 Parallel Session A, extreme weather events, changing river flows, and rising sea levels. In recent years, monitoring stations and people observed more extreme events in the Mekong Basin, including heavy rainfall events, severe floods and drought, and salinity intrusion due to the rising sea levels. The extreme events cost significant impacts on infrastructure, crops, fisheries, ecosystems, and the livelihoods of millions in the basin. Particularly in poor and rural areas. This session will discuss new evidence of extreme weather events, changing river flows, and rising sea levels in the Mekong countries, as well as priority needs for climate policy actions to reduce risk and its impacts in the region. So right now, I will hand over the floor to Dr. Tanapon Piman, Senior Research Fellow of the Sock Home Environment Institute, Asia Center. Hello, good afternoon. So this is a first challenge already, how to bring people from lunch immediately to the sections, and also how to make people active after good lunch, you know? So please help me also to do active participation for these sections. So, yeah, I mean, the main purpose of this section is to go deep rise more about the extreme events, changing for, changing rainfall patterns, and also maybe look into the sea level rising in the delta. At you already see some evident this morning that Dr. Sutat present about the Mekong extreme projection, you know? So this section we will try to deep dive, maybe look into country specific and try to see how the evident or maybe observation, you know? From the ground, we will support the key fighting from the regional level. Also, we already foresee that the projection is also depend on many kind of scenario, many models. So it is important for us as a scientist and also for the policy maker to deal with uncertainty, you know? So that why the discussion can be related to how we can use this uncertainty information from the projection, from the observation for the long term planning for climate adaptation, in example. And also, I would like all the participants also who has experience, particularly at the local or national level on the adaptation, particularly linked to extreme events, unusual rainfall, you know, storm, how people affected or how they try to adapt. And even how policy or government agency try to support. This is a right section for you to share the opinion, to discuss and also try to help us to form maybe key climate action that we can bring this message to the COP 28 next year. So I will start now for the section by first introduce the panel or key speaker. First is from Jula Longkorn University, Dr. Piyatida. So she is an assistant professor from the Faculty of Water Resort Engineering. So Dr. Piyatida, please. Oh, sorry, I tried to look at the back that you sit with Ajahn Chayut. So, yeah, please. Second speaker, Dr. Sotyakam. He also have a long experience with the Mekong River Commission in the Flat and Drow Center in Cambodia. So he has a real operator. So he can also share his experience on extreme event unusual flow in the Mekong. And the last one is also very important, Mr. Tieng from Kanter. He is like a 20 year experience working in climate change, natural resource management, biodiversity. So he can represent Mekong Delta that how Delta adapt to the climate change and also see level rise. So please clap your hand to him. So the flow of this section is we will keep around 8 maximum 10 minutes for each speaker to have a presentation or talks. And after that, we will start dialogue actions. So, yeah, please let me speak only. Please help me work as well. Otherwise my boss will not happy if you quiet, look at the computer, you know. So please make it like kind of informal discussion. I would like to say that. Okay, let me go on the stage too. So first I may ask Dr. Piathida to have a talk about her presentation regarding for focusing in Thailand, please. Thank you very much. My name is Piathida from July Longgoin University, Thailand. And it's very honor to be joining the round table discussion today on the extreme weather events and changing river flows and rising sea levels. And I'm actually like do not have much experience yet in the in the Mekong region. And today I would like to focus on the perspective on the extreme weather events and the some policy actions that have been taken. So my first main point is on the big question on the extreme events whether what we are experiencing either flood or drought, are they really extreme or are they like fluctuation and variation? And also another big question in terms of the variation versus the climate change. And Dr. Tanaporn gave us very challenging questions whether there's evidence supporting what we are experiencing. Is it a climate change or not? So I select the data from Japraya River. So sorry that it's not in the Mekong River basin but we have a very long record of the data. So the RID, Royal Irrigation Department of Thailand, they record the data here for 67 years. So it's quite a long record. And when we try to analyze the peak flow, the annual maximum peak flow from 1956 until last year 2022. And this is the flood frequency curve that we get. So for the big flood in Thailand in 2011, is it extreme event? Yes, extreme event in terms of the damage. But when we look at the hydrological of the peak flow in 2011, actually the return period is not that long. The return period is about 24 years. So what does it mean? So yes, we have peak flow of about 4,700 cubic meter per second. And this is not the highest either for the past 67 years. In 2006, we have almost 6,000 cubic meter per second of the