Water pollution is a serious environmental issue that is common in various areas of the world. It can be thought of as the contamination of water preventing it from being able to be safely used for activities such as drinking, cooking, and cleaning. There are several causes of water pollution; in fact, every form of pollution, including air pollution and land pollution, can eventually cause water pollution. One notable region in Asia that is being threatened by significant amounts of water pollution is the country of Vietnam.

Vietnam is a Southeast Asian country often known for its rivers and has a coastline that is 3,260 kilometers long. However, several portions of the vast bodies of water are polluted, and the National Center for Water Resources Planning and Investigation has found that “water samples from Binh Chanh, Cu Chi and District 12 contain unsafe levels of ammonia and manganese” (1). 

Although both the government and the industry are responsible for the pollution, the poor management of industrial waste is the main factor. In fact, “fifty industrial zones discharge 105 million liters of largely untreated wastewater into the Saigon every day” and the “Hydropower plants [that] have been built on all 13 big river networks” “[make] people living downstream from these areas particularly vulnerable to pollution from farming pesticides, fertilizer, factory runoff, fish farms and wastewater” (1). Another important thing to note is that the poor law enforcement regarding water pollution in Vietnam could also be a major factor, as professor ​​Nguyen Thi Kim Oanh states that “[Vietnam] [needs] to have strong punishments” (1). Additionally, “low fines, vague criteria for identifying polluters, low monitoring capacity, little willingness to enforce regulations and inadequate funding” are all problems observed in the country that allow water pollution to thrive (1).

There are countless impacts of water pollution in Vietnam. One is its harmful effect on national health. According to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, “up to 80 percent of diseases in Vietnam is directly caused by water pollution” (2). The farming industry suffers as well; because the water supply is unstable largely due to the pollution, agriculture faces instability and ineffectiveness. The effect on Vietnamese children is also a major issue, specifically because children, unlike most adults, have an immune system not developed to resist the practice of “more than 9.5 million Vietnamese” releasing biological waste into the environment (2). As a result, “Vietnam has one of the highest child malnutrition rates in Southeast Asia, and as many as 44 percent of Vietnamese children fall ill with whipworms, hookworms or roundworms” (1).

However, people around the world and in the country are realizing the issue and have started to address it. An example is the Vietnam Local Works for Environmental Health project of the United States Agency for International Development which aims to develop new infrastructure in the Ha Lam commune to bring clean water to the schools of younger children. Another example on the part of the Vietnamese government is the project it launched to prevent people from continuing to release excreta into the surrounding environment. The goal of the Vietnamese government is to achieve water standards clean enough to recover public health and the economy by 2025!

Source:

1. https://borgenproject.org/water-quality-in-vietnam/

2. https://borgenproject.org/the-vietnamese-water-crisis/

3. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/ehep/82-2/

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam