Standing up to Vietnam’s coal rush
Grandma Ca, 99, refuses to leave her plot of land even after bulldozers demolished her house.
VAN PHONG BAY: Toothless and nearly blind, grandmother Pham Thi Ca refuses to leave her plot of land even after bulldozers demolished her house – an extraordinary holdout against communist Vietnam’s deepening addiction to coal.
The 99-year-old was offered money to move as authorities hoovered up land for a planned US$2.6bil (RM10.8bil) Japanese-funded coal plant in the remote Van Phong Bay she has called home since birth.
But when she said no, around 100 authorities showed up, forcibly removed her from the house and bulldozed it.
They were helpless to prevent the destruction of the property two years ago, but Ca, frail and wizened, has rebuffed all attempts to evict her from the land since.
“The authorities carried me away, but I refuse to move,” explains Ca, who now lives in a makeshift shelter of corrugated tin, wooden beams and coconut fronds next to the pile of rubble that was once her home.
“My house is here, my land is here, so I will be buried here,” she says, sitting on a small cot where she spends much of her time.
It’s a story playing out across Vietnam, where a strong-fisted government is powering ahead with coal projects to meet the soaring energy demands of a turbo-charged economy.
Coal accounts for about a third of Vietnam’s current energy production and is slated to rise to about 50% by 2030.
That means building more coal plants in places like Van Phong Bay despite a chorus of opposition from locals who complain of land grabs, loss of livelihood and environmental damage.
Some 300 people have been relocated from Ca’s community in south-central Khanh Hoa province.
They were offered cash compensation and rooms in state housing – but the residences were far from their farms and fishing grounds.
The US$43,000 (RM180,000) cash to leave their 9,000sq m plot was not enough to upend Ca’s family.
“We cannot work there, there is no land for cultivation,” says Ca’s son Ho Huu Hanh, referring to the proposed relocation area.
He insists they were never told about the planned coal plant and accuses authorities of bending the law to strongarm residents to leave.
The family lost their farmland anyway. Now Hanh works as a day-labourer to get by, earning US$170 (RM711) a month.
“I can’t do anything, I feel so sorry for myself,” he adds, crying.
Others in the area are worried about what the coal plant will do to fish and coral reefs in the bay where water temperatures could rise due to the plant’s runoff.
Like many of the 20 or so coal plants already operating in Vietnam, the bulk of the funding for the yet-tobe-built Van Phong plant is external.
The Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) last month approved a US$1.2bil (RM5bil) loan for the project, which is sponsored by the Sumitomo Corporation of Japan and is set to come online in 2023.
Sumitomo says assessments were conducted to measure the environmental, social and health impacts of the project which were “managed and mitigated appropriately”.
It says consultation meetings were held with residents and that compensation and resettlement was “carried out under the responsibility of local authorities in accordance with the laws of Vietnam”.
Developing economies like Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia are attractive for investors from Japan, South Korea and China as the developed world turns away from coal in search of clean energy.
Foreign investment has skewed Vietnam’s energy strategy, locking it “into expensive and dirty power for decades,” warns Julien Vincent, executive director at Market Forces, a non-governmental energy investment watchdog.
But for power-hungry Vietnam coal is for now cheaper, more reliable and more familiar than renewables, which currently provide less than one per cent of the country’s power generation.