peak flow at C2 station. So C2 station is merging between bingwang yom nan, so bing and nan merging together. So it's the control point for the flood management in the lower Japaaya River basin including Bangkok. So the data here is very important for the flood mitigation. And also in 1995, we also have big flood and the peak flow is actually higher than 2011. But the damage from 2011 because we have a lot of social and economic development, especially the industrial park in the flood plain in the Ayutthaya. And also how we manage the water and also the reservoir operation. So from the analysis and the picture that I show you, so the question is when we are talking about extreme events, it cannot be stand alone, right? Because we have to take into account the land use, the social and economic development that even though it's not like a very long return period, what it means is that the probability of happen is not that low. So it's possible to have this kind of peak flow again. And then how we go into plan and to mitigate and also to adapt to this kind of not so extreme but extreme in term of the damage to all the sectors. And also for maybe I go to another slide first. But for this year, we are experiencing very low rainfall and we expect to experience in the next year also. So in terms of the policy and also the action plan, actually the Office of the National Water Resources of Thailand. So just in July this year, they already changed to Department of Climate Change and Environment, the CCE. And they developed the platform for the special risk map from climate change for Thailand. They consider many data and indicators for six sector including water. And the example that I show you here is the risk map of drought. So they have the database behind by the team of many, many professors and experts from Ramkamher University for the GCM Dow scaling that part of the CODICS network. And also expert in different sectors developing this platform. And they are trying to do the special map so that people in different area they can visualize, they can see how each factor affecting each sector. And this is just to show an example for the drought risk map comparing between the past 1970 to 2005 and 2046 to 2065 using RCP 4.5. So we can see na kondraso sima korad that has a pretty high risk on drought from the past and also more intensify in the near future. So this kind of information provide the basis for some planning for adaptation and it's accessible publicly accessible for anyone that interested in looking into the issue that matter in their area. And another big question that Dr. Thanaporn shared with us is that whether we can investigate the climate change impact. Whether what we are experiencing is a variation of climate change. So we really need long term data and its climate change is not a local scale as all of you know is regional, is global scale. So we really need the regional analysis and I think Dr. Kim will mention about that on the regional region. So this is the picture that I put here. It's just showing the tropical storms that occurred in 2011 during the big flood in Thailand. So we have like five storm came that year and these five storm they has true like the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos and before coming to Thailand. So for us, for Thailand the effect is much less than like Philippines, Vietnam, Laos. So the storm already dissipate when it reached Thailand. So for us to really understand on the regional scale, we cannot just only looking at the data or what happened in Thailand. We really need to look at the big picture and work together with researchers, staff, everyone from the country in the region to actually sharing the knowledge, sharing the research and also sharing the analysis together to actually understand how the last scale process effect our climate and weather system and as a result affecting the extreme events. So in terms of the policy actions, Thailand put together in the master plan, the 13 master plan on climate change as well and focusing for the social, focusing on the knowledge and also raising awareness for the people, where you stay, is it a low lying area, the flood plain area, how you need to understand your area and also for the land use planning and for academic or for research as I mentioned, we need resources for the research platform for the regional analysis. Thank you very much. Thank you Erumat Achan Piyatida to keep a kind of experience from Thailand and I can capture a key message that she talk about climate change needs long term data monitoring to look at kind of or distinguish between variation cycle or climate change. Second also, I see that the Thailand have reforms O&EP into a new department that try to taken climate change issue specifically and the third one is about regional cooperation to monitor or to look at the climate as a big picture not very specific country itself. So one quick question from John. Thank you Dr. Piyatida. Two quick questions, one is how does the cooperation work within Thailand between university, ONWR, ONEP, HII and secondly when you say it's important for the region, Dr. Sultat spoke of the ASEAN hydroinformatics cooperation. So how does that work and do all the Thai agencies participate in that and the universities or is it just one or other? Because as a visitor, it's hard for me to work it out. Thank you. So maybe Dr. Sultat can also share. Is it here? Oh okay. Maybe at ASEAN. Actually personally I also work closely with HII developing the operation system for the satellite bias correction and also flat forecasting. So that's kind of the