Foreign sea leases deprive locals of living

Nha Trang Bay

Nha Trang City, Van Phong Bay

Van Phong Bay

Talking about environment, Vietnam is one of twenty five countries to possess a high level of biodiversity. It is mean that this country are riches in natural resources. However, I would like to talk about foreign enterprises which leasing water space in central of Khanh Hao Province has cut off the chance of local people to make a living from the sea. The reason why I choose this news article is because I think it is not fair for the local people. They also have a right to use their local area to run a business.

In this news article, it was talking about foreign countries such as Japan, Taiwan and Norway mostly have signed the firms of 20-years leases for more than 1,000ha of water in Van Phong Bay to raise oysters and fish. Moreover, foreign enterprises have leased thousands hectares of water for tourism and shipbuilding in Van Ninh and Ninh Hao districts. Many of local people have struggle to access the coast. Also, they have asked the provincial Natural Resources and Environment Department to lease part of the coast for their own business but most of them have been failed. In addition, only co-operative and businesses were permitted to leases water area because they were participated in large-scale production. For the local co-operatives, they were allowed to lease water space for business reasons only. According to that, local citizens were rarely given permission to lease area because they are usually engaged in small-scale production. Furthermore, it is easily affected by natural disasters and hard for local authorities to manage. Therefore, permission for foreign businesses to lease coastal areas had deprived local people of the right to earn a living.

As I see it, I think the government should give local people a chance to lease water space because that water areas are not only a places for foreigner businesses. The local people also need their native land to reside and rises oysters and fish. Although their businesses are produced in small scale, the government should give some opportunities to local citizens. To compare with Thailand, we do not have a contract to rent water spaces for foreign businesses. However, most of foreign businesses are like to buy local areas which located near to the seaside. The local citizens also like to sell their own land to the foreigner because they give native people a lot of money. In order to have more right to buy lands, they married to Thai people. Therefore, most of the resorts and apartments in south of Thailand are own by foreign businesses.