anglais

The Saigon-DongNai hydrological system and Mekong delta concentrate around 21 Million inhabitants (30% of Vietnam population) and 46% of Vietnam PIB (Đông Nai Statistical House, 2020). Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) is the most populous city in Vietnam (10 million inhabitants), the financial capital and the prime economic hub. Due to intensive agriculture and aquaculture productions, the Mekong Delta referred to as the “rice bowl” is crucial on a socio-economic point of view for Vietnam. Because of their low elevation, the Mekong delta and the HCMC regions are threatened by climate variability and by human pressures at local, regional and global scales. In the region, climate change is manifest through sea level rise and through local changes in rainfall distribution and intensity. Relative sea level rise, due to both land subsidence and climate change, leads to increased coastal erosion and flooding, and increased saline water intrusion into the rivers and aquifers. As urbanization intensifies, natural environment becomes more and more degraded, making it increasingly challenging to ensure a healthy environment and a safe water supply for all. All these challenges involve water (its cycle, its quality, its social and economic importance). Water is the common denominator of the science developed in the International Joint Laboratory CARE, “Centre Asiatique de Recherche sur l’Eau”. Thus, the main objective of CARE is to strengthen research on all these regional challenges related to water and to intensify training and knowledge transfer in environmental sciences, hydrology, climate change modeling, water remediation and water treatment. To do so CARE will enlarge the scientific topics and expand its collaborative perimeter accordingly. The activities foreseen under CARE will strengthen the contribution of academic research to the adaptation to climate change and natural hazards, to the risk assessment related to pollutants emissions, to the identification of regulation and environmental infrastructure needs, and to the development of technologies or the implementation of nature based solutions capable to mitigate pollution for a healthy environment. Knowledge on water and climate are socio-environmental constructions that promote specific representations of nature. As this process frames and constrains environmental policies, CARE will include social sciences as a cross-cutting theme of four main thematic areas: 1) Water cycle: Understanding the dynamics of the Saigon-DongNai and Mekong river systems, groundwater budgets and severe floods induced by extreme rainfall events. 2) Anthropogenic pollution from their emissions sources, to rivers and down to coastal areas: Monitoring emerging pollution in environment (carbon and nutrient, microplastics, emerging contaminants, antibiotics, pesticides), characterizing their spatio-temporal dynamics, determining their fate and assessing their risk toward aquatic life and human health. Understanding Human practices with chemicals and human perception of environmental degradation. 3) Water Management: Developing engineering techniques that can provide solutions to provide drinking water and reducing the risks associated with water consumption; determining suitable nature based solutions to provide biodiversity benefits and to control water pollution from urban surface-runoff and municipal wastewater in urbanized areas. 4) Coastal Hazards: Coastal erosion and flooding, their relation to ocean variability, land subsidence, sand and sediment supply, as well as mean sea level rise, storm surges and tides. Creating a vulnerability map to flooding, erosion and sea-level rise for the south region and identifying how the population can adapt to these risks. CARE will be based on an excellent dynamic, integrating large newly funded projects (TROPECOS, SAWACO, PLUME, MULTISOURCE), and relying on trusted and productive partnership (see LECZ-CARE report). We will seize the opportunity to strengthen synergies between thematic areas that are still too compartmentalized and to develop transdisciplinary as a collaborative process that crosses disciplinary boundaries.