collaboration that we have and also capacity building together with HII and also we have many supporting and collaboration with other Thai government office like ONWR, DWR, RID and supporting in terms of the research and academic but not only like deep dive research but also on the practical issue. Like recently my colleague also has the analysis on the annual rainfall and also the irrigated area and very interestingly like it has very high correlation and we can try to estimate the damage from if we have very low rainfall like this year how much damage that would be resolved in terms of the high level policy and also at the ground level. Thank you Achan Piyatida. So we will have more chance to come back and discuss. Thank you John for ice breaking question. So next I would like to move to Dr. Suteer from practitioner and operator experience. Please Dr. Suteer. First of all I would like to thank Dr. Tanaporn for letting me in this session and also I would like to thank for the SEI and ocean partnership who could organize this session and all of people are here around the making region also the global. I think it's a great honor and on behalf of the MOC secretariat of Dr. Anula, I'm Kim Suteer. I'm working at the flood and drought management center in base in Tunumpen because we have two main office, two of these one main office in Dientian that are run by the MOC secretariat and sub-regional center at Tunumpen just doing on the flood for coasting and drought prediction. And on behalf of this working on of the regional flood and drought management center I would like to have some word and reporting what the situation have been happened in the lower Mekong Basin and taking into account for the climate change as you have already known by our colleague this morning concern about the climate change and of course that it is connecting to the rainfall intensity or rainfall amount that have been captured in the lower Mekong Basin and of course that in this year you can see in early from May to August the rainfall is seem to be a little bit higher than long-term average. However, that we use the for coast rainfall based on the NASA satellite data that the rainfall seem to be lower than long-term average in the near future especially from October to November and also passed to the next year to 2024. This is what we are concerned on the climate change in the lower Mekong Basin and we are concerned on the low flow that could be happen in the our Mekong region and that's why water management content should be considered all together especially not in the individual agency but also the national and sub-national region. And as you see this is the capturing all the general situation of the rainfall that we have been recorded into our Mekong region and this is we are concerned about what's happening inside the Mekong region and for the regional flood and drought management center we are doing on daily flood forecasting and also the drought prediction but drought at this moment is not much concerned because we have more rainfall inside our region and now we are doing on daily flood forecasting but only for the mainstream along the Mekong River from Chiang San in Thailand to Vientiane and passed to Steng Trang and Tung Chau and Chau Dog in Vietnam. So all information are issued in every morning and of course we are appreciated to the member country who also sharing our data information every day. So based on this sharing information from each member country we are producing the daily bulletin and the daily bulletin have consist all the flood forecasting from day one to day five and specific how does this stand from each level to the alarm of flood level. So I think some of them of us here I think have received our daily flood bulletin and beside this one we also working on the flood flood guidance system but we just consider on what are connecting the flow into the tunle sub lake because of our colleague the lady from Cambodia this morning also mentioned about the concern of the low flow of tunle sub lake that concern to the ecological system in Cambodia and impact of course to the livelihood of the community living around the area. So now up to this date that the low flow of the tunle sub lake have been observed. So this is mostly can be revealed on what the consecutive year of low flow in the past especially from 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. This is not much inflow from the Mekong River into the tunle sub lake and also the rainfall intensity in the tunle sub lake and around the area have been low recorded. This is why now the low volume of the low flow of the tunle sub that have been observed at this moment that you can see in the graph that the volume of the flow at the tunle sub have been lower than its long term average. So this is what we are concerned and in the future if the low rainfall and contribute in this year it could be foreseen into next year how the tunle sub can be affected. This is what we are concerned for for the near future and of course to do this effect we at the regional level we have been conducted many environmental analysis I think we have another division who have been done for water quality who have analysis on water impact on the hydro system hydro power system and of course at the technical division of the MOC also we are doing on the PMFM regarding to the procedure of flow maintenance of flow in the river. So all are this in we are updating daily and weekly and update into our website of the MOC. So the MOC have been collect all information based on the contributed data information from the each member country as I already