Sim Chi Yin On Chau Ma island in the Mekong Delta which has experienced heavy riverbank erosion in recent years, farmers harvest and grind Amaranth vegetable for its seed which is sold as a health food. Some
(...) of the farmers are now landless as riverbank erosion has swept away their ancestral land and giant plot of vegetable farmland. If they are now landless, they can only hire themselves out as daily waged workers to others and do work like this. Chau Ma island, in Hong Ngu district, Dong Thap province bordering Cambodia, has seen some of the worst effects of widespread sand mining in the Mekong River and its tributaries. The island which used to have 5,000 inhabitants, has lost about half of its land and people have moved away. The erosion is said to be caused by the dams being built up-river on the Mekong, climate change as well as sand mining, with the latter much more in the spotlight in recent times in Vietnam. Chau Ma, Hong Ngu. Vietnam. 2017. From "Shifting Sands", 2017— on-going. © Sim Chi Yin | Magnum Photos
