VietNamNet Bridge – The prolonged water disputes between hydropower plants and local authorities in the central region and Central Highlands recently show that big problems exist in the water natural resource management.

The battles for water getting more violent 

While the number of people using water has been increasingly rapidly, the water resources tend to get exhausted, disputes will occur, in Vietnam and other countries in the world as well. This is a necessity. Therefore, Dr. Doan The Loi, Head of the Institute for Economics and Water Resources Management, said that Vietnam needs to think of the possible scenarios to settle the problems.

Since water is a kind of valuable natural resource, it must be used in the way which can harmonize the benefits of involved subjects. Hydropower plant developers want to use the water to make electricity, but their use must not badly affect the agriculture production and daily household use.

A lot of hydropower plants have been built on the upper course of rivers to generate electricity to ease the thirst for electricity from industries and households. However, the plants, which need huge volumes of water to run their turbines, have caused a drought to the residents in the lower course of the rivers.

It’s necessary to find out the solutions which allow to obtain many different targets when using water. Water should be allocated in an effective way, so that it can be used for hydropower plants which can help control the water capacity, thus allowing to stop floods, for industrial production factories, households’ use and environment protection.

In order to do that, the government needs to build up reasonable policies based on the close cooperation among ministries and branches to ensure the harmonized benefits to different subjects.

While emphasizing the importance of the water resources management, Loi said that the current management mechanism is unreasonable. Too many ministries and agencies have got involved in the management.

In principle, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment is in charge of the water natural resources. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Industry and Trade takes care for hydropower plant projects, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development takes the responsibility for the irrigation works that serve the agriculture production and anti-flooding works.

“If there had been a more reasonable mechanism on the water management, there should not have been such prolonged disputes,” Loi said.

It’s obvious that the relevant ministries did not have the necessary cooperation to manage the natural resources. They should have sit together before the hydropower plant projects were licensed to discuss the necessary measures to both ensure enough water for the hydropower plants and provide enough water for the people in the rivers’ lower course.

Analysts have also noted that since the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment takes care for water natural resources, and the Ministry of Industry and Trade takes care for hydropower plants, the number of water disputes tends to increase.

In fact, Loi said Vietnam has had a lot of legal documents stipulating the water resource management, but these are just the documents with general regulations which cannot help settle the disputes.

“We should have set up the rules of the games before the games kick off,” Loi said.

All the involved parties need to be given the right to raise questions to the hydropower plant developers before the projects are implemented. For example, people can question what the developers would do when the floods rush down, if the developers are capable enough to deal with the emergency cases…

Thien Nhien