mentioned and also the flood flood as I show here we just show that MOC have induced our flood flood guidance system we predict not a prediction the guidance for 1 hour, 3 hour, 6 hour and 24 hour that can be a cool and concentrated into any specific region in our subways and the flood flood also can update in our website I think I would incorrect all of you if you are interested please go into our MOC website and you can find more information not only the flood and drought or flood flood also we capturing summarizing summarizing the weekly report of hydrological analysis in the lower MOC so I would incorrect if you have time please go to our website Yes, just only summarize what we have been done so in fact the MOC river have been served for 70 million people that we need to provide transport tourism already have been presented by our colleague this morning concerning about the climate change and could be happen our future of low flow in our and flood risk can be minimized through our various forms of land use like you see at flood not only in river but also at any side of sub bus in or sub catchment that can be happen like landslide or whatever like yesterday they have a big flood flood flood in Vietnam so in northern Vietnam make acute landslide over there and cause a lot of damage in the nation drought is the also bring our sexual or social economic hardship to riparian country and we are doing on flood prediction in weekly, monthly and same monthly for our updating so now we are all developing our information to integrate all flood and drought and also we have been developed the long term flood for the Mekong region so I hope in the near future in our MOC website will be included the long term a medium and long term of flood and drought that this can be share to our public and other stakeholders in our region to understand and learn about the flood in the upcoming flood or in next year flood rely on our information and this is what the MOC have been done and I think from now if you we can supplement to all the information that you would like to know please I'm welcome for your question thank you. Okay, thank you very much Dr. Suthiat to share your experience with the MOC in terms of producing very important information for the region and for the country so I would like to ask if there are any burning questions two, three okay maybe let's try to have a quick okay my name is Suvel, I'm a journalist environment journalist for RFA I wanted to ask about the Mekong flow it's at lowest level in last few weeks is that correct? Yes, you are correct because most of the station are staying about one or two meter below at long term average but now recent just a few days before we have over over every rainfall happen inside of a low main combustion now some of the station water level rising up one of the things that I wanted to ask was about damn upstream how much of that is affecting historically low Mekong water level downstream in lower Mekong basin because this seems to be a problem that happens almost every year sometimes little bit more sometimes little bit less but the wet season to have this low is an anomaly probably but has there been any thing done as a regional cooperation talking to for example China or other countries for a regional mechanism to tackle this issue thank you Thank you for your question this is taking to the key point as you know that this the Mekong river have connecting from the upper part especially from China and most of the people we talking about the flow of the Mekong all are concerned from the inflow from China but you have to know that the flow contributed from China just only 16 to 25% the seasonal flow especially 60% 16% just only in the wet season but mostly the lower Mekong basin is much more influence from rainfall if you think about the inflow from China of course have impact nevertheless but of course we have to consider on the inflow from our tributary contributed to our main basin into our Mekong so this is what we think mostly of the lower Mekong basin river flow depend much more on rainfall intensity and also of course inflow from China we have been obviously seen the impact but not to the downstream part of to Cambodia or order to the Tunleza Black but of course we have to control or have to understand about inside the lower Mekong basin inflow can be too contributed so maybe next doctor and then for your question can I pause for a while and let the last speaker say first and then I will come back to you the first okay thank you so much for excellent panel and I'm so happy to really listen to your talk because I want to really convey the big comment and also appreciation to hard work especially from regional flood centers because I know that you do daily forecasting and there's no holidays for those people I used to be working in the flood centers and I know we have holiday even our kids really have the school break we have to be in the centers to be able to really communicate and really make sure that we have really timely information to share to neighboring country and I just want to have a few questions to Qunso Tia so you mentioned about really acknowledging some great cooperation that different country providing the data and we also understand that some countries they actually face also difficulty to maintain their data collection services and the station so how am I trying to address these issues especially when it come to the data collections and I understand you use NASA and others to supplementary so just to learn a little bit on what are the current situation in term of making sure to have sufficient data