Chủ Nhật, 25 tháng 10, 2015

THIS YEAR 2015 THE HIGH WATER SEASON DID NOT COME



The Mekong River ends at her nine large mouths
Her epic ode her long current roars aloud
                                                       Nguyên Sa

To the Friends of the Mekong Group
NGÔ THẾ VINH


     THE HIGH WATER SEASON IN THE MEKONG DELTA

It is in the age-old cyclical flow of the Mekong River marked by the High Water Season and the Receding Water Season that the eco-system of that river’s basin finds its natural equilibrium. Dohamide Đỗ Hải Minh, a Chăm scholar and a regular contributor to the Bách Khoa Magazine prior to 1975, saw life and grew up in the Hậu Giang Châu Đốc area. Well-informed about the eco-system of the Mekong Delta, he remarked that over the decades the local inhabitants are used to the annual floods, also known as the “High Water Season” and considered them a natural phenomenon that comes periodically.
                                                           
In the old days, only over 300 years back, the pioneers of the Southward March came to settle in the Mekong Delta and preferred to build their houses on high lands or “đất giồng.” As a result, come the High Water Season, the vast, outstretched fields may be turned into boundless expanses of water but those high lands still offered safe havens to their inhabitants and countless snakes. In later years, with a growing population and the high lands running scarce, late comers had no choice but dwell on the flat lands they farmed. To adapt to their environment, they built stilt houses along the banks of rivers and canals with pillars high enough to keep the floor dry during the High Water Season.

The High Water Season also known as the Rising Water Season usually is a very mild affair compared to the floods that ravage the Northern or Central parts of the country. In the Mekong Delta, around August of the Lunar year [September or October of the Solar calendar], clumps of uprooted hyacinths floating in succession down the river currents from the flooded fields in Cambodia, are telltale signs of the impending High Water Season in South Vietnam. [1]

During the High Water Season, the water in the Tiền and Hậu Rivers gradually rises overflowing the river banks and inundates the surrounding fields. Besides washing away the alum in the soil, that flood water also carries with it the alluvium, this rich god-given natural fertilizer that turns the South into the rice bowl of Vietnam and makes it the second rice exporter in the world after Thailand. In the past, there was a rice species named lúa mù/ lúa sạ that the French called “riz flottant” or “floating rice.” Its stalks can grow very fast - up to 7 or 8 meters - to keep apace with the rising water. After the water recedes, the stalks would lay flat on the ground ready for the harvest. With the introduction of the Miracle Rice/ HYV that brings higher yields, the “floating rice” variety just fell out of favor with the farmers.

When the High Water Season arrives, the people in the Western Region/ Miền Tây usually take hourly measurements of the rising water so that they can sound the alarm on time should the collected data exceed the normal levels of the previous years. The moment the water inflow from upstream begins to subside, the water level ceases to climb then drops very rapidly. The people say that the water “pulls backs”/ “nước giựt”, because they can clearly see it recede before their very eyes.

Dohamide also remarked that the rising and lowering of the water level, however, do not occur uniformly in the Mekong region. As it rushes out to the sea, when the water dips in Tân Châu, Châu Đốc, then, it rises in the Cần Thơ, Vĩnh Long regions… downstream the water swells, overflows the river banks, inundates the fields then ebbs – just like the way liquid moves in communicating vessels. [1]

Following the murky current rich in silt, shoals of fish swarm into the fields to spawn. When the water “pulls back”, bands of small fish especially Siamese mud carps swim along the dark gold color current into the fields then into the canals to eventually reach the main rivers. Farmers who are not at the time busy with works in the fields stand at the ready to set up trap nets along the banks of rivers and canals. Several decades ago, the catch was so abundant that they had to open the trap nets to release some of the fish and spare the nets from being torn. [Picture I]

 Picture I: Life scene in the “High Water Season” 2000
[Source: photo by Ngô Thế Vinh]

Nowadays, that process of natural balancing in the eco-system becomes almost a thing of the past. The High Water Season - if not totally gone – no longer shows up as frequent and intense as it used to. That ecological disaster comes about not by an act of God but at the hands of humans. 

