Current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
"Diane Fox (dnfox)" <dnfox@hamilton.edu>
date Feb 1, 2007 1:15 PM
subject [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
Hi--
I suspect many of us are asked from time to time to give public talks on things like
"Vietnam Today" or "Current Issues Facing Vietnam".
As I prepare for one such talk, I thought it would be interesting to hear what many people
felt were some of the key issues, based on their own particular focus. I thought it might be
useful to all of us to have such a list and a few key sources to send people to for further
reading.
Thanks for any ideas!
Diane
"Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Feb 1, 2007 2:15 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
Gathering land loss in the Mekong delta and the imminent demise of Anh hai Mien nam?
The failure of in-country thinkers to properly address the consequences of the destruction
of the material basis, not only of Anh 2, but also the Si phu Bac ha? Nguyen van Faust.
Whether the fundamentally unreformed political system can cope with it all?
??
Adam
"DiGregorio, Michael" <M.DiGregorio@fordfound.org>
date Feb 1, 2007 7:56 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
Diane,
This issue was first brought up by my colleague at the Center for Natural Resources and
Environmental Studies, Masa Yanagisawa, more than a decade ago. At the time, the focus was
on the effects of draining Dong Thap Muoi and diverting fresh water flow into an expanded
canal system. He anticipated increasing salinization along the coast during the dry season,
with overall lack of fresh water below surface for irrigation. The reasons for this are
simple: Dong Thap Muoi had served as a huge dry season reservoir.
There are still articles in the papers from time to time about how Vietnam has conquered
nature and turned DTM into an export oriented rice bowl. Of course, no-one mentions coastal
salinization which now encompasses huge areas (last time I checked, the figure was roughly
25%). The point made a decade ago was that Vietnam's ability to export rice was a
sacrosanct symbol of the success of renovation, whose environmental consequences should not
be tested. As the role of agriculture as a symbol of export success declines, and concerns
over global warming rise, this will likely change .
If you are wondering what the effects of a 1 meter sea level rise would be on both the
northern and southern delta regions, check out the map at the link below.
http://www.cresis.ku.edu/research/data/sea_level_rise/jpeg/
southeast_asia/southeast_asia_1m.jpg
Mike
"Stephen J. Leisz" <steve_leisz@yahoo.com>
date Feb 1, 2007 8:26 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
Excellent map, Michael. The results for the southern part of Vietnam look exactly like the
results I got in 1999 when I did a similar exercise, only for VN though, but I thought mine
could not be correct since I didn't trust the quality of the DTM/DEM I had at the time. I
had thought the northern delta would be more affected than is shown here.
Steve
Stephen J. Leisz
LTA USEPAM / Research Fellow IGUC
"Diane Fox (dnfox)" <dnfox@hamilton.edu>
date Feb 1, 2007 11:02 PM
subject Re: RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
Thanks Adam, Mike, and Steve--I've already learned something, been nudged out of my usual
thoughts.
25% of what coast, Mike?
And Adam... Anh Hai Miền Nam, Sĩ Phu Bắc Hà... là gì? là ai? You see how much I don't know!
df
"DiGregorio, Michael" <M.DiGregorio@fordfound.org>
date Feb 1, 2007 11:13 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
Steve,
If you go to the CRESIS website, they have the map on a loop showing the effects of seas
level rise up to 6 meters, as well as population distribution and major cities.
I think one of the issues that needs to be considered in the north is the role of sea dikes.
Maybe these are built into the modeling. But I have checked out several sites that all
seem to agree that the Mekong delta would be hardest hit.
Mike
"DiGregorio, Michael" <M.DiGregorio@fordfound.org>
date Feb 1, 2007 11:48 PM
subject RE: RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
Diane,
The last time I checked, roughly 25% of the Mekong delta was subject to dry season
salinization. All coastal areas are subject to varying degrees of salinization, which is
held in check by (fresh water) ground water flow. In the past, water retained in Đồng Tháp Mười, which gradually seeped through the soils during the dry season, held salt water in
check. Increasing pressure to divert flood waters, as in the northern delta, result in less
water held in reserve for the dry season. This effect could be reduced somewhat by elevated
roads, which become in effect long dams, except that Vietnamese practice has been to
construct elevated roads in delta areas by excavating canals, which divert water.
