A considerable area of a 30-year-old
protection forest with mangrove trees towering five meters high in the northern
Vietnamese province of Thai Binh now risks being cleared to make space for an
industrial park. Authorities in Thai Binh, some 120km south of Ha Noi, have
plans to reclaim 320 hectares of coastal area in Thai Thuy District to make way
for an industrial park on the reclamation ground. The project includes the
destruction of 150 hectares of forests originally planted to protect the
mainland from erosion and landslides, according to the environmental impact
assessment submitted by the provincial administration to the Ministry of
Natural Resources and Environment. News of the possible destruction has
infuriated villagers around the forest, sparking fears of potential devastation
as “the forest is considered far more precious than gold to villagers like us,”
Le Ngoc Cung, one local, said. Cung still recalls that the first trees were
planted in the forest in 1986, when a local dike broke. “The forest has since
become a golden shield for thousands of households against storms,” Cung told
Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper. “We also use its water to catch seafood in order to
earn a living.” The villager added that the new minister of environment Tran
Hong Ha attended a tree planting ceremony in early February in celebration of
the World Wetlands Day, “and now they are planning to empty 150 hectares of forest.”
The 320 hectare land plot proposed to be used for the project lies entirely
within the biosphere reserve of the Hong (Red) River, according to data
reviewed by Tuoi Tre. The particular150 hectare area marked for clearance was
grown as part of a government-backed plan to add five million hectares of
forest to Viet Nam. Thai Binh officials are also wary of the plan, warning that
the project’s environmental impact assessment notes that clearing 150 hectare
forest might create an environment which would allow seawater to reach the
mainland and destroy local dike systems and aquatic farms in the event of
strong storms. The report does not mention any specific impact the
deforestation may have on the local area.
Dishonest
environmental impact assessment
The Thai Binh administration assigned the
provincial agriculture department as the developer of the controversial land
reclamation project. The developer, in turn, tasked the monitoring agency under
the province’s environment department with preparing the environmental impact
assessment. In the document, the agency says the reclamation will affect areas
now used as aquatic farming grounds for 80 households in the Thuy Xuan and Thuy
Hai communes, adding that the impact is ‘small’ as these farms yield poor economic
outputs. However, Tuoi Tre was told a much different story from local
villagers. Nguyen Duc Anh, who runs a large aquatic farm, said he was shocked
at the assertion that there are only 80 aquatic-farming households in Thuy Xuan
and Thuy Hai. “The data is certainly inaccurate,” he said. Bui Ngoc Hien,
chairman of Thuy Xuan Commune, also said the number of aquatic-farming
households in the two communes could not possibly be as low as 80. Hien’s
counterpart in Thuy Hai Commune asserted that in his locale alone, “right now
there are as many as 297 households with aquatic farms.” According to data
gathered by Tuoi Tre, there are 354 aquatic-farming households in Thuy Xuan and
Thuy Hai, 4.5 times higher than the statistic in the project’s environmental
impact assessment. The developer held two separate meetings seeking feedback
from Thuy Xuan and Thuy Hai leaders and residents about the project. However,
Tuoi Tre discovered that invitations for both meetings, held in December 2016,
were not extended beyond local leaders. Simply put, the aquatic farmers – the
people most affected by the project – never received an invitation. The
communes’ leaders confirmed that the developer has yet to meet with farmers. Even
so, the environmental impact assessment stated clearly that “following the
public meetings, local residents have shown support for the project and its
potential to help boost the industry-service development [of the province].”
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