     THIS YEAR, THE HIGH WATER SEASON DID NOT COME

Not long ago, I learned from a friend’s eMail that author Nguyễn Đình Bổn stated in his Facebook that this year the High Water Season did not come and people who care about the Mekong could not help but feel very concerned. Nguyễn Đình Bổn is not a native of the Mekong Delta but was born in Quảng Nam after 1975. At the early age of 13 he came with his family to settle in a rural community in the Western Region/ Miền Tây for almost 20 years and has grown fond of the land. Recently, he wrote in his personal Facebook:

“Near the end of August of the Lunar year, my younger brother-in-law from the Mekong Delta came for a visit and I asked if the flood came? He shook his head.  So, this year the High Water Season did not come to the Western Region/ Miền Tây! It rained in midafternoon. Thinking about a place that isn’t my birth place but loving it as much as loving a dear one. Almost 40 years have passed since I experienced my first High Water Season. The water saturated with alluvium in the Hậu Giang region suddenly turned a clear blue. The current in the canals lazily flowed, the diurnal tides were absent. All kinds of fish swam in the water: cá linh/ mud carps, cá thiều/ anthem fish, cá vồ/ pangasius... especially the white cat fish when cooked with bông súng/ water lilies or bông so đũa/ sesbania grandiflora would make an exceptionally delicious sour soup... The Western Region/ Miền Tây is still there. Alas! Its environment has changed drastically for the worse. In tandem with China, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia compete with each other to build dams on the Mekong current. And the tragic truth stares starkly at us: the High Water Season is gone. The Western Region/ Miền Tây looked half of her true self. What’s more frightening: the flood water did not come. Seawater will quickly submerge the fields. Will we still have our Rice Bowl?” End of quote.  

The following day, the author received another email from a young friend living in the Thất Sơn Châu Đốc region, An Giang Province with this short message: "the High Water Season this year is abnormally feeble," then he wondered: "Could it be because the reservoirs of the hydropower dams upstream are withholding the water?"

     THE ROOTS OF THESE MAN-MADE DISASTERS

     From Suicidal Deforestation:
     From time immemorial, the rainforests have played a regulating role by retaining in the soil a significant volume of rainwater that flows down from upstream.  At the present time, this is no longer the case. When the rain falls, it erodes and bares the land. The rainwater then runs straight into the rivers and enlarges their current. As a result, the water in the rivers instantly swells up markedly when a downpour occurs upstream.
     In recent years, the Vietnamese inhabitants in the Mekong Delta lead an increasingly burdensome existence because of the suicidal deforestation practiced by the people in the Mekong basin like the Chinese in Yunnan, the Lao and Cambodians in the Lower Mekong Region, and their secretive Thai and Vietnamese accomplices. With the advent of the High Water Season, the floods come sooner, flow faster and stronger. People do not have the time to react resulting in heavy losses of crops and human lives. During the Receding Water Season, with the disappearance of the rain forests acting like giant sponges to retain the water, the people are threatened with inevitable droughts.
     From Phnom Penh we receive this dispatch: “Global Witness accused Vietnamese political and military leaders of involvement in the grand scale illegal deforestation that is devastating the rainforests of Cambodia. Those precious trees are being indiscriminately cut down and smuggled to the ports of Quy Nhơn or Saigon via Gia Lai and Sông Bé for final export.” The text adds that “such a large scale business, in flagrant disregard of the laws, can only be conducted with the complicity of the corrupt authorities in both countries.” A not less disastrous situation is taking place in the rainforests of Laos. [2]
     As a coconspirator in the destruction of the rainforests, Vietnam’s Communist Authorities are directly creating a self-inflicted ecological disaster producing long-lasting impacts that are no longer restricted to the basin region but have spread to all the country’s networks of rivers, canals and water sources.

     To the Reservoirs of the Hydropower Dams:
     Taking into consideration the giant reservoirs of the series of dams in the Mekong Cascades in Yunnan that were and are being constructed by the Chinese in addition to the ones the Lao and Cambodians are building, the probability is high that the High Water Season in the Mekong Delta may one day disappear completely.
     Ideally, the huge reservoirs of the hydropower dams are supposed to store the rainwater during the High Water Season and release it during the Receding Water Season. However, when water is being held up in the reservoirs upstream, the volume of water being discharged into the current downstream is reduced. Without the flood there would not be the High Water Season any longer. Consequently, the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia won’t be replenished and less water will be flowing down from it to the Mekong Delta. In the meantime, with a rising sea level the devastations caused by salinization will grow even more serious. 
 

Picture II: The area of the Tonle Sap Lake varies with the Rainy and Dry Seasons; Left: Dry Season; Right: Rainy Season [source: Tom Fawthrop]

In defense of the hydropower dams in Yunnan, the hydropower engineers in China argue that the reservoirs upstream help regulate the current flow of the Mekong: they retain the water during the High Water Season thus reduce the danger of floods from occurring downstream. When the Dry Season arrives, the same dams will discharge the water and the river current will have more water than it normally would. However, it’s not that simple in reality.

