Nearly 1.9 million hectares of land in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta have been hit by saltwater intrusion so far, which is 50,000 hectares higher than the affected area in the peak salinization in 2016, according to the Water Resource Directorate (WRD), under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD). As many as ten out of 13 localities in the delta, with a total of 71 out of 137 units at the district, township, and province levels, have been affected by the phenomenon. Earlier, the directorate projected that the region will likely have to reduce 50,000 hectares of plants in the 2019-2020 winter-spring crop due to severe droughts and saltwater intrusion. (Nhan Dan)
