An Overview of Sustainable Ocean Resources for Socio-economic Development in Vietnam

Vietnam is one of the nation with long coastal with many valuable resources, which is the basis for the economy development from the ocean-based activities. This paper outlined the main maritime resources and their contribution to the socio-economic development in Vietnam. The raw data was collected from the readable sources such as General Statistics Office of Vietnam, Vietnam meteorological and meteorological data center…. as well as from the practical investigation. This raw data was processed and analyzed in order to have a general view on the majority marine resources in Vietnam. The results showed that there were 5 main resources (oil, fisheries, natural hydrate, green energy, and tourism) from the ocean, which significantly contribute to the economy development of Vietnam. The highest contribution of the oil value to the GDP was witnessed in 2011 with 26.6% of the GDP. While the value of the fisheries and tourism increased every year, the natural hydrate and energy from the ocean are still young areas, however, they come one step closer to the exploitation, which can greatly contribute to the Vietnam economy growth. With these valuable resources from the sea, Vietnam need to have reasonable policies and strategies for the management, exploitation, and export in order to able to effectively use of these resources for the sustainable economy development. Keywords: Ocean resources, sustainable development, fisheries, crude oil exploitation DOI: 10.7176/JRDM/69-05 Publication date: September 30 th 2020


Introduction
The maritime sector is of an important role for the economy development of the coastal countries, which is increasingly being recognized and acknowledged by many countries. (Nuryadin et al., 2016;Rizal et al., 2018;Wang and Wang, 2019) In which, Vietnam has long coastline of 3.260 km, excluding islands, Vietnam claims 12 nautical miles as the limit of its territorial waters and possesses rich and diverse marine resources. (Baklanov et al., 2017;Dao, 2017;Hai et al., 2020;Nguyen and Nguyen, 2018) Like other coastal countries, Vietnam has many exploiting strategies for the ocean resources such as coastal agriculture, fisheries, aquaculture, offshore natural hydrocarbons, and sea transport services. Beside there are still many ocean resources, which have not been discovered and these resources are an important driving force for the sustainable development of the economy for Vietnam. However, until now there are only few industrial-scale activities for the exploitation of ocean resources such as the crude oil exploitation, marine transportation, fisheries, naval administration and defense, extraction of natural gas, and tourism. (Vincent et al., 2017) Especially, many nontraditional marine-related activities recently have been exploited including, but not limited to sports, marine research and education, seafood processing, marine energies… It has been well-known for centuries that the ocean sector always plays a significant role to the socioeconomic development for Vietnam. However, the challenges still remain which need to overcome in order to further effectively employ the marine resources for the economic growth of Vietnam. The significant contributions of the marine resources to the socio-economic development of Vietnam are outline below.

Oil resource in the Vietnam ocean -motivation for the socio-economics development, especially for the coastal cities
The geological and geophysics report indicates that Vietnam consists of 7 sedimentary basins, which might have oils at the continental shelf, such as Red reiver, Phu Khanh, Cuu Long, Nam Con Son, Ma Lai -Tho Chu, Tu Chinh -Vung May and Truong Sa -Hoang Sa. Oilfields in Vietnam were discovered and exploited from ground under the ocean from the continental shelf in the southern, where is 50 to 200 meters in the depth and in the geological structure with 1000 to 5000 meters in depth. Several oilfields at the Cuu Long (Bach Ho and Dai Hung) basin, which is considered as the best quality of oilfields, even contains oil at the foundation stone. Especially, Bach Ho oilfield is one of the exceptional cases, which the oil is moving freely in the cracks of the foundation stone. The oil sources in the Vietnam ocean region were discovered and estimated to be 4 billion cubic meters and the new discovery even predict much higher reserves of the oil in Vietnam. The oil mining operation in Vietnam at the present is maintaining for the 6 oilfields at the southern continental shelf including Bach Ho, Dai Hung, Rong, Rang Dong, Hong Ngoc and PM3 (Bunga Kekwa). The quantity of raw oil exploited increased around 30% at the beginning stage and tends to decrease in recent years with 16.03 million tons in 2016, which is 8.8% decrease in comparison with the year of 2015 ( Figure 1). The quantity of raw oil only reached 15.52 and 11.31 million tons in the years of 2017 and 2018, respectively. As prediction to 2025, the quantity of the raw oil will continue decrease of approximately 10%.  Source: General Statistics Office of Vietnam In 2014, the world price of the raw oil decreased leading to the decline of 6% in annual revenue and continued to reduced 15% in 2015. However, the oil and gas sector still significantly contribute to the growth of Vietnam economy accounted for 19.05% in the period of 2008 -2015, with the peak of 26.6 % and 15.9% in 2011 and 2012, respectively (Table 1). Table 1 However, every year Vietnam burns out approximately 1 billion cubic meters of the associated gasses in the oil-exploited industry, which is equal to the input materials for a power factory with the capacity of around 300 MW. In order to utilize this associated gasses source, Vietnam government built a power factory at Ba Ria (Vung Tau city) and introduced into operation in 1996. Two oil-refining factories were urgently built and introduce into operation at Dung Quat (Quang Ngai province) and Nghi Son (Thanh Hoa province). Beside, currently Vietnam still has nearly 10 oil-refining projects waiting for approval with total capacity of 60 million tons/year. In the near future, Vietnam focuses into searching and exploring the oil mines on the basin, off coast, and depth in the ocean, which have promising structure with high capacity of the raw oil for the exploration.

