Room for the River

How will the river be given more room?
(Source: www.roomfortheriver.nl)

On 29th of September, we attended the workshop on "Production Ability for Climate Change Adaptation in Coastal Areas of Mekong Delta", at Ngoc Thu hotel, Soc Trang. It was an introductory workshop to the collaborative project between Can Tho university and Wageningen university (Netherlands) on developing agriculture, aquaculture and environment - based climate change adaptation strategies for the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. 

Because of its high vulnerability to climate change and sea level rise as a coastal province, Soc Trang has been chosen for first pilot studies. As the workshop aimed to initiate preliminary discussions to collect information, opinions, ideas from local people, the afternoon session's time was used for working groups' discussions. Participants were mostly representatives of Soc Trang provincial/district institutions and authorities. Besides, there were also participants from An Giang (represented for upstream provinces), and the research groups in Can Tho university and Wageningen university (2 professors.and one master student). 

The project's key approach to climate change adaptation is the idea of "Room for the River", rebuilding extra room for water instead of putting much investment in hard infrastructure measures. Originated from a governmental programme in Netherlands (2006-2015), it is a more natural friendly flood protection strategy in contrast to past response to floods, where rivers were confined by increasing higher dykes (as more and more people live behind the dyke, the land would sink, creating more and more risk). 

"Room for the River", on the other hand, restores the river's natural flood plain (lowering and broadening it), liberating river's flow, creating river diversion and temporary water storage areas. Marshy riverine landscapes would be restored to serve again as natural water storage sponges, providing biodiversity, aesthetic and recreational values. This approach is also considered as "Living with Water", living harmoniously with nature, embracing flood, cherishing water as an asset but not something to fear and keep out of sight. Moreover, retention of water in the rural areas can help reduce urban flood. [Even in urban area, excess water can be incorporated into infrastructure, creating high quality public space (ex., water plaza design idea from Netherlands)].

River can be given more room through measures such as placing and moving dykes, lowering of river foreland, depoldering, creating/increasing the depth of flood channels, removing hydraulic obstacles, flood bypass... Applying that approach for Mekong Delta, "Room for the Mekong Floods" implies climate change adaptation services such as seasonal flood retention and dry season reserves; recession agriculture, fresh fish culture in flooding season. In addition to flooding, climate change also exacerbates salinization and freshwater scarcity. Dropping of groundwater level is currently a serious issue in coastal district areas of Soc Trang. Therefore, creative adaptation to brackish water, more open attitude toward sea water suggests some modification in farming systems into more water-saving and salt-tolerant crops. 

There was one helpful comment of Mr. Stefan from DRAGON institute that i would like to note here, which was about the no-use zone. Sometime, non-use zone is not just no-use zone because it can be preserved as buffer zone that increases resilience of the area to climate change. 

More notes on the workshop is on our group blog Soc Trang team.