The simple fact is: it is those very hydropower dams upstream that destroy the magical regulating role of the Mekong’s natural cycle. When the dams upstream retain the water during the Rainy Season, they are actually preventing the High Water Season from taking place in the Mekong Delta. On the other hand, during the Dry Season, with China, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia simultaneously diverting the water for farming, the net result is a Mekong being drained drier.

The agronomist Võ Tòng Xuân observed:
"We have seen with our own eyes parched rice fields expanding noticeably during the Dry Season in all regions of the North-east of Thailand, Southern Laos, and Cambodia. They have used up a considerable portion of the water in the rivers. For many years already, the source of water used for farming during the Dry Season in the Mekong Delta has been reduced dramatically.  As a result, seawater has intruded as far as 80 km inland causing much damage to the crops.” [26-10-2013]

Therefore, hydrologic engineer Đỗ Văn Tùng from Canada pointed out that the Mekong Delta is suffering a “double blow disaster”: water penury during both the Dry and Rainy Seasons! Also according to him, starting in August 8, 2015, the water level in the Tonle Sap Lake has dipped about 1,3m in 10 days. That’s quite abnormal for a lake as large as the Tonle Sap because even in the event that there is no water inflow into the lake, normal evaporation alone would not be sufficient to account for the dip. Thus, we must take into consideration water diversion from the Lake to irrigate Cambodia’s parched rice fields that are expanding during the Dry Season. So, the Mekong Delta, being located at the river’s mouth, is deprived of a substantial source of water.

Engineer Phạm Phan Long of the Viet Ecology Foundation, pointed out that a Mekong River Commission’s graph showed that the water level of the Tonle Sap during the last two months was lower than the record low registered during the 1992 drought. With rain coming less frequently while the reservoirs of the hydropower dams are being built larger and more numerous it’s inevitable that the Tonle Sap Lake would bare its bottom and the Mekong Delta lose its Rising Water Season. The “double blow disaster” has materialized during both the Dry and Rainy Seasons. It originates from a “double source” perpetrator: natural and man-made. [3] http://ffw.mrcmekong.org/stations/pre.htm 
Picture III: water level in the Tonle Sap Lake, according to the MRC, in the last months [September & October, 2015] the water level dropped below the record low of the 1992 drought [source: MRC]

THE MEKONG DELTA AND THE BOILING FROG SYNDROME

In the news media, the “boiling frog syndrome” is often used as a metaphor. It says that if we put a frog in a hot pot, natural reflexes will make it jump out of the pot at once.  However, if we put the frog in a pot full of cold water it would comfortably stay in there even when we gradually increase the heat.  The animal would remain in the pot until it is completely cooked without having the slightest idea of what has happened to it.

In reality, the frog will jump out when the water starts to get warm. Anyway, the “Boiling Frog Syndrome" still holds a metaphoric meaning when we refer to people who lost the “ability to react” to threats that are sneaking up on them.

Al Gore, the former American vice-president, is acclaimed as a 2007 Nobel Prize co-laureate for his efforts to disseminate knowledge about man-made climate change and lay down the groundwork to adopt measures to fight it.  In the film An Inconvenient Truth (2006) he also made use of the “boiling frog syndrome” to allude to the “apathy” of the people in the face of “global warming." Nevertheless, in the film, the frog was eventually saved. [4]

It would not be farfetched if we liken the Mekong Delta to a “boiling frog” that is crawling slowly toward the "Creeping Death of the Century". All the while, the 20 million of its inhabitants are still leading a quiet existence, not showing any reaction to a slowly approaching disaster that they are unable to discern until the entire Delta along with its “Civilization of Orchard” become deeply submerged in seawater.

NGÔ THẾ VINH
California, October 24, 2015


References:
1/ The Mekong Drained Dry, The East Sea in Turmoil. Book Review by Đỗ Hải Minh, Magazine Thế Kỷ 21, No. 139, 11/ 2000.
2/ The Mekong Drained Dry, The East Sea in Turmoil.  Ngô Thế Vinh, Nxb Văn Nghệ 2000, Nxb Giấy Vụn 2014.
3/ Prek Kdam (Tonle Sap), Water Level. Mekong River Commission
4/ An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming. Al Gore. Viking Books, 1st Edition, April 2007.

Không có nhận xét nào:

Đăng nhận xét