Strategy and action plan for mitigating water disasters in Viet Nam.

Bibliography: p. 105-108

DHA/94/1

Includes glossary

Viet Nam has one of the most abundant water resources in the world. However, this abundance also makes water disasters rank as the most serious of all events affecting the country. The worst of these water disasters are caused by typhoons that raise sea levels many metres and send storm surges up estuaries to inundate valuable croplands. Further, these typhonic rains, particularly when added to rivers already swollen because of the annual monsoon rains, create floods which threaten devastation to millions of households. On average, 4 to 6 typhoons reach Vietnam each year causing regular and substantial suffering, loss of life and economic damage. Annually in Viet Nam, a large amount of the infrastructure is made inoperable, hundreds of people are killed and millions of dollars of property and crops are damaged or lost. One reason that water disasters are so serious is that most of the population lives in areas susceptible to flooding. This is because Viet Nam has developed as a nation by exploiting the low-lying river deltas and coastal lands for wet-rice agriculture. Thus both the broad Red River and Mekong Deltas and the narrow connecting coastal strip of the country are prone to flooding from monsoon rains and typhoon storms. Further, the remaining three-quarters of the country is mountainous and suffers from flash flooding. As a result, over 70% of the population of Viet Nam is at risk of water disasters