Fisheries resource in Vietnam in Vietnam ocean -a main outcome of the fishermen in the coastal cities
Vietnam waters is one of regions having the most abundant seafood resource in the world with highly biological diversity. According to the reported data, Vietnam waters have approximately 2458 fishes belonging to 206 fish groups and many other seafood except fish. The estimated seafood reserves in Vietnam waters are of 4.18 million including squids, shrimps, seaweed and others in near coastal sea. In the past few years, fisheries sector significantly contributes to the national economy in general and agriculture in general. The average proportion of fisheries in the period of 2015 -2019 account for 22.38% in Vietnam agriculture value.

Figure 3. Proportion of Fisheries in Vietnam Agriculture Value
Source: General Statistics Office of Vietnam Fisheries sector develops quickly and become one of the spearhead economy sectors of Vietnam. Total fisheries products had been constantly increasing, particularly the fisheries amounts were around 0.8, 1.19, 1.99, and 2.06 million tons in 1986 1995, 2005, and 2007, respectively. The total export value from fisheries sector also increased constantly with the total value of 1.04, 1.5, 1.8, and 9 billion US dollars in 2000, 2005, 2007, and 2018, respectively. In 2019, the export value tends to decrease, however, in first 10 months of 2019 the total value still reached 7.1 billion US dollars. Figure 4. The total export value of the fisheries sector Source: General Statistics Office of Vietnam In recent years, the increase in fisheries exploration along with technical improvement, the modern catching equipment, which lead to high efficient for the fisheries, as a result, the fisheries reserve is seriously decreased, especially in the coastal area. In the period of 2000 to 2005, 36 investigations, studies, and evaluations of the fisheries reserve using various approaches were carried out in different Vietnam waters. The results indicated that the fisheries reserve between seasons and years fluctuate significantly. Generally, fisheries catching productivity in the South West season and offshore is higher than North East season and the shore waters. The fishing ground in the North East season tends to move to the South in comparison with main fishing grounds in the South West reason. The fisheries capacity in the whole Vietnam waters is estimated to be approximately 5 million tons with the sustainable capacity of 2.3 million tons per year. The fisheries consist of 51% small surface fishes, 21% big surface fishes, and the remaining is the deep fishes. In the Vietnam waters, there are 15 important large fishes zone, in which 12 are near the coast and 3 are offshore.
One of the main features of the valuable fisheries in Vietnam waters is that the breeding season occurs all year round, which focuses on the month period of from March to July. Vietnam fishes normally move with small groups: small fish group of lower than 5 x 20 m accounts for 84%, the big fish groups with diameter of approximately 20 x 50 m is only 0.1%. Thus, the Vietnam fishery is considered as multi-species and small-group fisheries, which is the main outcome of the people living in the coastal areas and offshore islands. The such high value of fisheries is an important foundation, which brings Vietnam to become one of the promising countries for the sustainable development in the fishery sector. In the past few years, 80% of the exploited fishery quantity come from the coastal areas and brackish coastal water, which provide the important protein for the human. In 2011, the fisheries exploitation reached 2 million tons along with fishes reared in brackish water with total export value of 6 billion US dollars. Until now, the total exporting value of fisheries is close to the 10 billion dollars per year.

