Une infographie de l’Agence française pour le développement rappelle les enjeux que soulève le changement climatique au Viêt-Nam à horizon 2050.
Document à télécharger : https://www.afd.fr/fr/ressources/infographie-le-vietnam-en-premiere-ligne-du-changement-climatique
[ndlr] Un article de la revue Nature revoit à la hausse l’impact de la montée de la mer sur les côtes et le risque de submersion de plusieurs grandes villes d’Asie. Dans cette perspective à horizon 2050, une grande partie du delta du Mékong disparaitrait sous les eaux. L’urgence climatique n’est pas un vain mot.
Scott A. Kulp1 & Benjamin H. Strauss, “New elevation data triple estimates of globalvulnerability to sea-level rise and coastalflooding”, Nature, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12808-z
Denise Lu and Christopher Flavelle, “Rising Seas Will Erase More Cities by 2050, New Research Shows”, New York Times, 29/10/2019. Extrait :
Southern Vietnam could all but disappear.
The first map shows earlier expectations of submerged land by 2050. But the new outlook, the second map, indicates that the bottom part of the country will be underwater at high tide.
More than 20 million people in Vietnam, almost one-quarter of the population, live on land that will be inundated.
Much of Ho Chi Minh City, the nation’s economic center, would disappear with it, according to the research, which was produced by Climate Central, a science organization based in New Jersey, and published in the journal Nature Communications. The projections don’t account for future population growth or land lost to coastal erosion.
Source : NYT
La réponse de Mme Huynh Thi Lan Huong, directrice de l’Institut vietnamien de météorologie, d’hydrologie et du changement climatique : Mekong Delta extinction an extreme prediction: Vietnam expert, VnExpress, 02/11/2019.
MàJ 04/11/2019.
Annonce de la première séance d’un séminaire conjoint franco-vietnamien très intéressant sur les questions environnementales.
We are pleased to invite you to participate to the FIRST SESSION of the seminar ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF VIETNAM, organized jointly by the Department of history of the University of social sciences and Humanities in Hanoi (USSH) and the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) under the framework of the AFD project GEMMES-VN and in collaboration with the Center for South East-Asia Studies (CASE) in Paris (EHESS, Inalco, CNRS).
30th September 2019 at the same time, in a parallel session between Hanoi and Paris :
First session:
Climate and environment in Vietnam during 17th and 19th centuries: primary sources, methods and philological analysis
with two keynote speakers :
• Dr. Hoàng Anh Tuấn, Vice Rector of University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Hanoi), Associate Professor at USSH, Chair of Urban History, What primary sources, issues and challenges to write an environmental history of early-modern Vietnam?
• Pr Emmanuel Poisson, Professor of History of Vietnam, University Denis Diderot, Paris, The perceptions and understanding of environment by scholars in classical Vietnam
Further information in the attached files related to the goals of the seminar, the abstracts and the organization of the first session, the tentative program of the year, the website and the connexion access details to follow the Seminar through Internet, if you are not in Hanoi or Paris.
You look forward to seeing you in Hanoi or Paris to discuss and develop environmental history of Vietnam.
The steering committee of EHVN.
Documents joints :
[ndlr] Prix de thèse australien 2018 sur l’Asie décerné à la chercheuse Kathryn Dyt. Présentation de son travail dans l’entretien en ligne signalé ci-dessous (extraits).
My thesis, The Nguyen Weather-world: Environment, Emotion and Governance in Nineteenth-Century Vietnam, is an environmental study of the Nguyen dynasty in Vietnam from 1802 to 1883, prior to French colonial rule. It explores how the Nguyen court organised itself in relation to the powerful, agentive and emotional ‘weather-world’ within which it was immersed. What I found is that the systems of governance at the Nguyen court have been approached from social and cultural perspectives, but ecological issues have been overlooked. Through situating the court within its environment, I was able to offer new perspectives on the nature of royal authority and power. The thesis shows how the environment related to the political structures of the court – for example, the ability to measure, divine and respond to climactic events was linked to court hierarchies. Nguyen emperors, I argue, consolidated their positions through displays of their superior weather knowledge and emotional interaction with the natural world.
It was really through working on the material from the period. When I began to sift through the weighty tomes of the Nguyen court chronicles, I was surprised by the court’s copious documentation of a wide range of meteorological phenomena – not only ‘unusual’ and dramatic events such as storms, floods and droughts, but also a continuum of weather cycles and subtle seasonal changes in the natural world. This begged the question: What drove the Nguyen court to implement such a rigorous system of environmental information gathering? Previous histories of the period have tended to dismiss the court’s environmental reporting as unimportant, but I argue it provides compelling evidence that the environment was central to how the Nguyen understood, experienced and governed the world they were part of.
Working with source material in different parts of the world in three different languages – Vietnamese, Chinese and French – was a real challenge. I had to conduct research in a number of different archives in Vietnam and France. The language of the Veritable Records (a major primary source for this period) is archaic and, at times, opaque and difficult to interpret, so I had to spend a lot of time reading and re-reading passages.
