Bad weather and bad policy aggravate an awful drought
© The Economist, Apr
30th 2016 | From the print edition
SHADED by a tree, an elderly farmer gestures
hopefully at the scrawny green shoots poking from his small plot in Vietnam’s
Mekong river delta. The sugar crop he planted earlier in the year has already
failed once, poisoned by dry and salty soil. Fresh growth from the cut-back
plants now offers a second chance, but without rain it may go the same way. The
farmer is lucky to have a pond full of fish, which he shares with his
neighbours. But he says his family will have to find other work this year to
make ends meet.
Drought is plaguing much of mainland South-East
Asia, including Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. Thailand’s shortages are the worst
for two decades (though urbanites still splashed around during Songkran, its
annual water festival in mid-April). Vietnam has been hit as hard as any. The
Mekong basin is home to one-fifth of the population. It produces about half of
the country’s rice. The government says the amount available for export in the
three months to June will be 11% less than originally forecast. Drought in the
country’s Central Highlands has affected a third of coffee plantations there
and now endangers the region’s supply of drinking water. These woes are weighing
on the economy. Growth in the first quarter slowed by half a percent
year-on-year to 5.5%.
The immediate cause is El Niño, a recurring
weather phenomenon which causes downpours in the Americas but heat and drought
in much of Asia. Scientists believe that El Niño’s effects are growing stronger
as global temperatures rise. Last year it was blamed for exacerbating annual
fires on farmland in Indonesia, which smothered much of the region in a noxious
haze.
People living near the Mekong say there is
another problem: hydroelectric dams built in China near the head of the river
that are holding up its flow. Since March China has loosened some of the dam
gates, ostensibly as a favour to its neighbours. But locals say the effect on
water levels has been measly. The episode has only heightened fears that China
(with which Vietnam has an enormous trade deficit and an intense territorial
dispute) can use water flow to hold the country to ransom.
The dams are certainly stripping the Mekong of
essential sediment. But many of Vietnam’s water woes are self-inflicted. In the
delta, for example, a booming population has built more than 1m wells since the
1960s. These have made saline contamination worse, and are also causing
subsidence. In 2014 an American study found that the delta, which mostly lies
less than two metres above sea level, could be nearly a metre lower by 2050.
A related problem is the ruling Communist Party’s
obsession with maximising rice production. Straining to hit absurd
targets—inspired by memories of post-war food shortages—the government has
pushed delta farmers to produce three rice crops per year.
This policy has caused the poisoning of paddies
with pesticides and has discouraged farming of more profitable, less thirsty
crops. It has also prompted the building of a massive network of dykes, canals
and sluice gates, which spread pollution from fertilisers and pesticides and
restrict the flow of sediment. Koos Neefjes, a climate-change expert in Hanoi,
the capital, reckons all this infrastructure has done more to harm the delta
than China’s dams.
Fixing this will mean taking on powerful
state-owned rice traders and exporters, who benefit from intensive production.
Nguyen Xuan Phuc, who took over as prime minister in early April, is said to be
a competent technocrat. But he may not have the political strength to carry out
difficult reforms. Some simple remedies would be useful, however. Giving
farmers earlier warning of drought would help avoid pointless ploughing and
planting, says Nguyen Huu Thien, an environmentalist. He says the authorities
may soon be caught out by La Niña, a sodden period which often follows El
Niño’s parching.
At a roadside café in Cu Lao Dung, young sugar
farmers moan about their lot. Life would be easier if they could work at tea
stalls, they say, with cooling banana-leaf roofs. Or perhaps on coconut farms,
where trees need watering only every few days. Each year supplies of safe drinking
water get a little tighter, says one. He worries that in ten years there will
be no fresh water at all.
