Vietnam’s Mekong Delta may run out of sand by 2035: Study

HANOI - Vietnam’s Mekong Delta may run out of sand by 2035, an expert warned on Thursday, as sand mining and dams strip the “rice bowl” region, putting people, crops and the economy at risk.

The delta, a biodiversity hot spot where the Mekong runs into the South China Sea, provides food and livelihoods for many people.

Hydropower dams further up the Mekong

are reducing the flow of sand downstream, playing a major role in the rapid decline of sand under the riverbed that is critical to the delta’s resilience.

Mining sand to feed Vietnam’s booming construction sector is fast depleting resources, according to a major World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) report.

At the current extraction rate of 35 million to 55 million cubic m a year, “the exploitable stock under the riverbed… can only last as far as a decade”, said the Sand Budget For Vietnam Mekong Delta report.

Report co-author Sepehr Eslami said that if the sand runs out, there would be a 10 per cent increase in areas affected by salt intrusion – a phenomenon that has already caused huge damage to rice crops in the freshwater Mekong.

Dr Eslami said sand depletion would lead to “more riverbank erosion and larger tides that lead to more flooding and erosion”.

In the context of climate change and the threat of rising sea levels, the shortage of sand represents a threat to the delta, the WWF warns. The Mekong Delta is one of the world’s most rapidly transforming deltas, with a reserve of up to 550 million cubic m of exploitable sand.

The study said only four million cubic m of sand flowed down to the delta in 2022 – well down on the average of seven million cubic m.

The amount of sand being extracted each year is likely to be even higher than the study reported because the research did not calculate the volume mined at night, when many illegal dredgers are known to operate.

In August, the police arrested a senior official in An Giang, a Mekong Delta province, for allegedly taking bribes of US$50,000 (S$68,400) from a mining firm.

Trung Hau 68 mined more than 4.7 million cubic m of sand despite having a licence to extract just a third of that, the police said.

Homes and businesses across the Mekong Delta have disappeared into the sea due to coastal erosion, caused in part by disappearing sand.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said nearly 800 erosion spots have been reported, stretching across a total of 1,134km of sea and riverbanks in the Mekong Delta, since 2016. AFP