300,000 coastal residents threatened by forest loss-triggered erosion

Thousands of households along the coast of Tien Giang Province in the Mekong Delta have been seriously endangered by soil erosion caused by the loss of protective forests.

Since the strip of protective forest, 21 kilometers long, covering the coast of Go Cong District has been ruined, around 300,000 locals and 55,000 hectares of farming land there have been “put under a knife blade” for years.

Houses in the coastal area from the Soai Rap River mouth in Vam Lang Town to Den Do in Tan Thanh Commune are under permanent threat and may be swept away or sunk by erosion any time.

A sea dike of steel concrete was built along the coast to protect local residential areas but it is just a temporary measure since sea waves have continued to encroach on land day by day.

Before 1997, the depth of the 21km forest strip was 300-400 meters, acting as a natural wall to separate sea from land to protect the residential areas inside.

In recent years, the forest has been eroded by 8 to 10 meters a year, according to the Tien Giang Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Some sections of the forest lose a length of twenty meters a year.

Local authorities are planning to build a “soft” dike which is a combination of measures such as planting pillars to create walls to limit the strength of waves approaching the shore, placing bags of sand to consolidate the foot of dikes and stop erosion, and planting trees.

They are building such a soft dike in a section of 1.4km at VND56 billion (US$2.5 million).

Erosion has also occurred along thousands of kilometers of coast in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam for years.

Mời quý độc giả theo dõi VOV.VN trên