The beautiful town being suddenly washed away as river begins eroding
Local residents and authorities are suffering the social and economic consequences of erosion, which threatens to displace tens of thousands of people.
A beautiful town in Vietnam is worried about its future as the houses keep collapsing into the river due to depletion of sand reserves.
At Can Tho, a city in southern Vietnam's Mekong Delta region, shoreline erosion caused by sand mining and hydropower dams is threatening a large number of people.
The future of the Mekong Delta, a strategic region for rice cultivation and biodiversity, is threatened by the depletion of its sand reserves by 2035, warned a WWF report.
Sand, used as a building material, is the second most exploited natural resource in the world after water, in volumes that are at the limit of what is sustainable, the United Nations has warned.
Le Thi Hong Mai's house collapsed into a river in the Mekong Delta, where rapid riverbank erosion due to the depletion of sand reserves is threatening hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese.
Socio-economic impacts
She told AFP: "I heard a bang, I rushed outside and everything disappeared".
"I lost everything."
According to the researchers, hydroelectric dams, which hold back alluvial deposits, and the removal of sand for construction sites, which are increasingly numerous in the developing country, are preventing the natural renewal of stocks.
The drying up of sand is accelerating riverbank erosion in a region already vulnerable to rising sea levels caused by climate change.
Local residents and authorities are suffering the social and economic consequences of erosion, which threatens to displace tens of thousands of people.
Don't miss...
The European city with unusual winter rule as locals see only six hours of sun [INSIGHT]
Inside abandoned diner frozen in the 1950s with plates left on tables [REVEAL]
'I live in city with toxic air levels so bad it's like a baby smoking 30 a day [EXCLUSIVE]
"Very very scared"
In Hau Giang province, Diep Thi Lua woke up in the middle of the night to see her garden engulfed by the waters.
The 49-year-old woman said: "We could feel the earth shaking. We were very, very scared."
According to Vietnamese government figures, at least 750 kilometres of riverbank and almost 2,000 houses disappeared due to erosion between 2016 and August 2023.
The phenomenon is jeopardising the economic ambitions of the Communist regime, which has one of the highest growth rates in the region. Near the mouth of South-East Asia's longest river, barges travel day and night to remove sand from the riverbed.
The delta region needs 54 million cubic metres of sand to build six motorways before 2025, according to the Vietnamese Ministry of Transport.
"20,000 households needs to be relocated"
The river can provide less than half of this, officials admitted.
Some 20,000 households need to be relocated because of the risks associated with erosion, according to the government agency in charge of natural disaster prevention and management.
However, the WWF has predicted a much higher figure and some 500,000 people could lose their homes.
Such a relocation programme "requires a lot of money that our government will never have", confided an official from Hau Giang province, who did not wish to give his name.
He admitted: "We know that people can lose their lives living in these high-risk areas.
"But we don't have any solution."