for two-serve public casting and if there is any need for others stakeholders and partners to support MRC's important work what will be in term of data-related issues and second is is there any further studies or any monitoring report from your site how like many users and how they make use of their for casting's information or down monitoring's information from the MRC's for their use I sometimes talk with people where they get data they always refer to MRC's data and support and some people really appreciate that but is there any further information or you collect the information on really like monitoring and evaluation on really how great is the impact form providing such information to the country and also to communities so that's two major questions thank you can you try to answer in the chat okay of course I would like to thank Dr. Chinese for supplementing our routine work at the regional level that of course we are doing without any holiday during this flood season and concerning to the data information we have been share by our member country of Cambodia Laopido, Thailand and Vietnam I think first we have to follow with our MOU between the MRC and the member country in a specific station that have been provided from the member country and that's why I appreciate to the member country who have been deal and sharing with information but up to 2015 that the centralized process of the MRC have been apply our the implementing activity so this can be affected to our data sharing information as Dr. Chinese mentioned about the support of data collection how we can secure on this one this is now the national of the national agency have been rely on their national budget but MRC can be supplemented in some part not a whole system like we have applied before so that's why we now have some problem also because of the old station have been some problem of not operation well and we need some budget to cover to operate to install that station again so now we try to make country to discuss with country to make more available budget for cover this station however, MRC have some small package also to cover our monitoring network like we have been install make on high cost before and that make on high cost have been still under supported by MRC so this is a relationship between MRC and member country still on going well and although we have problem I mentioned about the number of station that have problem and for what you mean about the last one the second one is about okay you already provide the information to the national comments and also link to the people do you have any study or any kind of research to look at the feedback you know who using the information in fact we have regularly meeting between regional and national also connecting to the sub-national level and I think most of the information provided from MRC just setting at the national level but from national to community level is a rule of national rule only but we are working not only for considering on the researching or what we are studying but we talk directly with the people who are working with the MRC especially from the line agency what we can share what we have breaking point and we need to supplement the point based on the member country comment okay thank you thank you so I need to have move quickly to the last speaker Mr. Tian to share his experience observation in the Mekong Delta regarding to extreme events sea level rising in particularly please thank you and good afternoon everybody and I'm the last but also the least speaker my name is Tian but no Vietnamese name do not make sense to you just so you forget my name I'm just a Delta boy coming from the Delta and just an ordinary Delta boy but I am very talented I've got a talent want to talking people start sleeping so do you need some exercise I can ask people just stand up please stand up do some exercise to support Mr. Tian if you pity that he is the last and the least time people to talk okay yeah because my talent I'm going to make it very short and I'm going to make crispy point so that you can take home what to talk about alright I'm from the Delta that's the important point okay the first point I want to make is that you cannot talk about climate change adaptation alone without talking about other things because everything is interconnected and you have to address the whole web of issue at the same time not just talked about blah blah blah climate change as a stand alone thing and in the Delta it's a good example of that because I will have to ask you to imagine or look at that one and imagine the Delta okay because our position location at the downstream most part of the basin facing the sea so we are subject to whatever's happening upstream and we are subject to whatever happening globally and from the sea and we are subject to the things that we are doing to ourselves also so anyone learning or haven't heard about the Mekong Delta you would have heard about a long list of issues yes the Delta is facing a multi-dimensional crisis long list of issues erosion severe erosion houses collapsing salinity intrusion very severe we lost crops we are subsiding a lot of other things but the long list can be categorized into three groups again at the sea it is rising and the media usually scare the public with with the protection of one meter one full meter of sea level rise and they make it sound like tomorrow morning they see going to rise one full meter and submerge the Delta under the Pacific Ocean but the actual rate of sea level rise we learn this morning globally is 3.6 millimeter per year okay that's also scary I'm not a denier