Choosing a location deep in the riverbank, planting trees and building an anti-erosion embankment, Mr. Tran Quang Vinh (An Giang) still lost half of his factory under the Mekong River.
Mr. Vinh silently looked at the 160m embankment that had crumbled like foam and then looked at the ruined 1.2ha factory of the Hoa Binh Food Processing Enterprise, not knowing what to prepare for the future. In 15 years of building his business in the West, he had used many measures to cope with landslides but they were still not enough.
The landslide in mid-May caused the three-room workers’ dormitory to sink deeply and had to be demolished. Half of the 1,300-square-meter warehouse collapsed, leaving behind torn corrugated iron sheets and twisted, deformed purlins.
The results of decades of building went down the drain in the blink of an eye, causing a loss of more than ten billion VND. As a result, 100 workers had to stop production for several days to restore the factory. For each day off, the lost revenue was equivalent to 200 tons of rice.
Mr. Vinh’s workshop is among 136 houses damaged by landslides in the past 6 months in the Mekong Delta. 145 landslides since the beginning of the year have cost the delta more than 30 billion VND, along with 1.7 km of dikes and 1.5 km of roads. Although it is not yet the rainy season - the peak of landslides - the five provinces of Long An, An Giang, Dong Thap, Vinh Long and Bac Lieu have had to declare an emergency situation in 10 riverbank and coastal areas.
These losses are just the tip of the iceberg. Each landslide leaves behind lingering concerns for both residents and businesses in this river region.
Run from the sky but can not avoid landslides
Recalling 2008, when he went to Cho Moi to survey the location on the bank of Hau River to set up a rice mill, Mr. Vinh calculated and looked for the safest place. Seeing an alluvial land a few dozen meters away from the riverbank, convenient for transporting large-scale goods by ship, and located in a place where the water flowed smoothly, he decided to level the land and build a warehouse.
Everything went as planned for the next 12 years, until the river in front became more unusual and the alluvial land gradually disappeared. An Giang became one of the areas with the highest risk of landslides in the Mekong Delta. To protect the factory area, he ordered a row of cajuput piles, then coconut piles, and then built a concrete embankment. The cost was more than 10 billion.
After Tet, when the rainy season had not yet arrived, he heard that the commune on the opposite riverbank (My Hoa Hung, Long Xuyen City) had lost thousands of square meters of fish ponds. Seeing that the row of cajuput trees in front of the factory also showed signs of falling, the 59-year-old man had a bad feeling. He immediately hired someone to use an "endoscope" to examine the riverbank around the factory, thinking he had anticipated all the risks, until the landslide happened.
"No one thought the riverbank would collapse right there," he said, explaining that when checked, no frog jaws were found and the foot of the bank below the river was not hollow.
After the landslide, the "hungry" water still quietly gnawed at the bank, occasionally "swallowing" a large piece, not knowing when it would swallow the rest of the factory. Many new cracks began to appear on the cement floor 20 meters away from the landslide. Just in case, Mr. Vinh ordered people to dismantle the entire warehouse and machinery system. Part of the rice conveyor belt had already drifted down the river, he did not want to lose any more.
More than 200 km downstream from An Giang, Truong Phuc Seafood Company Limited (Canh Dien Hamlet, Long Dien Tay, Dong Hai District, Bac Lieu) is in the same situation.
"In just six years, we have suffered two landslides," said Deputy Director Hua Hong An, while busy cleaning up the devastation at the factory after a landslide at the beginning of the rainy season.
In just 7 months, the number of landslides in Bac Lieu doubled over the same period, causing 119 houses to collapse and damaging thousands of hectares of shrimp and fish ponds.
A native of Bac Lieu with 37 years of experience in the aquaculture industry, Mr. An said that in the 1990s, the riverbank was so far away that when the tide receded, a large yard was revealed for village boys to play soccer. The river section passing the factory was then only 100 meters wide and gentle. Now, the river is twice as wide, with turbulent water.
When he bought the land to build the factory, he carefully built a dike about 50 meters from the riverbank to guard against strong winds and waves. Unexpectedly, the landslide on the night of June 9 swallowed up the entire 1,200 square meter dike and surrounding wall. The prefabricated factory and the backup wastewater treatment pond were also damaged.
Mr. Vinh and Mr. An are typical examples of a class of businessmen in the Mekong Delta region who are struggling to cope with the unpredictable changes of natural disasters. Spending billions of dong to build embankments but with the danger still lurking, these businesses are struggling to find ways to survive, with no time to think about development.
"Doing business in the Mekong Delta is difficult in every way, there is no way to avoid it," said Mr. Vinh, "we have to face too many paradoxes."
According to Mr. Vinh, although it is surrounded by rivers, transporting goods is not easy. Enterprises that want to trade conveniently by large ships must build warehouses and factories along the river, but are worried about landslides. The river and canal system is nearly 28,000 km long, but the infrastructure on both banks is not guaranteed, too much activity will create big waves, accelerating the landslide process.
While businesses are struggling to find ways to live with the erosion, many communities that have lived along the river all their lives are now drifting and scattered, struggling to find a livelihood after the river "starved" and ate away at its banks.
Life is unstable
In an old house located next to the Cai Vung River - a small branch of the Tien River, Mr. Nguyen Van Thom (45 years old, An Giang) looked at the cracks on the wall, trying to distinguish which ones had just appeared. The 100 m2 house - an asset accumulated over 20 years, is now abandoned. On the old wall, the words "a hundred years of happiness" are covered by a thick layer of dust, reminding the 45-year-old man of the happy days when his family lived next to the river.
