Fig. 1: The Mekong basin
Fig. 2: MD flooding map in 2000
A DISCUSSION PROPOSAL ON

PEOPLE’S ADAPTABILITY TO FLOODS
IN THE MEKONG RIVER DELTA
Le Anh Tuan
1

1

Department of Environment and Water Resources Engineering
College of Technology, CanTho University, CanTho City, Vietnam
E-mail:

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I. INTRODUCTION
The Mekong river is ranked as the tenth one in the list of the largest rivers in the world
and is longest river in southeastern Asia. From its source in Tibet, the river flows to the South
China Sea through Yunnan, China, forms the border partly between Burma and Laos and most of
the border between Laos and Thailand, then the main stream goes into Cambodia and finally it
flows across southern Vietnam to the sea (figure 1). The river has 4,200 km long and carries more
than 450,000 million m
3
of runoff water yearly to sea. About 80 percent of annual flow volume
enters the low lying parts of the basin in Vietnam as the flood season from June to November.
The river network of the Mekong is rather complicated, especially from Cambodia to Vietnam. At
Phnom Penh, the river meets the Tongle Sap river, then splits into Tien river and Hau river before
entering the border of Vietnam and continues to branch into 9
tributaries as the river estuaries.

October and goes down on November. The average
duration of flooding in the MD is more than 3 months. In
the 20
th
century, the Delta had more than 11 big floods, as
the peak water levels in TanChau (Tien river) and ChauDoc
(Hau river) were counted equal or higher then 4.50 m MSL, occurring in the years 1904, 1923,
1937, 1961, 1966, 1978, 1984, 1991, 1994, 1996, 2000.

The flood in year 1994 to the MD killed
nearly 500 people and damaged to property more than 210 million US dollars. In October 2000,
the MD faced one of largest and most damaged flood in 70 years: over 300,000 households were
reportedly submerged with over 2,900 destroyed, 1.3 million people were affected. An estimated,
more than 500 million US dollars of material facilities was lost.

III. NATIONAL POLICES AND PEOPLE’S BEHAVIOUR WITH FLOOD
Last two decades, as a part of Vietnam Government’s rural development policies to
provide water mainly for agricultural productivity, protect against flood and control salinity
intrusion, many large-and-medium-scale hydraulic works such as pumping stations, irrigation and
drainage canal systems, crop protection dikes and dams have been built in the Mekong Delta.
Almost these water works were investigated by the national budget or the contribution of the
local people and government according to the motto: “Both the Government and People do
together”. Almost of these water works play significant role in providing benefit to local farmers
but they have also brought other damages to other neighboring areas as negative effects.
However, up to now, almost there is no an overall long-term evaluation on the impacts of
hydraulic works to the sustainable development of the Delta.

In recent years, the Delta farmers are generally not to consider annual floods as a natural disaster
or an “enemy” of their production, even in high flooding if they are not so unusual. Many years
before, they did not say the word “flood season” but used “raising water season”. In fact, floods