Home 
Topics Water Country Water Actions Viet Nam
 | |
Country Water Action: Viet Nam
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Freshwater, essential to sustain life, development and the environment, is an increasingly vulnerable resource in Asia. Population and economic growth, combined with declining investments in infrastructure, has created serious challenges for meeting agricultural, industrial and household water needs. Asian nations must find efficient and cost-effective strategies for water rights and allocation. Viet Nam is no exception to this trend. |
|
In 1999, Vietnamese policymakers established a new legal framework for water resources management that included setting up water rights and allocation, and state management of the country’s river basins.
To help put this new legislation into practice, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)1, in collaboration with the Sub-Institute for Water Resources Planning (SIWRP) in Ho Chi Minh City and support from the Asian Development Bank, developed and analyzed alternative water management strategies for the Dong Nai River Basin in southern Viet Nam.
The Dong Nai River Basin accounts for about 15 percent of Viet Nam’s surface area and includes both rapidly growing urban-industrial centers and a highly dynamic agricultural sector, with products ranging from basic staples, such as rice and maize, to high-value crops, like coffee, flowers, fruit, pepper, tea and vegetables.
While water scarcity in the Dong Nai River region is not yet severe, the basin will likely soon approach a ‘semi-closed’ state, where water resources are adequate during the rainy season but scarce during the dry season. With this trend in mind, the study examined the costs and benefits of alternative water rights and allocation strategies. An especially important question was how to prevent farmers who irrigate from losing access to water, and thus their livelihoods, if water keeps being reallocated to rapidly growing Ho Chi Minh City.
To examine alternative water rights and allocation policies for the Dong Nai, researchers developed a picture of the complex relationship between water supply and demand in the basin, taking into account the economic benefits of different water uses and the legal and institutional frameworks involved.
Engineers from SIWRP, which houses the Dong Nai River Basin Organization (RBO), and economists from IFPRI developed a comprehensive river basin model that includes environmental, technical and policy components of water supply and demand. The model also reflects the location and demands of the various basin water users, including households, industries, hydropower and irrigation. The model of the Dong Nai River Basin provided the basis for the analysis of alternative water rights and allocation strategies.Constructing the model involved extensive information gathering. To learn about water supply and demand, IFPRI studied industry-heavy zones in the basin’s four major industrial provinces, as well as various municipal water supply companies in the basin. The Sub-National Institute for Agricultural Planning and Projections gathered data on agricultural water needs by conducting a survey of 700 farm households in the Dong Nai watershed. The resulting model provided estimates of water supply across the basin and water demand for use in irrigated agriculture, domestic and industrial uses and hydropower. Researchers then balanced supply and demand, guided by the objective of maximizing the economic benefits of water use.
Members of the Dong Nai RBO and other stakeholders went on to develop a series of alternative policy scenarios that were then analyzed with the river basin model. Such analysis can help decision-makers and water planners better understand options for alleviating future water shortages and can support them in their water rights and allocation decisions. This, researchers hope, will contribute to more efficient and sustainable sharing of scarce water and financial resources across irrigation, hydropower development and urban water supply demands.
One policy option analyzed with the Dong Nai model was an innovative brokerage mechanism to protect farmers from losing access to water and incomes as a result of reallocation to richer, urban-industrial areas. Under this policy option, the Dong Nai River Basin organization would manage water rights and allocation to various sectors and distribute a base water right, reflecting historical usage levels, to water users either directly or through user groups. The idea is that should urban areas and industries require more water, they could purchase the resource at a price set by the RBO. If the price for additional water is high, farmers planting low-value crops could then have the option to sell part of their rights to the RBO and in return receive funds to support water conservation measures or shifts into activities outside agriculture. The sold water rights could then be purchased by urban users at reduced prices. However, extensive testing at pilot sites is still needed before such a policy option could be adopted.
This is an example of the evolution of water allocation through markets of transferable water rights, which is consistent with ADB's Water for All policy.
Whether or not the brokerage mechanism or other policy options analyzed is adopted by the Dong Nai RBO in the future, a model of the larger water system has now been established. This model, developed by local researchers and IFPRI, and supported by the ADB, provides a first step to better share water resources among competing uses in the Dong Nai Basin.
IFPRI Discussion Paper on Water Allocation Policies for the Dong Nai River Basin
____________________
1 IFPRI is one of 15 international agricultural research centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
| © 2009 Asian Development Bank Privacy | Terms of Use |
 Top of page |
