Restored mangroves breathe life into Mekong Delta

By safeguarding the forests, communities protect themselves and their environment

(Chau Doan photo for Oxfam America)
A Long Hoa villager collects fish in her pond.

Andrea Perera, a resident of Roslindale, is a writer for Oxfam America, an international relief and development agency. Together with a small team from the organization’s communications and programs departments, she is traveling throughout Cambodia and Vietnam to collect stories about Oxfam’s work in the region.

By Andrea Perera

June 10, 2008

TRA VINH, Vietnam -- I’m riding side saddle on the back of a moto bike, regretting my decision this morning to wear a skirt. We’re zipping across a rare strip of concrete on this muddy sandbar, a sliver of land surrounded by the brackish waters of the Bassac River.

My colleagues and I have come -- by plane, van, ferry boat, and now moto -- to Long Hoa village to learn about an Oxfam America-funded conservation project. Our local partner organization, Can Tho University, or CTU, is teaching communities living on the Mekong Delta how to preserve the mangroves growing along the sea shore.

Thriving in a swirl of fresh and salty water, mangroves weave their roots together above the surface, creating what is both a protective barrier during typhoons and floods as well as the perfect breeding ground for a variety of fish, shrimp, and crab. These hardy trees once dominated Vietnam’s coastline. But population growth, illegal logging, and aggressive fishing and shrimp farming have devastated the mangroves. Many never recovered from the US military’s use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

So about three years ago, CTU set out to help rebuild the mangrove forests. They made a pact with the villagers in Long Hoa: If they would replant the mangroves and then hold off on fishing, shrimping, and felling the trees, CTU would train them to use the resulting enhanced biodiversity to their advantage. Rather than fish from the coastal waters itself, they would learn they best ways to use spillover water from the replenished forests to raise more and better fish, shrimp, and crabs in the ponds they had already constructed in their backyards.

“We would like to help you develop your livelihoods,” Nguyen Huu Chiem, head of the department of environment and natural resources management at CTU, told the villagers. “We would like to help increase your incomes.”

To make his case, Nguyen told the community members about a trip he once took to Thailand. There, he saw how intensive shrimp farming had damaged the mangrove forests, and worse yet, how this type of shrimping was sustainable for only about three years. In other words, every three years a new stretch of forest was being destroyed by the Thai shrimp trade. And as a result, the deforested shorelines -- and the people living nearby -- were at a greater risk of natural disasters.

(Chau Doan photo for Oxfam America)
The return of the mangroves means the return of various types of aquaculture. Tran Huu Tri throws feed into his shrimp pond.

The Vietnamese fish farmers were skeptical of the outsiders at first. Tran Huu Tri, 51, for one, wasn’t convinced that the new methods held promise. But he agreed to give it a go. He learned to properly test the pH level in his pond, and he discovered that the tidal water from the mangroves was so rich with shrimp, crab, and fish that he no longer had to pay for fish to stock his pond. The reforested coastal area was providing all he needed. “Now I don’t stock the shrimp. I get it from the natural environment,” he says.

Tran estimates that he doubled both his shrimp harvest and his income over the past two years. Like any businessman, he puts most of the extra money back into his operation, improving and expanding his fish pond.

But not all community members have their own land, let alone fish ponds. CTU gave these villagers cows to breed, so that they wouldn’t feel pressured to exploit the natural resources in the mangrove forests.

“Every morning before I go to work, I take my cow out to graze and I cut the grass to feed it at night,” Tran Ngoc Anh, 32, said. One day she hopes to quit her job working in construction to raise cattle full time, while staying at home with her children. Who knows? With the extra money from the cattle, she said, she might even buy some land for her own pond.

In the end, it’s these sort of options that have become available to community members. CTU staff have even encouraged the villagers to replace the mangroves as a fuel source, by converting their animal and household manure into biogas. They can use this gas to power stoves for cooking, and even as a type of nutrient for their fish.

All the while, the mangroves remain untouched and the community thrives, a development that nicely summarizes the conservation project: For everything the villagers give up, they gain much more in return.

(Chau Doan photo for Oxfam America)
Tran Ngoc Anh received a cow as part of the conservation project. Breeding cattle full-time could someday replace her day job in construction.

For more information about Oxfam America and its work, please visit their website at www.oxfamamerica.org. For information on how you can contribute to the Passport blog, please contact the Globe's assistant foreign editor, Kenneth Kaplan, at K_Kaplan@globe.com.