Figure 5. The export proportions of the fisheries products of Vietnam in 2018
Source: General Statistics Office of Vietnam The fisheries export in 2018 reached 8.8 billion dollars, which increased 5.8% in comparison with 2017, however, this growth rate was lower than previous years as well as the predicted amount of 9 billion dollars. In 2018, the Vietnam catfish exported to 129 different markets with 8 big markets including China, USA, EU, ASEAN, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and UAE with total export value of 80% in catfish exporting. In the same year, the tuna exported to 101 different markets with 8 big markets including USA, EU, Israel, ASEAN, Japan, Canada, Mexico and China with total export value of 84 % in tuna exporting. The squids and octopus products such as dried, smoked, fresh, frozen, processing, exported to 64 different countries in 2018 with 9 big customers such as Korea, Japan, EU, ASEAN, China, USA, Isarel, Taiwan, and Australia with with total export value of 98.3 % in squid and octopus exporting.

Ocean energy in Vietnam: a renewable energy resource for the sustainable economy development
Ocean is of particular significance for the Vietnam climate control. Vietnam ocean is an open waters, which lays within the tropical belt of the Northern Hemisphere, where receive the highest solar radiation in comparison to other belts on Earth. Vietnam waters belongs to the typically tropical climate with strong wind and stable during all seasons of the year. The seasons changing in the circulation atmosphere leads to the formation and operation of weather systems as following: summer and autumn are stormy seasons, spring and winter are northern-wind seasons. Vietnam waters and eastern sea are in areas, which are affected by many important factors such as high pressure of Asia continent, tropical Pacific, and hot low pressure and Western wind. Thus, Eastern sea and Vietnam coasts are considered as valuable resources, especially in the development of wind energy at the coastal area and on the islands. Apart from wind energy resource, due to belong to the tropical climate and hot weaters, Vietnam also has tremendous potential in the solar energy. Recent years, the solar energy started exploring in Vietnam, which mainly served for the people on the islands and the coastal areas. Furthermore, Vietnam also has huge potential for other ocean energies such as waves, tides, and flow, which are green and renewable energy for the future. As an open water, Vietnam is affected greatly by season winds leading to formation of two wave and flow seasons, which is important for the economy development of the cities in the central of Vietnam.

Natural hydrate in Vietnam waters -green energy source of the future
Natural hydrate, mainly consists of hydrate gases such as hydrate gases and hydrate methane, exists in the form of the solid mixture with the outer layer of similar to ice or dried ethanol, transparent or blurry, and the color of white, grey or yellow. The natural hydrate comprises hydrocarbon derivatives and water, which was formed at the high pressure and low temperature, thus, they can vaporize even at ambient conditions.
The scarce of the conventional energy sources such as coal, oils, peat…leads to the emergence of natural hydrate as the replaceable energy source, because of its high efficiency, relatively clean and renewability. Eastern sea is one of 4 regions in Eastern Asia having huge potential about the natural hydrate, only after Mexico and Nankai. Thus, great potential about ocean resources in general and the natural hydrate in particular has attracted great attention from the ocean and islands countries all over the world, which is also one of reason leading to the intensive disputation at the Eastern sea at the moment. Beside many advantages, the natural hydrate also contributes to the global climate change due to its sublimation phenomenon even at the ambient pressure and temperature as well as one form of geohazard. Many international organizations are warning that this disaster will happen if countries lack of responsibility in using old technologies for searching, probing, exploiting, storing and applying the natural hydrate.
Recently, there are several review works on the natural hydrate based on the available data such as geological, geophysics, gasification data on the sediment and other premises at the basin and the deep water of Vietnam sea. The data was based on the long-term collaboration with international organizations. The results show that Vietnam has huge potential about the natural hydrate. Thus, Vietnam government issues decisions No 196/QD-TTg about "Basis investigation and research program about the natural hydrate reserve at the Vietnam basins and waters". Vietnam administration of Seas and Islands corporated with Vietnam national oil and gas group implemented this program in relationship with the experienced countries having advanced technologies.

Conclusion
In short, the huge potential of the resources such as fisheries, energy, tourism, oil, and natural hydrate from the sea will be the major driving forces for the socioeconomic of Vietnam, especially for the coastal cities with the near islands. Towards the sea, protect the diverse resources from the ocean will help the coastal cities to be able to quickly develop the economy. However, the exploitation of the ocean resources has to ensure the sustainable development of the resources. Meantime, the ocean exploitation should be in good agreement with the protection of maritime sovereignty. These abundant resources from the ocean urge the Vietnam government to have appropriate policies and strategies to reasonably manage and exploit for the sustainable economy development.