The Mekong River starts in China and goes through 4 other countries before it ends in southern Vietnam. Every year the river gets bigger, overflows its banks and floods the southern end of Vietnam, in an area called the Mekong River Delta. The people who live in the delta depend on these floods, using the water to grow rice and fish. The floods bring water and mud that fertilizes the crops, and it’s easy to move around flooded rice paddies on boats. People here can grow two or three rice crops a year, and Vietnam is the second largest producer of rice in the world. The people who live here have a simple life and they are happy.
Vietnamese farmers in the delta are worried that the river may stop flowing someday soon. China is building six dams on the Mekong River thousands of kilometers upstream. China is doing this to provide electricity to their people, but the Chinese could also take the water from the river to grow food and drink in years when it doesn’t rain enough. If they do this, people downstream might not have enough water to survive.
The Vietnamese people we spoke to don’t believe their government would help them if this happened. Fifty years ago China helped Vietnam win a war against the United States. Some Vietnamese people we spoke to think Vietnam still owes China favors. Right now, China is taking over Vietnamese islands and the Vietnamese government is not complaining. What else might the Chinese government try to take from Vietnam as a return for these favors? Farmers in the Mekong River delta worry that if the Chinese government takes the water from the Mekong River, their government will not try to stop it. Without the yearly floods, Vietnamese people may starve, or else have to move away from their homes and find a different life in the city.
Fishing in the mud: a farmer traps fish in the waterways, and then we bail out the water to make fishing as easy as reaching out to grab something super slippery – not so easy!