To step outside this rather mechanical discussion of hydrology and practice, I think the
fundamental concerns have to deal with the loss of agricultural land, dry season
salinization of current arable land, and the huge population movements that will take place.
If you look at the map, upland leads in two directions: upriver into Cambodia and up coast
to HCMC.
Maybe the answers for Vietnam means creating a sea dike system as in the north. The costs
would be huge, however. In the north, costal dikes were built on dunes created through
sedimentation. Dike and canal systems tend to work against this natural coastal protection
by channeling rivers, which increase the rate of flow, pushing sediments out in the ocean.
This is part of the New Orleans story. Any way you look at it, the picture is not pretty.
Mike
"Stephen J. Leisz" <steve_leisz@yahoo.com>
date Feb 1, 2007 11:49 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
Thanks Mike,
I already did that (after sending off the last email) also they have a link to display the
overlay of the flooded area over the Google Earth imagery. Very impressive. I was
interested in the north and checked it out. At one meter I think parts of Hải Dương are
gone (because of the way the topography lies), other parts of the delta are gone, but most
of Hải Phòng is ok. At 4 meters about 1/2 the Red River delta is gone.
Re: the sea dykes, looking at the model in Google earth it's hard to say if they took the
sea dykes into account. (As an aside I helped Hanoi Agriculture University (building on the
experience in GIS/spatial modeling that has been gained from the current project I'm working
with them on) to co-write a proposal with the Dyke Management Unit of MARD to get DANIDA
funding to work on sea-level rise mitigation in the northern part of Vietnam last year. The
main thrust of the proposal is to identify the most at risk areas and mitigation efforts
that can be done for those areas (such as planting / protecting the mangroves in these
areas, etc.). The government (belatedly) is also recognizing the role mangroves can play in
diminishing / protecting against the effects of sea level rise and is trying to either
protect or replant areas of the Red river delta with mangroves (where they used to be and
were wiped out over the last 40 years or so).)
There was a "vulnerability assessment in Vietnam" funded by the Netherlands started in 1994
with the objective to study coastal zone vulnerability (I've not seen the report yet, but
the Dyke Management Unit is supposed to have it) and back in 1998 Clark University published
a study of the area around Vinh showing sea-level rise. One of the things about CRESIS's
model is its scale, the DEM used has a grid cell size of 30 seconds which is pretty large,
meaning that the DEM and the resulting model does not show local complexities. Clark
University used a 20 meter DEM (much smaller grid cell size) and the local complexities were
really interesting. The local complexities will probably play a large part in any policy
response that is needed and plans for mitigating the effects of sea-level rise, so these
more detailed (and data intensive) studies are needed.
Steve
"Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Feb 1, 2007 11:56 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
By land loss I did not mean physical land loss, but loss of land access - now the main
characteristic of the poor in the delta, and increasing fast.
Adam
Adam Fforde
"Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Feb 1, 2007 11:58 PM
subject RE: RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
AHMN - the idea that the south is a land of plenty, take it easy, life is good.
SPBH - the red River delta as the source of intellectualism defining of part of the
Vietnamese character
He said waiting for the sound of galloping feet to correct a dumb economist ...
Adam
John Kleinen <kleinen@uva.nl>
date Feb 2, 2007 3:43 AM
subject RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
I thought you would find this upcoming special issue on the Red River delta in the Journal
of Asian Earth Sciences useful. Morphodynamics of the Red River Delta, Vietnam, (Piet Hoekstra and Tjeerd van Weering, eds.).This special issue focusses on the morphodynamics of the Red River Delta, and in particular will discuss geological, hydrodynamical and sedimentological aspects of the Ba Lat system. Our present results were obtained in the framework of the Netherlands-Vietnamese Red River Delta (RRD) programme, a coastal-marine research programme which was executed in the period 2000–2002.
