Environmental policy and administrative management

Ninh Thuan and Binh Thuan are the 2 furthest South Central provinces with very severe natural conditions and biggest threats of desertification in Vietnam. Deforestation and unsustainable farming practices are the main causes of land degradation and desertification. In recent years, desertification seems to speed up in Ninh Thuan and Binh Thuan due to the prolonged droughts. Lots of Government programs and projects have been implemented with an aim to search for water source, water reserve as well as to increase the forest coverage. However, the lack of water for community daily life and production, especially in the dry season, remains a great challenge.In addition to the government efforts, the local community have had to face with difficulties of severe natural conditions of the dry climate and prolonged droughts with traditional measures in using water and land resources, such as water storage, anti-evaporation farming measures, hillside cultivation, together with having crop structures and crops that can survive droughts. These traditional measures are plentiful, diversified, simple and do not require a lot of investment capital, thus are easily and widely spread among communities. However, they are not yet to be collected and documented and widely shared for application. Even worse, in some places, these valuable measures gradually fall into oblivion because the local community is becoming more tuned in to advanced technologies and tend to more depend on complicated and expensive measures, such as building big irrigation systems to deal with prolonged droughts. Traditional measures are mainly small scale, with low productivity and they are unlikely to prevent desertification efficiently. However, these popular and traditional measures are a good scientific starting point from which to combine with advanced technologies for the improvement of the traditional measures in preventing desertification in dry areas.The project VN/04/010 is planned to implement in 2 communes of Phuoc Hai commune, in Ninh Phuoc district, Ninh Thuan province, and Hong Phong commune, in Bac Binh district, Binh Thuan province. The key objective of this project is to combine traditional measures and new technologies for sustainable use of water and land resources for community life and agroforestry production, contributing to solving the problem of land degradation and desertification in the project area. The project will also give priority to develop technical guidelines and to train technical staff for relevant agencies, local government and communities to promote the project sustainability and replication.

Vietnam