Evidence of uncontrolled pollution is visible in many of the nation’s villages.

VietNamNet Bridge - Despite laudable agro-forestry and aquatic achievements, Vietnam’s rural areas now face serious pollution, which is leaving a dirty stain on the environment.

In a stuffy room in Vietnam National Coal-Mineral Industries Group’s Hanoi-based Labour Health Care Centre, Tran Bich Phuong was lying in bed gasping for breath with the help of a ventilator. The 20-year-old suffered from a disease in which her lungs contained too much metal dust.

“Her lungs have just been washed,” said Nguyen Thi Mai, Phuong’s mother while looking at her daughter’s haunted face. She said after days of suffering from fits of bad coughing, Phuong was taken to a number of health care centres and even to Hanoi-based Central Hospital for Tuberculosis, for treatment.

“However, her disease could not be cured until we came here,” Mai said. “Doctors showed me a pot of black water, which was said to be the water after her lungs had been washed.” Phuong was born, grew up and works in Bac Ninh province’s Man Xa village, home to metal recycling, a job that is profitable but harms people’s health and pollutes the environment.

The village, home to 2,570 people, has been engaged in the industry since 1958. Each year, the village collects and recycles more than 8,000 tonnes of discharged metal and uses a great amount of water and assorted fuels for production.

In Da Hoi, another Bac Ninh craft village, some 1,000 tonnes of assorted metals are recycled per day. Cultivated land, ponds and lakes as well as the Ngu Huyen River, which runs through the village, are being filled with solid waste, while the village’s water sources have been seriously polluted. Da Hoi and Man Xa villages are just a few of the thousands of Vietnam’s rural craft villages that suffer from environmental pollution.

They are also typical of the environmental pollution in Vietnamese agriculture and rural areas that is causing growing public and policy-maker concerns. Agricultural activities take place throughout Vietnam, contribute 20.23 per cent to the nation’s gross domestic product and are participated in by more than 70 per cent of the Vietnamese population.
Over the past decade, Vietnam’s agriculture has made big strides. Between 2002 and 2007, the sector produced 35.45 million tonnes of rice per year, a 16.1 per cent increase against 1997-2001. Each year, there is an additional increase 0.8 million tonnes of product.

From the status of a food importer, Vietnam has exported rice since 1989 and other farm produce such as pepper, cashews, rubber and seafood. Last year, the export turnover of agro-aquatic and forestry products touched 12.5 billion of the nation’s total export turnover of $48.4 billion, a 20.6 per cent increase against 2006. The sector’s activities have remarkably improved farmers’ incomes and living standards and contributed to the nation’s strategy of hunger alleviation and poverty reduction.

Along with boosting agro-aquatic and forestry production, environmental protection has been regarded as one of three major guidelines for Vietnam’s development, namely economy, society and environment. The nation’s Resolution No41/NQ-TW on boosting environmental protection and the government’s Agenda No21 on stable economic development are amongst the government’s moves to protect the environment.

“However, such achievements have caused heavy environmental pollution to Vietnam’s rural areas. That is an expensive price to pay,” said Nguyen Binh Thin, vice head of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s (MARD) Department of Science, Technology and Environment (DSTE).

“Vietnam’s rural environment has been seriously polluted. Water and earth are being degraded, threatening the future of the nation’s agriculture,” said MARD Minister Cao Duc Phat. Vietnam has more than 1,450 craft villages covering 58 provinces and cities. “Unfortunately, people’s increased production activities in these villages are badly polluting the very villages in which they have lived for centuries,” said DSTE representative Le Van Tan.

According to the Hanoi-based University of Polytechnic’s Environment Science and Technology Institute, in most occupational villages, furnaces run on wood or coal which pollutes the air and the airborne pollutants present in these villages exceed safe levels.

Production households in occupational villages do their business as they see fit. Most are small, they use no protective clothing, while the production methods are outdated. Wastewater and fumes are directly discharged into the environment untreated. Villages that recycle paper and metal, dye fabric and cast metal are the biggest culprits.
For example, waste water in many villages has a toxic content 13-140 times in excess of permissible levels, while dust concentrations in metal casting kilns are 15 times higher than limits.

