Groundwater Use Habits and Environmental Awareness in Ca Mau Province, Vietnam: Implications for Sustainable Water Resource Management

Abstract

The Vietnamese Mekong Delta including Ca Mau province (CMP) is seriously affected by land subsidence. Groundwater over-extraction is considered to be a major driver for this process. To address the reduction of groundwater (GW) extraction as a potential counter measure for further subsidence, this study focuses on understanding the importance of GW in people's life and water using habits as well as their awareness with current environmental problems in Ca Mau. Therefore, GW sampling campaigns and surveys were conducted in all 9 districts of Ca Mau province in 2019 and 2020. The analyzed water samples showed a connection with information from questionnaires and created a general picture of water using habits. GW plays an important role in people's lives, it is used for washing, cooking, drinking and other activities. People use GW for different purposes depending on their perception of water quality. For important and direct health related purposes, such as cooking or drinking, people prepare to treat water more carefully or choose another alternative water resource. The analytical approach to evaluation results based on viewpoints from general to detail helped to dig deeper into people's stories to explain research results with their behavior in each situation. When people are dependent on GW and have no option to use alternative water resources, the importance level of GW in their life increases and their awareness of GW over-extraction becomes less. If people have another water source to use such as tap water (TW), habits of using GW change. This opens up the idea that a potential alternative water will reduce the dependence of people on GW and protect GW from over-exploitation. Besides, people in Ca Mau do not have much awareness of land subsidence or the reason leading to environmental problems. Therefore, raising the awareness of people by well-design education campaigns should be strongly considered.