Asian Countries Prepare for Future Sea Level Rise
With predictions pointing to a global rise in sea levels over the next century, many countries are beginning the first stages of planning to deal with such increases. For Asia, a land where population density is the least of their problems, but a major problem nonetheless, this foresight could save millions of lives.
One of the countries that is proactively attempting to find solutions is Vietnam. No longer willing to rely on foreign non-governmental organizations, Vietnam is looking to find solutions for themselves.
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“Only the Vietnamese can tell the Vietnamese people what to do,” said leading climate scientist Nguyen Huu Ninh. “They understand the traditions, the habitation. We can share and help, possibly more than foreign NGOs. Vietnam has a lot of international organisations; it leads to dependence.”
A member of the 2007 Novel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Nguyen Huu Ninh is also the director of the Center for Education Research Environment and Development. He has also been instrumental in setting up the new Vietnam Network for Civil Society and Climate Change. The VNCSCC is a network of Vietnamese based NGO’s, connected to local business and government bodies, and is only one step being taken by the Vietnamese government and local organizations in response to the future threat of sea level rise.
Vietnam would suffer dramatically if they were to be subject to an increase in sea levels. Such a rise would affect the Red River and the Mekong deltas, both areas that are massive rice-producing areas for the world’s largest rice producer and second largest rice exporter. By 2100, estimates suggest that up to 45% of the Mekong’s land could be under water.
But even though some optimists predict that sea level rise will be curtailed by 2050, in the interim, Vietnam will have to deal with an ever increasing frequency of storms and floods. And though the country is well versed in dealing with such things, being a country continually afflicted by monsoon weather, the frequency with which these storms are increasing could overwhelm the Vietnamese locals.
credit: S Baker at Flickr under a Creative Commons license
HOLEY!!
[...] Heeding warnings from climate change experts, the Government has ruled that new developments must assume at least the most conservative estimates and prepare for sea level rise. [...]