Climate Change: Lessons from Vietnam

This poem by Ho Chi Mihn from his Prison Diary speaks to the cyclic rhythm of nature, the predictability and dependability of the seasonal rains which make way for sunny weather. The poet, and the first President of the Vietnamese people after the Communist Revolution of 1954, also speaks to the harmony and happiness that seasonality brings to people and the environment.

However, just before we arrived in Ho Chi Mihn City (Saigon) in May 2024, the south of Vietnam underwent a prolonged drought just a month prior, which led to four provinces declaring an emergency due to clean water shortages and salt intrusion in the Mekong River Delta. Moreover, this drought led to 73 900 households suffering from drinking water shortages as water reservoirs dried up and saltwater intrusion upstream in the rivers and groundwater, requiring intervention and support from international role-players. To the north of the country, around the same time, intense, prolonged rainfall led to nearly 35 500 people being affected by flooding and landslides, and 19 recorded casualties.

The Mekong Delta is the main agricultural region in Vietnam, producing more than half of the rice consumed in the country, and a third of the fruit and vegetables. However, saltwater intrusion further impacts agricultural produce, where the salt concentrations in some regions (Fig 1) are more than 4 times the tolerance levels of much of the produce. The results are severe impacts on food security and safety leading to risks in the health and well-being of people in this area due to decreased health and nutrition.

Due to the significant effects of the drought and floods, Vietnam has been identified as one of the top five global regions most susceptible to the consequences of Climate Change. As a result, the government of Vietnam has taken significant steps to build climate resilience. On our journey, we encountered numerous farmers in the Mekong Delta, and Hanoi to the North, who have opted to diversify their income sources and secure their livelihoods.

Farmers have shifted from water-intensive crops like rice, a traditional staple in Vietnam, to cultivating watermelons and maize. Some have adopted sustainable farming methods to lessen their dependence on pesticides by individually wrapping fruit and vegetables in a material that reduces sun exposure and pests, improving their health and well-being. One farmer uses on-site produced composting as an organic fertilizer and has put into practice strategies like mixed-cropping and intercropping. These techniques not only reduce the requirement for pesticides but also aid in preserving the soil’s microbiome, phosphorus, nitrogen and carbon content, and moisture levels. Farmers have also incorporated eco-tourism as a reliable source of revenue to buffer against times when their crops do not yield as expected.

Apart from the geographic and climate realities, the differences between the Vietnamese and South African realities are stark. While the government owns all land in Vietnam, the Vietnamese have achieved health equity in their food system through co-operatives that dominate the agricultural sector through long-term leases, which means that many more families can contribute to food security with access to land and agriculture. Their government also has a greater influence on agriculture, which may shift interests away from “for profit” to “food security”. This is opposed to giant, for-profit, commercial farms privately owned and operated by a few in South Africa.

While our agricultural and agro-processing sectors are much more modern and developed, our reliance on technologies, practices, and pesticides to make our food systems more climate-resilient is eroding the fertility of the soil and poisoning the land and water which is having profound impacts on the health and well-being of the environment and the people. There is significant potential for further action that could involve policy changes to promote wider adoption of sustainable farming methods, and assisting co-operatives, particularly those involving emerging black farmers, to enhance climate resilience by diminishing the dependency on a handful of large-scale commercial farms.

The poet finishes his poem by recognising Nature’s Will when he says: “This is how nature wills it,” reinforcing the idea that climatic cycles and changes are beyond human control and are instead governed by the will of nature. We therefore need to take heed and build food systems in the face of the new climatic reality of unpredictable cycles that preserve the environment and well-being of all life.

This blog post was written by Anthony Christiaan Van Wyk. Anthony is a Tekano fellow and an environmental scientist.