"DiGregorio, Michael" <M.DiGregorio@fordfound.org>
date Feb 2, 2007 3:44 AM
subject RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
Adam,
Well taken. The official response to this has been that consolidation is good and that the
landless now consist of a mixture of people who have left the land for economic reasons
(shopkeepers and the like) as well as "the poor". My guess is that land lost due to
environmental causes will be quietly rise up the list of common reasons for landlessness in
the Mekong delta. The list often includes loss to infrastructure projects, household
divisions, land pawned or mortgaged for health or personal reasons.
At my last check, roughly 5 years ago, the highest rates of landlessness existed in the
coastal provinces. Maybe someone with more experience in the Mekong delta could comment.
Mike
Adam <adam@aduki.com.au>
date Feb 2, 2007 3:58 AM
subject RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
mailed-by mailman1.u.washington.edu
The VLSS data allows one to look at this at province level. I can't recall what this said about your point about coastal provinces. My sense is that the official responses are many, and one is 'oops, we got taught about the class basis of our regime in the province party school, we've tried all the policies we can think of, including a 3 ha land holding ceiling, and none of it works, so now what?'. One of the problems I recall is that families transition, initially to having far less land, borrow
to trial new livelihood strategies with which they may be unfamiliar, so that when they then
go bust they end up with very little or negative net worth. All very familiar from other
times and places, of course. But it changes things a lot when this (and I take on board what
you say about environmental causes too) starts to become very very common and wages start to
get pushed down as a consequence of reduced possibilities and less diverse family livelihood
strategies. Employment take-up in HCM city and elsewhere is limited, and in case this
process will influence the development of the labour regime there and elsewhere
(increasingly, nowhere for them to run home to). If China shifts in a big way to staples
imports that will shift rice prices up a step, but then they will stabilise again and that
will only delay the process. In any case monopsony at the farm gate level is pretty high so
farmers don't get so much of any price gains. I suppose one thing to watch for will be the
evolution of migrant labour, and also policies to support employment generation close to
their old farms. Another is to watch what the security people do - e.g. efforts at securing
more accurate population registration.
Anybody out there from Okie stock?
Adam
David Marr <dgm405@coombs.anu.edu.au>
date Feb 5, 2007 6:43 PM
subject RE: RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
Perhaps it should be elucidated that `Anh Hai' refers to money, usually USD. At least
that's the Da Nang meaning.
David Marr
Peter Hansen <phansen@ourladys.org.au>
date Feb 5, 2007 8:32 PM
subject RE: RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
I thought it meant the police.
Joe Hannah <jhannah@u.washington.edu>
date Feb 5, 2007 9:56 PM
subject RE: RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
Dear Adam and all,
I've been wondering about this "Anh Hai" phrase (which I hadn't heard
before as a nickname for southern Vietnam).
If a northerner uses the phrase "Anh Hai," it means, literally, Second
brother." But if a southerner uses it, it means "eldest brother"
(equivalent of Anh Ca? in the north).
So where does this nickname for southern VN originate, the north or south?
If the north, then it would indicate the "eldest" (superior); if the
south, it would indicate the "second son" (subordinate)... The phrase
takes on an entirely different meaning, depending on who is saying it, it would seem.
(Geography matters, as we geographers are wont to say.)
Cheers,
"trang_cao@berkeley.edu" <trang_cao@berkeley.edu>
Feb 5, 2007 10:18 PM
subject RE: RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
I too thought that Anh Hai was equivalent to "big brother," or the idea of
being monitored, surveilled.
"Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Feb 5, 2007 11:11 PM
subject RE: RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
Aha. My understanding (as I heard the phrase in the north) was that 'Anh hai
Mien nam' referred to the easy living people from the south - same joke as
the 'Say gon' rather than Sai gon - 'Say' meaning to spend (or maybe it is
Xay - I never checked the spelling - maybe I was wrong here). Much like Bill
C and Al G were referred to as the Babas ... referring to them both being
southerners and southerners thought to be of a certain type (thus the amazing 'Mamathon' skit in the film version of 'Primary Colours'). It has to be a northern phrase as referring to people as Anh hai in this way has to be
usage from outside the region.
What about Sy phu Bac ha (now occasionally Ty phu Bac ha if they got grant
lucky)?
Adam
"Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Feb 5, 2007 11:13 PM
subject RE: RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
read it at once - in that context - as the same as calling Bill C and Al G 'Babas' - like an Englishmen calling a Scot 'Hey Jimmy', a German 'Fritz'
etc etc. Take a local word and use it to refer to the locals in some way.
Adam
"bcampdvs@u.washington.edu" <bcampdvs@u.washington.edu>
date Feb 5, 2007 11:42 PM
subject RE: RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
as someone who has been on the business end of this particular handle a few times, i feel i
must report that it has always been "Bubba," with the 'u' pronounced not unlike the
Vietnamese 'ơ.'
Adam <adam@aduki.com.au>
date Feb 6, 2007 12:01 AM
subject RE: RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
Aha. Who was it who said that teaching Vietnamese to Texans was easy because
the vowels were / are all the same?
Adam
Linh Vu <vhlinh16@yahoo.com>
date Feb 6, 2007 3:44 AM
subject RE: RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
As a Vietnamese, in my understanding, "Anh Hai Nam bo" means a person or a lifestyle that
is careless, generous with money and adventurous. Vietnamese often say "Anh Hai Nam bo"
(Southern Delta Eldest Brother) not "Anh Hai Mien Nam" (Southern Eldest Brother) since life
in the Mekong river delta is comparatively good and free. But "Anh Hai" can also implies
"Big Brother" "Sy phu Bac Ha" (Northern intellects) reflects the intellectual roots of the North.
Normally, that term indicates a scholar/interllect with Confucious education based, a
principled lifestyle which values education, order and honesty and a conservative attitude.
Lan PHAMNGOC <lan_phamngoc@yahoo.com>
date Feb 6, 2007 4:14 AM
subject RE: RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
I agree with Vu Linh.
"Anh Hai Nam Bo" is opposed to "Si Phu Bac Ha" as one main characteristic of people living
in the Mekong delta and the Red river delta.
"Anh Hai" in the south is a very popular way to call somebody that you really don't know if
he is the eldest or not, just to tell him that you have some consideration for him. The
original use of "anh Hai" applies to "the eldest boy in the family" (this is a particular
way of Southerners calling the eldest "anh Hai", meaning "the second", because the "anh Ca",
meaning "the eldest" was exclusively reserved for a certain Chua Nguyen, as a kind of
respect for him). In the North, the eldest is still called "anh Ca".
To my knowledge, "Anh Hai Nam Bo" is a most recent expression, compared to "Si Phu Bac Ha",
already a widespread expression when Nguyen Hue conquered the North at the end of the 18th
century.
Pha.m Ngo.c La^n
Diem Ngoc Nguyen <ndnguyen@unc.edu>
date Feb 6, 2007 12:06 PM
subject RE: RE: [Vsg] current issues in Vietnam -- invitation to brainstorm
I think we should differentiate these two titles. “Sĩ Phu Bắc Hà” is to indicate feudal intellectual class in North Vietnam before. Contrary, “Anh Hai Nam Bộ;” is to call a typical farmer
with generousness, honesty, and hardworking, in South Vietnam,
especially in the Mekong Delta. While “Sĩ Phu Bắc Hà”
regards to a group rather than an individual, “Anh Hai Nam Bộ;”
focuses more on an individual. Also, we should distinguish between
“Anh Hai Nam Bộ” and “anh hai” as a way to call someone who is
the first son in family or someone who is older but we do not know his
order number in family.
Best regards,
Yim