27/06/2016
Natural resources surrounding us are not infinite. The integrating of biodiversity into development project planning is to create opportunities for better exploitation and maintaining long-term benefits of natural resources, to avoid waste in natural resources usage, to prevent reduction of biodiversity and ecosystem.
Human is not the only ruling species, but each of millions of species that co-exist and live in the planet in an inter-dependent relationship to create a nature network with diverse biodiversity chains to support communities to adapt and cope with changes in natural and climate conditions.
Việt Nam is a coastal country in the East Sea with the coastline of 3,260km, stretching 16 latitudes, is the 16th highest biodiversity country in the world, with diverse ecosystems including 11,458 fauna species, 21,000 flora species and 3,000 organism species. Biodiversity in Việt Nam plays a very important role to agriculture, forestry and fishery development; is the basis to ensure food security; to maintain genetic resources for animal husbandry and plants; to supply construction materials and medicinal sources, food as well as plays important role in climate regulation and environmental protection.
However, biodiversity is degrading at a very rapid rate. By now, the forest area of Việt Nam is about 13 million ha, with the cover rate of nearly 39 %. However, the area of primitive forest reduces and can only be found mostly in protection forests or in protected areas. The area of mangrove forests, protection shield of terrestrial land, has reduced more than a half in the last 10 years and continue to reduce. Nearly 700 species are threatened to extinction at the national level, of which 49 species are critical endangered at the global level.
Việt Nam is an agriculture country, depending mostly on natural resource conditions. Therefore, the reduction and loss of species or seedlings that have values in nature will affect directly the livings of people.
To protect natural resources, with other laws, the Law on Biodiversity was enacted in 2008 regulating in details the principles for biodiversity conservation, creating the legal basis for local communities and relevant stakeholders to participate in.
On 16/11/1994, Việt Nam formally became a party to the Convention of Biological Diversity. According to the Convention, the integration of biodiversity in a systematic manner into the development process is called as “biodiversity integration”. The overall objective of biodiversity integration is to incorporate biodiversity principles into different phases of the formulation process of policies, plans and projects. Biodiversity integration is mainly to support and minimize adverse impacts caused by production activities, to reconfirm the contribution of biodiversity to the economic development and welfare improvement for the people.
In other words, biodiversity integration is necessary and indispensable in development projects. Currently, the government has promulgated legal documents guiding the implementation and monitoring mechanism of the integration. However, due to extremely attractive economic benefits of some development projects, in some areas the integration of biodiversity has been neglected or intentionally missed out.
The Ba Ha River Hydropower plant and the fate of a freshwater crocodile is a typical example. On 18/04/2004 in Suoi Trai commune, Son Hoa district, Phu Yen province, the Electricity of Viet Nam (EVN) launched the construction of Ba Ha River Hydropower Plant – with the highest capacity in 10 hydropower plants in Ba river flow within the location of Son Hoa and Song Hinh districts, Phu Yen province, Krông Pa district, Gia Lai province. The main dyke running through the river bed is 320 m, with the dam peak of 110.9m, the total volume of the whole reservoir of 349.7 million m3, two turbines with assembly capacity of 220MW, average productivity of 825 million kWh/year, and the total investment of 4,274.7 billion dong.
Ba Ha River Hydropower Plant not only supplies the power to the national power grid, but the project also contributes to regulate irrigation waters for downstream areas and to promote local economic development. However, in reality, this plant has flooded and removed the habitat of a freshwater crocodile (crocodylus siamensis). This crocodile has resided and bred for a long time inside the planned hydropower reservoir - Ha Lam Pond, Ea Lam commune, Song Hinh district, Phu Yen province. This is considered as the only remaining natural mangrove area in Việt Nam that has freshwater crocodiles. According to the classification of IUCN Red Book, this species is critically endangered (CR) due to severe population reduction and threat to extinction. Reports of the Ba Ha River Hydropower Plant showed that the environmental impact assessment report had reflected the existence of this species in the project area. However the project investor and relevant agencies only consider this inattentively, without implementing impact mitigation measures to protect this species and presume that the water reservoir is good for the development of the freshwater crocodile species.
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| Freshwater crocodile sample |
Since 2006, biodiversity experts of the Việt Nam Science and Technology Academy discovered the existence of this freshwater crocodile species and warned about the biodiversity loss of the region. However, all efforts to save and converse this freshwater crocodile species in the nature are not successful. After the hydropower reservoir containing water, on 30/9/2012 the body of the last freshwater crocodile was float on the reservoir in Ha Lam lake area. The hydropower plant has flooded the final habitat and permanently removed the famous reptile in the wild nature of Việt Nam.
The case of Dong Nai 6 and 6A hydropower plants in the upstream of Dong Nai River is a typical lesson learnt for the lack of attention in biodiversity conservation planning. According to the environmental impact assessment, the implementation of two Dong Nai 6 and 6A hydropower plants will permanently remove 327.23 ha forest land, particularly including 128.37 ha land in Cat Loc area within the Cat Tien National Park. In addition, these two hydropower plants are 55km away from the Bau Sau Ramsar site along the river way. The environmental impact assessment has not fully assessed the biodiversity loss in the flooded area and in the construction areas in the relationship with the integrity and biodiversity value of Cat Tien National Park and local ecosystems of the region. Some measures to reduce the impacts on biodiversity of the environmental impact assessment are not feasible…
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| Camellia longii species |
These two projects have remarkably violated provisions of the Law on Biodiversity (2008), of which Article No.7 regulates clearly forbidden behavior on biodiversity, does not allow the construction of works and housing within strictly protected zone of protect areas, except for national defense and security purposes.
The environmental impact assessment has missed many biodiversity values of the Cat Tien National Park, or possibly the project investor was not fully aware of different valuable values in this important forest. For example, on 12/7/2011, camellia longii species was a new species that was discovered and collected by scientists of the Southern Institute of Ecology (SIE), Viet Nam Science and Technology Academy within Dong Nai 6A project area. Two times of preparing the environmental impact assessment for the project, this species was not discovered and described. According to the new discovery, Dong Nai 6A is the first distribution and description habitat of the camellia longii species, the only area in the world stores the biodiversity genetic resources of this new species. This shows that in the natural environment of Dong Nai 6 and 6A hydropower plant area is as a survival cradle and stores many secrets that have not been discovered. These biodiversity secrets will be drowned under Dong Nai 6 and 6A hydropower reservoirs and even the camellia longii species will be extinct before it is given a new name.
Scientific discoveries show that Dong Nai 6 and 6A hydropower plants are decided by viewpoints that are not relevant to regulations on biodiversity integration and are not closely linked to environmental protection regulations, or sustainable development policies. A happy ending was achieved for Dong Nai River and Cat Tien National Park after many efforts of different communities, on 27/09/2013 the Government decided to remove Dong Nai 6 and 6A hydropower plants out of the approved plan.
It can be seen that during the development process, many species and ecosystems are disappearing at an uncontrolled speed. Human, not others, is the main driver this trend. The lack of biodiversity integration in development projects has cause the loss of natural products and environmental services that human inherits from the nature for a long time. Therefore, Việt Nam needs to improve mechanisms and policies relating to biodiversity management and conservation to develop criteria on sustainable use and conservation of ecosystems in an effective manner, at the same time towards achieving sustainable development goals as biodiversity is our lives.
Dr. Vũ Ngọc Long, Director
Southern Institute of Ecology
Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology
