Rising sea levels sweep away beaches in VN

By 2020, provincial experts say more than 306 square kilometres of this coastal area will be submerged. Hoi An will be the hardest hit, with flooding predicted in more than 26 per cent of the city, followed by Dien Ban district, Duy Xuyen district and Nui Thanh district.

In Nui Thanh's Tam Hai island commune, seawater has encroached 50 metres of land in the past five years and local authorities are looking to relocate some 200 households from Thuan An village, which is the most severely affected. Many villagers have already moved to the mainland, fearing the impact of more frequent natural disasters, said Nguyen Tan Hung, a commune official in charge of agriculture.

He said landslides had decreased since 2 kilometres of protective dykes were built along the coast in Tam Hai. However, a 30-metre section of the embankment was damaged in a storm in 2013 and the commune needed to expand the dyke system by 2.4km in Thuan An and Binh Trung villages, where sea levels had been rising by nearly 10m each year.

Rising sea levels and erosion are also affecting Cua Dai beach in Hoi An, home to many high-end resorts. Now the ease is only 40 metres from the road and tides have eroded the coast to such an extent that some beaches have been completely swept away. 

Rising sea levels and erosion has hurt business at SunRise Resort, affecting more than 200m of beach in the last eight years and forcing the resort to spend US$1 million to build embankments, resort director Ngo Van Hoang said. However, the embankments could not withstand the high waves.

Several resorts invited experts from the Netherlands to survey the area and propose solutions, but the construction of a complex dyke system was beyond their means.