On September 5, 2023, representative of Gemalink Port and Seed for Sea Project, Mr. Chu Duc Trung, gave a speech about the cooperative efforts that have been taking place between businesses and local authorities to restore mangrove forests at the Workshop on Mangrove Afforestation in the Mekong Delta organized by Manglub in Tra Vinh Province.
The Mekong Delta is an important agricultural basket of Vietnam and Southeast Asia; it is also home to more than 20 million people. In recent years, the Mekong Delta has faced many climate change challenges, such as severe drought and salinity, riverbank and coastal erosion, urban flooding, river pollution, groundwater depletion, etc. These changes have caused extreme weather, threatening the homes and livelihoods of millions of people in the region.
At the Conference, Dr. Tran Thi Ngoc Bich from Tra Vinh University said that salinity intrusion in 2019-2020 affected 10/13 Mekong Delta provinces, increasing by 4 grams/liter and affecting 42.5% of the natural area (1,688,600 hectares), up from 50,376 hectares in 2016.
Vietnam is one of the five countries most heavily affected by climate change in the world, and the sixth in Asia threatened by rising sea levels. According to a 2022 study by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), 90% of the Mekong Delta's land area will be submerged by 2100 if there is no urgent action taken across the river basin. Also according to a 2019 study, by 2050, more than 20 million people in the Mekong Delta are at risk of losing their homes and livelihoods due to rising sea levels.
Also according to the WWF and many other reputable scientific studies, planting mangroves is the optimal solution to combat climate change in the Mekong Delta. Mangrove forests are a nature’s wall against storms, saltwater intrusion, and are effective carbon sinks, contribute to increasing biodiversity and livelihoods for local people.
At the event, representatives of Tra Vinh, Soc Trang, and Vinh Long provinces all committed to continue restoring more areas of mangrove forests, which is being threatened by climate change. At the same time, they have recognized the forest restoration efforts of organizations in recent times, typically the “Seed for Sea” mangrove planting project started by Gemalink Port (which belongs to Gemadept Corporation's port system).
In 2022, Gemalink Port has coordinated the Seed for Sea initiative – Nurturing the seeds for the sea, planting 2 hectares of Borneo teak (listed in the Red Book) in Long Vinh commune, Duyen Hai district, Tra Vinh province. Other businesses and multinational corporations have also joined hands with Gemalink and participated in this initiative. Together, they have planted an additional 11 hectares of other types of mangrove trees, such as Sonneratia caseolaris and Rhizophora apiculata, according to the planning of local forest rangers. Following the initial achievements, the Seed for Sea Project has been cooperating more deeply with local people in 2023 and the near future to come up with many creative solutions to preserve mangrove forests, such as coordinating mangrove planting with aquaculture and harvesting activities to promote sustainable development. The project is also expanding its scope to other provinces in the Mekong Delta. Furthermore, as a pioneer, Gemadept and Gemalink Port continue to encourage the business community to join hands in efforts to combat climate change.
Gemadept's port and logistics ecosystem, of which Gemalink Port is an important link, has been developing in a Greener and Smarter direction. The Company has applied advanced technologies using self-sufficient renewable energy with high automation in daily operation and has increased research into flexible logistics solutions. With that, Gemadept has been improving the operational efficiency and sustainability of the Port and Logistics ecosystem, contributing to minimizing the impact on the environment. This allows the Company to meet the increasing needs of customers and contribute to improving the competitiveness of Vietnamese goods on the global supply chain.
