China’s lack of cooperation causing problems for Vietnam’s water resources programming
The lack of cooperation from China and its erratic methods of water storage and discharge has placed Vietnam in a passive mode when using water from the Red River. Tong Ngoc Thanh, director of the National Center for Water Resources Planning and Investigation, said at a workshop held recently that since China was uncooperative, and that it was difficult for Vietnam to get information for development programming about the water source in the upper course belonging to the Chinese territory. Meanwhile, in the upper course, China now runs tens of hydropower plants, 1,870 dams and nine reservoirs with total capacity of 200 million cubic meters. These have all caused big changes to the water volume, the current flow regime, water quality and the sediment of the river.
