Typhoons and floods in Vietnam: Measures for disaster reduction in contexts of climate change

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Reports from Vietnam of typhoon Lekima which struck northern and central provinces on 3 October 2007 killing at least 77 people, are another reminder that Vietnam is a country most seriously affected by typhoons and floods.

Vietnam is one of ten countries having a larger share of population within the global low elevation coastal zone (LECZ), that is, within 100 kilometres of a coastline and at or below ten metres in elevation and, therefore, at high risk to typhoons and floods. Proportional risk to natural hazards is at its highest amongst island states because of their often low elevation but also because of their proportionally high length of coastline to land area. Percentages of island populations within the global low elevation coastal zone are that of the Maldives at 100 per cent and of the Bahamas at 88 per cent.

Vietnam and Bangladesh are the two continental countries having the largest percentages of their populations living within the zone, that of Vietnam being the higher at 53 per cent. Of a national total of about 83 million, therefore, 44 million Vietnamese people live at risk to sea level rise and its associated hazards, in heavily populated coastal lowlands and delta regions. Bangladesh is more often the country named in reference to flooding and cyclones, the hazards associated with sea level rise; appropriately so in terms of the number of population at risk but, in terms of percentages of national population, Vietnam is the nation at greatest proportional risk. 
Vietnam forms the eastward extent of the Indochinese peninsular, it’s borders with China, Laos and Cambodia totalling 3,000 km, “a very long border compared to the country’s surface area” matched by its coastline to the east of 3,444 km, a factor contributing to its low elevation coastal region of considerable length and exposure to the South China / Eastern Sea.

Three monsoons, from north-east Asia, south Asia and south-west Asia, meet over Vietnam creating, in their turn, cold winter drought, summer heat, heavy rains and marked differences in climate from north to south of the country. Sea temperatures are similarly variable on a coastline that extends between latitudes 21° and 9°N. “There have been typhoons in which the waves at Halong Bay (near Hanoi) reached 30 metres, and foam even covered Long Chau lighthouse, 50 metres above sea level.”
Further south, however: “It is on the shores of central Vietnam’s flat coastal alluvial plains that the waves break highest and are most numerous.” Slowly flowing rivers and streams skirt their way round constantly shifting sand dunes to find their way to the sea, trees having been planted in attempts to restrain and fix the dunes, on a coastline repeatedly inset by estuaries, coves, backwaters and lagoons of up to 70 kilometres in length. Principal road routes and railways thread their way between undulating higher ground to the west and the sea to the east. Inflow of the sea is tempered by a system of dykes, dams and lakes, to regularise the flow of sea water and to counteract stagnation in the dry season.

Centrally located on Vietnam’s “Green Corridor” and complex coastline, Thua Thien Hué province, for example, has an overall area of 5,009 square kilometres, a population of 1,136,200, an average population density of 225 per sq km and direct exposure to the sea. Population has increased by12.25 per cent since 1995, only marginally less than Vietnam’s national population growth during the same period. The province has eight rural districts, in addition to the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site of Hué City on the Huong (perfume) River.

The northern and southern regions of Vietnam extend further inland, have larger areas of fertile and accessible land, and concentrations of population around the capital Ho Chi Minh City on the Mekong delta in the south, and the principal city and regional capital of Hanoi in the north. Central Vietnam is only 50-100 km wide with a directly exposed 500 km (approx) length of coast; exposure to the sea is disproportionately high to land area. Although population is less in number, population density is similar to most rural provinces and higher than that of some.

For the whole of Vietnam and for a 26 year period, 1975-2001, 13,275 deaths are recorded from typhoons, windstorms, floods and droughts. During a closely similar 26 year period, 1980 to 2006, and in only three selected coastal provinces of Vietnam’s central region, almost 2000 people have been killed by windstorms, typhoons and floods (see Table). Sixty percent of this total, and 84 percent of the number of people made homeless, have been caused by typhoons and windstorms.
In recent years, attention has turned to the disproportional exposure and loss in this extended coastal region of Vietnam. Building on earlier Vietnam experience with the United Nations Centre for Human Settlement (UNHabitat), Development Workshop France (DWF) has, since 1999, promoted the preventive strengthening of existing houses in Central Vietnam (with initial support from the Canadian International Development Agency / CIDA and, since 2003, from the European Commission Directorate for Humanitarian Aid / ECHO). Preventive strengthening is based on rapid training of artisans and community leaders in the application of ten key generic principles of typhoon and flood resistant domestic design and construction. DWF also promotes awareness raising events in schools and in public places using media ranging from theatre to boat races and traditional community communication methods by television, to get across the message that prevention is easy, cheap and durable. Although every house has different needs, the average cost of strengthening is about 25% of the house value; access to credit and financial encouragement is part of the package.

In 1999, community leaders thought the idea of strengthening houses was laughable. In October 2006, the hundreds of buildings that had been strengthened under the DWF programme withstood the impact of Typhoon Xangsane that destroyed 20,000 other houses and unroofed 250,000 more in the three central provinces. The provincial authorities issued an edict throughout the population, stating that the DWF ten key principles had to be applied to houses and public buildings to avoid further damage from future disasters. Community leaders and families alike are now convinced that investing in prevention is cheaper than waiting for a storm to come and paying the high price of reconstruction.

This kind of programme is well justified as one small but significant measure against recurrent losses, as are numerous other current post-disaster initiatives. But deaths, homelessness and economic losses are set to continue, and to increase overall, in current and forthcoming contexts of climate change and rising sea levels. They will increase inexorably where there has been comparatively little preventive strategy, which suggests that repetitive and costly post-disaster assistance might not always be possible. A further 58,000 houses were damaged or destroyed by typhoon Lekima with estimated damages of US$ 130 million.

Typhoons and floods do not select, they are random in their incidence and impacts. Housing and its occupants are not the only victims; workshops, docksides, fishing fleets, farms and agriculture all need simultaneous protection. Instead of apparent series of piecemeal post-event responses, an overall developmental concept would comprise multidisciplinary participation within a single framework for the entire Vietnam low elevation coastal zone: reconstruction, construction and maintenance of dykes for flood resistance, mangrove plantation and other vegetation for wave reduction, cyclone shelters and killas for population and animal security, communications systems for promulgation of warnings - and construction strengthening projects - would be a part of the same development programme: “investing in prevention is cheaper than waiting for a storm to come and paying the high price of reconstruction”.

Why is it that such programmes are in such short supply ? Climate change and sea level rise were recognised during the 1980s and should have heralded then the need for such action. But pre-disaster has never held the initiative nor the resources; post-disaster, after people have been killed and dwellings destroyed, is more dramatic, attracts greater publicity - and therefore more kudos and more money. It is also so much more cruel.

Eminently successful and praiseworthy projects, such as domestic construction strengthening in central Vietnam, show the way and demonstrate the success that professional quality and popular participation can generate when given the opportunity. It is time for a wider perspective.

TABLE

Vietnam central eastern coast
Recorded typhoons, windstorms and floods 1980-2006       
Provinces of Binh Tri Thien, Thua Thien Hue, Quang Binh and Quang Tri

(Source: EM-DAT)

Also at 
http://www.tiempocyberclimate.org/newswatch/feature071101.htmhttp://www.radixonline.org/latest.htm           
http://www.vietnamdisasterprevention.org/        

References will be supplied on request to datum@gn.apc.org