------Program code: NS-080613-04860 (what's this?)
Source: CCTV.com
06-13-2008 11:09
Over the past 30 years, disasters - storms, floods and droughts - have increased threefold, according to the UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. When extreme weather strikes, the poor are usually hit hardest.
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Tropical storms, floods and droughts account for 75 percent of all disasters. Disaster relief agencies try to pick up the pieces. But increasingly, governments and UN agencies are going one step further, aiming to reduce damage before it strikes. Earth Report investigates how poor farmers in Honduras and fishing communities in Vietnam are working with disaster risk managers to strengthen nature’s defences against the violent effects of climate change.
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Vietnam is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. Typhoons and violent storms are frequent - 8 in 2006 - with often calamitous consequences. The country’s entire 3,000 kilometre coastline is low lying and vulnerable. In the northern provinces an extensive sea dike system has been in place for centuries. The dikes give some protection but not against storms classified at Level 8 or above. Waves over 3 and a half metres are simply too powerful.
Between 1995 and 2004, disasters claimed almost 6,000 lives in Vietnam. Over 320,000 houses were destroyed, costing the country’s overstretched economy an estimated US$2.5 billion. Relief agencies dealt with the aftermath. In 1994 Vietnam’s Red Cross, decided to try a new approach – preventing or at least reducing disaster - before it happens. ‘The Coastal Environmental Preservation Programme’ involves local communities in planting mangrove forests along the shoreline. Dang Van Tao has been involved in the project from the very start.
Dang Van Tao, Vietnam Red Cross: The mangrove project done by Viet Nam Red Cross, brings to it, is the agreement to protects the sea dike system where the dike and the people are at risk and its active involvement of the local people, and the community from the planning to the implementation, and the monitoring and protection of the mangroves.
Two-thirds of Vietnam’s population earn their living from agriculture. Villagers helped plant the mangroves, supporting the project from the very outset. Mangrove trees were planted along the coast to protect vulnerable communities as well as their dikes, shrimp farms and rice fields. Over 100 kilometres of coastline have been planted with the trees Since 1994. The Red Cross estimates that it has helped reduce the cost of dike maintenance by $7.3m per year. Today the planting extends over a kilometre into the sea. The mangroves act like a giant breakwater. - Storm waves are reduced to harmless ripples by the time they reach the coastal sea dikes. This is Tan Thanh commune, 100 kilometres from Hanoi city in the north of the country. It is home to around 4,000 people. Here the dike protects the industry that is the backbone of this community – shrimp farming.
Do Thi Hang, Shrimp Farmer: The mangroves play an important part in our lives. They stop heavy waves from causing damage and protect the dike. They also ensure the ecosystem is balanced. The shrimp and fish under the water bring many benefits to the people here.