let me change the sea level rise happening for real but it's not tsunami it's not tomorrow morning it's a gradual cumulative process and to us in the Delta it's quite it gives you still gives you time and in inland we are subsiding and quicker much quicker than that 3-4 times faster and to us that's the adaptation deficit or a more urgent priority because we are extracting groundwater too much like you are living on a watermelon and trying to drink the water to juice from the watermelon and the melon collapse just like that why? because in the past decade or so driven by the rise first policy we produced too much too much rise and we built too much infrastructure stopping this and that and the salinity and so on and the flood and so on and we use a lot of chemicals so we can no longer use surface water for domestic uses so we rely on on drinking the juice from the watermelon to quench the watermelon so we are thinking so that's the first more urgent priority upstream and yet upstream we are subject to things happening upstream the deprivation of sediment and sand that caused the rampant erosion we discussed that today and the barriers to fish migration just mentioned in passing we don't have time but I'm going to talk about extreme events because in the delta we are facing the same and the salinity intrusion boundary is a constant struggle day and night, year after year between the two forces the river force and the sea the sea force, the water from the sea whenever the make on flows weaken the sea push further in land as simple as that so in the dry season we always have a natural fringe of salinity and that's okay but in some years not okay because upstream climate change the rainfall and amount of water available in the river so in some years the rainfall is so low like 2015 the rainfall is so low so in the next dry season we have too little water the water level in the river is very low so at the sea front the river is not strong enough to push salinity out so in that year we had 90 kilometers of salinity intrusion into land so we had 160,000 actors of rice damage that year and that's not because of climate change and extreme El Nino alone but also on top of that we have the hydro power and you know during the dry season of an extreme year like that the hydro power reservoir they do not have enough depth to run the turbine below so they have to close the dam to accumulate enough depth of water for running the turbine I think it's 20 meters minimum so that you can run the turbine and so it takes time for water to pass the dam because the dam closed it takes days or weeks to pass each dam and then you have full series cascade of dam it takes a lot of time I don't know how much I cannot do the math it takes a lot of time for the water to pass the cascade of dam as a result in an extreme year when salinity is already pushed further into land we don't have enough water downstream the dams make it worse okay so we have learned that from the experience of 16 we had damage but it repeated one more time in 1920 and so we say okay extreme years like this we can no longer fight we can no longer adapt so we abandon that crop and we change the calendar and we move the crops a little bit earlier and we did okay so last year we had almost zero damage for the coastal rice crop that year we say okay that's good so for the long term we accept that for extreme years we don't have enough water and hydro power gonna make it worse there's no way for us because no way for us to stop the saline from coming in because when you stop saline coming in from the sea no water anyway so no way to adapt to the situation like that so we become wiser and we have developed the Mekong Delta master plan the number one principle in line with the in line with the resolution 120 issue before that and the main spirit of the resolution 120 and the master plan is that one we gonna stop fighting with nature and we gonna adapt we gonna adapt accordingly and we gonna transform our agriculture and we don't take glory in being the second largest rice exporter in the world after Thailand we give that glory to Thailand from now on we can reduce our rice production and and we gonna retreat the freshwater zone into land so that we don't land rise in the coastal zone wrong place in the wrong time the dry season so we gonna retreat the freshwater zone in land and we change livelihood the farming system in the intermittent zone so let me come to the conclusion we are subject to three set of issues climate change and sea level rise real but gradual can we still have time to adapt within the delta we made a lot of mistakes that can be changed with policy change and the government of Vietnam is doing that but upstream things outside of Vietnam it's a big challenge, we don't know how to deal with it and the change of flows and especially the deprivation of sentiments we don't know how to deal with it yet okay that's the conclusion very good, please clap your hand to Mr. Thien that well expressed what happening in the delta and I think people even no experience to the delta you can imagine probably the climate change but the cumulative effect and also unknown I don't want to come back that so maybe I may have 5 minutes to have a question maybe start from the lady can you keep the microphone sorry so and anyone would like to ask the questions please write the hand so I can prioritize why waiting for question I have a question for you on why this room so full are we that attractive or are you too lazy to go to others thank you very much to help me modulate this section Mr. Thien, please thank you very much for all