Read more / Lire la suite : Asian Currents
Illustration “à la une” : Kathryn Dyt © DR
[ndlr] Signalement d’un article intéressant sur les ravages de l’Agent Orange et la décontamination.
From 1962 to 1971, the American military sprayed vast areas of Vietnam with Agent Orange, leaving dioxin contamination that has severely affected the health of three generations of Vietnamese. Now, the U.S. and Vietnamese governments have joined together in a massive cleanup project.
In the thriving industrial city of Bien Hoa, about 20 miles east of Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, there is a large air base, just beyond a sweeping bend in the Dong Nai River. During the American war in Vietnam, it was said to be the busiest airport in the world. Since the war ended in 1975, a dense cluster of four residential neighborhoods has grown up around the base. Their total population is perhaps 111,000, while the base itself, now home to advanced long-range fighter-bombers of the Vietnam People’s Air Force, has another 1,200 permanent residents.
A small drainage canal, no more than 8 or 10 feet wide, snakes its way from the west end of the runway — an area known as Pacer Ivy — for half a mile or so through one of these densely packed neighborhoods, which is called Buu Long. On a sweltering afternoon last month, toward the end of the dry season, the canal was no more than a stagnant greenish-brown murk strewn with garbage and choked in places with water hyacinths. Nonetheless, a middle-aged woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Mai was washing her hands and feet in the filthy water. Nearby, a fisherman was sitting on a low cement wall near the mouth of the canal. Nothing was biting.
The problem for Buu Long, however, is what couldn’t be seen. The canal is heavily contaminated with the most toxic substance ever created by humans: dioxin, the unintended byproduct of the defoliant known as Agent Orange, for the color-coded band on the 55-gallon barrels in which it was stored before being loaded onto the lumbering C-123 aircraft at the Bien Hoa base and sprayed over vast areas of Vietnam. During the U.S. Air Force campaign known as Operation Ranch Hand, Agent Orange was used to strip bare the coastal mangroves of the Mekong Delta and the dense triple-canopy forests that concealed enemy fighters and supply lines.
Lire la suite : Yale Environment 360, 13/05/2019.
Voir également sur le même sujet (articles signalés par Greg Nagle
PhD Forest and watershed science, Hanoi) :
Illustration “à la une” : A Vietnamese soldier next to a hazardous warning sign for dioxin contamination at Bien Hoa air base last October © Kham/AFP/Getty Images
[ndlr] Face à l’explosion des cancers dus aux épandages chimiques hors de contrôle depuis le Renouveau, une mesure importante prise par le gouvernement vietnamien.
Invoquant la « toxicité » des produits contenant du glyphosate et leur impact sur l’environnement et la santé, le ministère de l’agriculture et du développement rural vietnamien a annoncé, mercredi 10 avril, le retrait du pesticide de la liste de produits autorisés dans le pays. Le 27 mars, le pays avait déjà fait savoir qu’il interdisait l’importation de tout herbicide contenant du glyphosate.
Lire la suite : Reporterre, 15/04/2019.
[ndlr] Signalement d’un article en ligne et des travaux d’Amélie Robert, géographe, enseignante et chercheure associée de l’UMR 7324 CITERES (CNRS, Université de Tours).
Résumé : Situées dans la partie occidentale de la province de Thừa Thiên Huế (Centre-Việt Nam), les montagnes d’A Lưới ont été lourdement affectées par la guerre du Việt Nam (1961-1975). Zone refuge pour les Việt Cộng, traversées par la piste Hồ Chí Minh – axe stratégique pour ces derniers –, elles subissent de nombreux épandages d’herbicides et bombardements, y compris au napalm, avec une intensité plus grande que dans les autres unités paysagères. Ces pratiques sont perpétrées par les troupes américano-sud-vietnamiennes qui mènent une véritable guerre contre l’environnement de l’ennemi. Mais celui-ci est aussi à l’origine de perturbations. Il recourt notamment aux bulldozers pour la construction des nombreuses voies de la piste Hồ Chí Minh. La comparaison des cartes d’occupation des sols de circa 1954 et 1975, dressées le long de transects, révèle les dynamiques paysagères survenues pendant la guerre. Certains sylvosystèmes de la région montagneuse d’A Lưới régressent, surtout dans la vallée principale. Mais d’autres progressent, conséquences indirectes de la guerre. En raison des combats, les montagnards, ethnies minoritaires, modifient leurs pratiques puis désertent la région, favorisant ainsi la reconquête forestière sur les terres délaissées. Pour les Kinh, ethnie majoritaire, la guerre est l’occasion de se familiariser avec la région montagneuse, jusque-là délaissée.
Pour en savoir plus, voir la thèse de l’auteure (2011) :
Publications et communications d’Amélie Robert sur le portail Hal-SHS