For generations, his family has made a living by fishing on the river, but over the past two decades, it has become increasingly difficult. From just casting a net to harvest a few dozen kilos of fish and shrimp, the trawler has had to travel farther and farther. One day, he returned with an empty net. Losing money on fuel, he decided to sell the trawler, buy a wooden boat, and switch to transporting rice for hire for local people.
In 2001, the house gradually collapsed. The hamlets along the Cai Vung River (Long Son Ward, Tan Chau Town) became dangerous landslide hotspots that needed to be monitored every year. The surrounding neighbors gradually thinned out. As for his family, because they had no land to relocate, they stayed there for 6 years. Every day, they watched the water lapping at the foot of their house.
In 2007, his family moved away from the river for the first time, resettling under a government program, nearly 2 km away from their old home. Although he regretted it, he knew he had to leave the place he had been attached to for a decade.
Since moving to a new place far from the riverbank, he had to sell his rice boat and switch to making a living by selling ceramics and porcelain. His older brother also left his hometown and went to Ho Chi Minh City to make a living. Mr. Thom's family's life on the river ended. He did not want to leave, but had no other choice.
"It's a pity to give up, but to keep it is... death," he said.
Mr. Thom is just one of millions of people facing an uncertain future as they search for a new place to live and a new source of income.
According to incomplete statistics, the Mekong Delta has nearly 500,000 households that need to be relocated to avoid landslides, of which tens of thousands are in urgent need. Since 2015, the government has only resettled about 4% - more than 21,606 households with a total cost of 1,773 billion VND.
Relocating entire landslide-prone areas remains difficult for localities due to lack of funding, land, and solutions to the livelihood problem while the number of landslides is increasing.
For example, An Giang has asked the central government for 1,400 billion VND in subsidies for many years to urgently relocate 5,300 households. In the distant future, it will be about 20,000 households, which means it needs about 7,000 billion VND, equivalent to the province's domestic revenue in 2022.
After more than 4 years as Vice Chairman of An Giang Province, in charge of agriculture, Mr. Tran Anh Thu has become accustomed to having to sign decisions declaring a state of emergency every time the rainy season comes.
As a master of soil science and having worked for a long time as Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of the province, Mr. Thu is well aware of the increasing level of landslides in upstream provinces such as An Giang and Dong Thap.
"The number and scale of landslides are increasing compared to 20 years ago and spreading to small canals where many households live, causing increasingly greater damage," he said.
Erosion
Landslides are the final and most visible manifestation of a previous destructive process, when the Mekong Delta fell into a state of alluvial starvation.
This delta region is shouldering the responsibility of food security for the whole country, providing 50% of rice production and 70% of aquatic products. However, this "rice pot" is increasingly depleted. Landslides not only erode the soil, but also "erode" the economy of the Mekong Delta.
“In a large river basin like the Mekong, everything is interconnected. Losses in one sector can ripple across many others,” said Marc Goichot, WWF Asia-Pacific Freshwater Programme Manager.
According to this expert, all economic sectors are partly dependent on the river. Deepening of riverbeds affects agriculture, fisheries, water quality and infrastructure. Reduced alluvium, or sand and gravel, also causes riverbank erosion, leading to land loss, house collapses and infrastructure collapse.
The 2020 and 2022 annual reports on the Mekong Delta by VCCI Can Tho and the Fulbright School of Public Policy and Management indicate that in the three decades since Doi Moi, the economic role of the Mekong Delta compared to the whole country is gradually decreasing, the lowest among the four key economic regions.
Looking back to 1990, Ho Chi Minh City’s gross domestic product (GDP) was only two-thirds of the Mekong Delta’s. Two decades later, this ratio has reversed, despite the delta’s population being nearly double that of Ho Chi Minh City and its rich resources.
Dr. Vu Thanh Tu Anh, Head of the research team, commented that while the internal economic strength is difficult, investment resources in this land are also very modest. The Mekong Delta is the region attracting the least foreign investment in the country. Public investment resources have also "forgotten" the Mekong Delta for many years, especially in the construction of transport infrastructure. As a result, intra-regional roads, as well as inter-regional connections, are very weak, thus not attractive to investors.
Struggling to adapt to natural disasters, without motivation from external capital sources, businesses are facing even more difficulties. The business density in the Mekong Delta in 2021 was only 3.53 businesses per 1,000 working-age people, while the national average was 8.32 businesses.
“The only way for people and businesses to adapt to climate change and natural disasters is to address the core issues that are causing the delta’s declining resilience,” said Goichot, emphasizing the importance of river and coastal sand as a protective layer against water and climate hazards.
However, how to adapt is still a question for Mr. Vinh, owner of Hoa Binh Food Processing Enterprise (An Giang).
More than three months after the landslide, the company is still in a dilemma. The river continues to erode the bank, but he cannot build the embankment because the flood season is approaching and must wait until the dry season - next year. Relocating the factory is also impossible because most of the equipment is bulky and cannot be moved by provincial roads because the bridge system cannot guarantee the load. Meanwhile, the river wharf is eroding, so ships cannot enter.
"We can only wait and hope the river calms down," said the director of Hoa Binh Enterprise.
Hoang Nam - Thu Hang - Ngoc Tai
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