of your insights my name is Katrin Eidl I'm basically affiliated to the U.S.S.H. University in Ho Chi Minh City at the moment actually I have two questions to both of you the first question is regarding the daily flood forecasting and actually you already asked my question but I wanted to do it a little bit more deeper and I wanted to ask you what kind of data do you use for your forecasting if you also use NASA satellite data complicated in this data and data imaginaries are the problem that it shows only when for example extreme weather extreme weather happenings occur but it does not show who is affected actually by it so for example extremely vulnerable groups are not it's not visible in these kind of imaginaries so I just wanted to know what kind of data you use actually and where it comes from okay it was partly answered already and my second question goes to Thien and I remember your name so I'm very interested in how the stems and the sea dike policies plays out on site actually when you're saying that you are now trying to transform with this massive land from combating climate change to working with climate change I was just wondering how you evaluate the stems in this scenarios with regard to that because these stems were erected mainly for electricity power and also to combat plots for example so how does this place come into the vision of going with climate change and not combating and fighting against it anymore so thank you very much thank you so much I take first thank you for your question I just brief only the data information that we need for our flood forecasting of course first we need data from member country including rainfall and water level and totally we receive only 138 rainfall station include for 46 water level in the mainstream also from the tributary but you see the lower Mekong Basin area have acute area that have not covered all the rainfall that's why we use satellite data especially we use data from NASA at the moment and before we use from NOR and because we make a bias correction between the ground station and satellite data that's why we apply for our model for flood forecasting I'm sorry I didn't really get your questions can you repeat using simple English sorry are you asking about dams or dikes both actually because there is a sea dike that is proposed somehow to build between the lower Mekong Delta and Ho Chi Minh City nobody knows if this ever will happen but however I mean there are still dams implemented or still on site in the Mekong Delta and I was just wondering if the master plan foresees not to combat climate change but to go with climate change and with nature to come into play then because they actually are built in order to get the floods out of the Mekong Delta okay let me take the coastal dikes then because upstream we already described that's three scenarios upstream normal year usually upstream normal years dams will cut off the flood pig and store some of the water in the reservoir to add to the the dry season flow but in dry year because of not enough depth the dams going to make the drought wash downstream but in extreme La Nina year we haven't had yet and I expect that in high flood year, extreme high flood year the dams will release water for emergency for dam safety purpose at more water to the flood already flooded downstream so that's double flooding okay that's enough for upstream downstream many people have asked the government of Vietnam to build a mega sea die as a strategy to cope with sea level rise and we are thinking and they say look at the Dutch look at the Netherlands they are under water and they are thriving why not do the same so luckily I just wrote an article yesterday waiting to be published against that I made several points number one we are not Dutch do I look like a Dutch? no no the point that we the Netherlands in Vietnam we mistook that but the Netherlands the whole Netherlands is under water that's not correct right only 30% about the Netherlands is under water because they kept pushing in the last 700 years by building dives and pump water out using windmills and so on and now they have also a lot of problems in the Netherlands also subsiding because they built with peak tea soil so some of the die cracks during drought year and also now they are upgrading the die because it's 90 years old okay so the delta not the same at the Netherlands so we shouldn't build that okay suppose when the delta is so low the sea is so high you build a mega die at the sea front to keep the sea at bay and sometimes you miss the sea so much you have to climb the ladder up to the die can gain the view of the sea and then you climb back right but you forget that your people have to go in and out by boat for every day you gonna kick me out otherwise I have to kick out okay one more minute the most important thing is that we are in a tropical context with 2,000 millimeters of rainfall and we gonna be submerged under rain water first if you build a dike to keep the sea in it will also keep the water from coming out and we gonna be submerged under 2 meters of rainfall and we have the mighty Mekong and now back 475 billion cubic meters of water so we are not that don't build that sea dike okay okay so let's have a big hand to our excellent speaker so yeah I still you know want to talk more but of course we need to move so yeah thank you very much for our speaker and I believe that you can have more interaction with the participant ask more questions coffee break you know after this meeting also you can keep continue this dialogue that is the main purpose of this event so yeah thank you very much