According to a MARD survey of 184 aquatic production plants, 90 per cent of them are destroying the environment through directly pouring untreated waste water into rivers and the sea. Pollutants mixed in waste water are hundreds of times higher than permitted levels.

“Each year, in the Mekong Delta, millions of tonnes of chemicals and feed mix are fed into the water. This has given diseases to fish and polluted water sources,” said Le Vien Chi, vice head of MARD’s Department of Aquatic Production.
“Since 1993, aquatic epidemics have caused losses of nearly $5 million per year to the aquaculture sector,” he said.
Vietnam is home to 16,700 livestock farms and millions of households raising animals. Each year, the sector’s waste volume is more than 73 million tonnes. However, only 40 per cent of the livestock establishments are equipped with waste treatment systems.

According to MARD’s Strategy on Livestock Production Development until 2010 and 2020, the ratio of farm and industrial livestock production in agriculture will increase from 40 to 50 per cent by 2010, 60 per cent by 2015 and 70 per cent by 2020.

“This means that the volume of livestock waste will be much more than now and more pollution and epidemics such as avian flu and foot-and-mouth diseases will occur,” said Hoang Kim Giao, head of MARD’s Livestock Production Department.

Besides, rural areas are also being polluted by waste from industrial parks and chemical fertilisers in the earth. The MARD survey indicated that rural areas discharged more than 100 million tonnes of trash per year. It was expected that by 2010, the volume would increase to 145 million tonnes per year. However, only 30-40 per cent of the discharged trash was being collected. “Besides, forest destruction and natural calamities are also pressurising policymakers to design measures to rural environmental pollution,” said Phat.

Impacts of rural environmental pollution

Bac Ninh’s Mai said most residents in her village had respiratory and lung diseases as well as skin diseases. “If we don’t do the work, we will have no money,” she said. Waste and waste water from agricultural activities have seriously affected people’s health. In many localities, especially those close to craft villages such as in the former Ha Tay province, the toxic metal content in underground water breaks the acceptable limits by 2.5-100 times. The danger of catching diseases in these villages is 15-20 per cent higher than pure agricultural villages and the life expectancy in these villages is only 55-65, while Vietnam’s average is 72.

Lien Minh, an expert from MARD’s Agro-Forestry-Aquatic Product Trading, Processing and Salt Industry Department, said that pollution in rural areas had reached crisis levels. “Living in an environment full of toxic gas and dust, people always suffer from diseases. For example, 80-90 per cent of the inhabitants in handicraft villages suffer from backaches,” she said.

DSTE’s Thin said that agricultural land was increasingly polluted by metal toxic discharged by industrial parks, households, craft villages and farmers’ manure. He said environmental pollution had caused epidemics to the local livestock production sector. Since 1997, rampant foot-and-mouth disease in cattle has yet to be fully controlled. Since 2003, avian flu has caused multi-million dollar losses to the nation, while the H5N1 virus has killed 46 people.

Moreover, the blue-ear disease in pig has rocked farmers and many of them have had to quit farming. According to MARD, despite contributing an expected $9 billion to the nation’s total export turnover this year, the crop production sector was also one of the sectors destroying the environment.

Intensive farming has resulted in the over use of fertilisers and pesticides. In 2007, nearly four million tonnes of assorted fertilisers were not digested. In addition, the abuse of more than 75,000 tonnes of pesticides has caused a biological imbalance, earth and water pollution in many rural areas.

What is the solution?

Over the past years, the agricultural sector has designed eight programmes to improve environmental pollution. However, they are yet to be successful. Thin said inconsistencies between economic development and environmental pollution were looming. “While environmental protection seems to be ignored, there is a lack of concerted effort amongst relevant agencies,” he said. “A failure to address the problem means that the agricultural sector cannot be developed further,” Phat said.

MARD is designing a central project to strengthen environmental protection between 2009 and 2015, improve the environmental management capacity of localities and radically curb pollution. The capital for the project is expected to be VND122 billion ($7.3 million), which will come from the state, international assistance and environmental protection funds.

The project will be divided into five different programmes regarding environmental management capacity, forecasting, research and support for enterprises to meet international environment safety standards.

(Source: VIR)