Though local fishermen have gained first achievements in retaining Ran Trao coral reefs, they understand that they would continue making every effort to protect the sea from people’s daily activities.

Local residents, in their activities to earn their living, have been gradually destroying the environment. They have been breeding lobsters in large scale with fresh food, thus having caused serious pollution to the water resources. And it is the polluted water resources which have killed lobsters and made people become penniless after shrimp crops. These are the big threats to Ran Trao.

One and all men breeding shrimp

If someone arrives in the Xuan Tu Hamlet 2 of Van Hung commune of Van Ninh district in Khanh Hoa district, he would see that local residents now have comfortable lives. A lot of beautiful villas and solid houses have arisen recently among the green large orchards. The roads here have been concreted.

Nguyen Van Chim, a local resident, said that in the past, there were only bamboo made houses with earthen wall. However, a lot of successful lobster crops have helped local residents have new lives.

According to Chim, Van Hung is the first locality in Vietnam that breeds lobsters. Thanks to the successful lobster crops, which bring a profit of more than 100 million dong a year, Chim can feed six children. He said that many other people, who have bigger capital than him, can pocket 3-4 billion dong a year.

The most prosperous period for local residents was 2003 and 2004, when people spend one dong in capital and earned 10 dong in profits.

However, the profits have gradually decreased because of the pollution. As it is impossible to breed shrimp near the seashore, people have to put shrimp cages in other places in the Van Phong Bay. Dam Mon proves to be the most suitable place for shrimp hatchery. However, even Dam Mon has also become polluted.

Chim said that the pollution in Dam Mon is not so serious that people have to “desert their country.” However, shrimps have caught diseases recently. Especially, a lot of kinds of medicine now cannot cure shrimp. Previously, the loss percentage was 20 percent, while the figure has increased to 30-40 percent.

The overexploitation has made people suffer.

The unequal struggle

Nguyen Cuong, Head of the Ran Trao group of eco-tourism community, said that right in 2003, the local authorities decided to collect fee from lobster breeding households, 70,000 dong per annum from every household. However, the local authorities failed to do that, because the households came from different provinces and cities, which made it unable to control.

MCD project also suggested a lot of models for local people to earn their living, which aims to sustainable development. For example, they were suggested to breed snout otter clam, making coconut brooms or join the eco-tourism chain. However, when reviewing the project in November 2011, MCD acknowledge that the poor people in the community still put a hard pressure on the project’s purpose of preserving the sea ecosystem – the subject that the project and the government’s partners still cannot approach.

Tran Kim Bao, Deputy Chair of the Van Ninh district’s local authorities, admitted that the local authorities still have not found a proper solution to the problem, despite tens of scientific workshops which discussed how to protect the environment, the environment still has been polluted.

Dr Pham Khanh Nam from the HCM City Economics University said that it is necessary to impose environment tax in order to scale down the lobster breeding industry, which means that the households, who cause pollution, have to pay money for this. However, this proves to be not easy thing.

Source: SGTT/ VNN