changes in flood water levels can occur. This region is protected against flooding by one of the world's major river dyke (levee) and sea dyke (coastal protection) systems that has been built and added onto for over a thousand years.

Within the Central part of the country, each province is in effect a separate river basin; and river flooding is so rapid, it must be treated as flash flooding. This region has historically used a whole of river basin approach to protect against water-related disasters.

Within the Southern part of the country, the Mekong Delta portion of the Mekong River Basin is shared with six riparian countries. Here the flat topography of the Mekong Delta causes annual monsoon rain river water level changes of even a few centimetres to become flooding over vast areas of the Delta. Very little has been done historically to protect against this flooding other than to learn to live with the floods.

Other non-water related disasters also occur, often in different geographical areas of Vietnam. Fires occur regularly, particularly forest fires in mountain and highland areas, which are caused by burning off of land for cultivation. Unexploded Ordinance (UXO) can be found in almost all parts of the country, but is highly concentrated in old battlefield areas. Earthquake disasters only rarely occur; but when they do occur they are most likely to affect the northern mountainous area of the country.

In conclusion, storms and floods are the two most destructive disasters for the entire country. They annually occur over a large area and in the plains and the coastal zones, which are essential economic centres in Vietnam. Flash floods, drought, inundation, fires, industrial and environmental problems, salt water intrusion, landslides, storm surges, whirlwinds, and desertification are seen to have less severity and to affect smaller areas and often in different geographic areas of the country. Nonetheless, all disasters are capable of putting people into poverty, damaging the environment and undoing sustainable and equitable development.