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HOTEL
TOP By
default, we will reserve rooms at the following hotel for
most participants: Army Hotel, 33 C Pham Ngu
Lao Street, Hanoi, Vietnam
If
you need a double room or a suite (for a family), or want
to share a double room with another participant,
please also let us know! If
you prefer to look for a hotel by yourself, here are some
possible places to start: (Prices
vary from under $10 to above $100 per night)
VISA INFORMATION Most
foreigners need a visa to enter Vietnam, except for
citizens of the following countries (please confirm with
the Vietnamese Embassy in your country):
Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore,
Campodia,
Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland,
Russia...:
for visits of up to 15 days. I. Tourist
visa: Apply in person (or by mail) at a Vietnamese
consulate, filling in the application online. This kind of
visa is easy to get. See
http://www.mofa.gov.vn/en. Many
travel agency specialized in Vietnam travel can also
handle visas for you. II. Business visa: In general, business travelers should apply for a visa through the Vietnamese host. In our case, the organizers of the conference will apply for a visa approval for you at the Ministry of Public Security of Vietnam. After that, the relevant Vietnamese embassy or consulate is informed of the approval by fax. You will be notified about the date of this fax as well as an approval number. You must then send (or bring in) (1) your passport, (2) approval number and date of fax, and (3) two passport photos, to the appropriate Vietnamese embassy or consulate to obtain your visa. In general, some visa fees are charged. If you want the organizers to apply for your visa approval, please send us (nvthanh49@yahoo.com) your personal data: (1) Full name, (2) Date and place of birth, (3) Profession, (4) Passport number, (5) Date and place of issue and date of expiry of your passport, (6) Nationality (original and present), (7) Date and point of entry to Vietnam, (8) Length of stay in Vietnam, (9) Which Vietnamese embassy or consulate do you want to obtain your visa from? Please also provide the data of each accompanying person. The procedure of visa application takes generally about 4 weeks.
At present, Southeast Asia is harbouring the largest extent of mangroves on Earth, i.e. 4.9 million ha or nearly 35% of the world’s total. In addition, the mangroves of Southeast Asia might be the best developed and most diverse in terms of plants and animals. Mangroves are highly beneficial, as they yield many valuable products since mangroves are very high productive ecosystems and they are thus highly important, be it at local, regional even national level. Apart from economic benefits, mangroves are also performing, free-of-cost, and many important functions that support the often dense coastal population. However, in almost Southeast Asian countries, the over-exploitation of coastal areas due to various anthropogenic activities has accelerated the degradation of mangrove forests. As a consequence, natural disasters like cyclones have cost thousands of lives and inflicted severe damage to infrastructure. The destruction of mangroves also affects the fishery industries and coastal ecosystem balances (Baran & Hambrey, 1998). The leaf-litter detritus from mangroves is important to fisheries because it provides an essential source of nutrients for the trophic food web and juvenile fish. It is estimated that 90% of all marine organisms spend some portion of their life cycle within mangrove systems (Adeel & Pomeroy, 2002). The rapid population growth and industrial activities, in tandem with the environmental movement, have brought to focus the problem of environmental degradation which threatens the well-being or even survival of population communities. Hence, it is necessary to adopt or develop technologies, which shall be given better understanding of the factors and processes responsible for the deterioration of the physical environment, as well as people who can apply and develop such knowledge. It is likewise necessary to have reliable benchmark information on the condition of the physical environment to prevent depletion, destruction or degradation, or at least permit man to determine the rate of depletion that may be consistent with sustainable growth or steady state development. It is in this context in which the value of an environmental assessment task must be viewed. Environmental problems in the Southeast Asia, therefore, are the inherent consequences of nation building as the extraction and processing of natural resources such as oil, water and precious metals, and the use of soil and water systems constitute the basic activities for economic growth. As economic development progresses from agriculture to industrialization, more and more resources have to be extracted from the environment. Coupled with exponential growth of human population, environmental problems increasingly demand major concern and concerted effort on the local or regional level. Specifically, industrial activities, economic development and rapid population growth are among the major sources of stress on the water environment, factors that are indispensable or inevitable within the local context. In Southeast Asia, particular in Vietnam, the industrialization and modernisation is in progress. The socio-economic development planning requires an environmental protection plan since the indiscriminate use and mismanagement of natural resources brought about by poorly planned and inadequately studied urban and agricultural expansions, human settlements, estate development, fishery activities and tourism may cause severe problems such as: destruction of mangrove forests and watersheds; degradation of agricultural land; air and water pollution; destruction of coastal ecosystems; and solid and liquid wastes disposal. These are indispensable natural habitats in terms of biodiversity and carbon cycling for the region (and beyond), but are increasingly impacted by source exploitation (deforestation, aquaculture and fishery), tourism and pollution due to the growing population density, the extension of the peri-urban zones, and the increasing industrialization and mobility of people (maritime transport and tourism). Recently, the growing overall threat of sea level rice due to global climate change on these particular habitats has also been brought under attention. In order to ensure future sustainable exploitation of natural sources in mangroves need to be analyse changes in the biodiversity of these ecosystems in relation to particular anthropogenic activities by comparing sites from the peri-urban zone with pristine areas, and identify indicators for disruption of the ecosystem and assign levels for future sustainable exploitation (aquaculture, fishery, wood production and eco-tourism). Additional to supplying charcoal, mangroves are nurseries, shelters and feeding grounds for fish and decapods. Disruption of the functional structure of the system will endanger the balance between the ongoing socio-economic activities and the ecology. By comparison of the key-component of this ecosystem namely the benthos (important for decomposition processes and food for higher trophic levels like fishes and birds) along a gradient between an undisturbed, pristine mangrove site, intermediate disturbed areas and an heavily disturbed mangrove we will identify early warning signs that indicate change of the functional structure of the benthos and thus may lead to irreversible levels of disturbance of the mangrove ecosystem. Thus the conservation and management of mangroves need to understand essentially these special ecosystems, in which zoobenthos always altitudes as key component of ecological net and their processes. Unfortunately, up right now the achievements following these challenges in mangrove ecosystems might be not too much enough information. Perhaps, our symposium as first scientific meeting to be provide original research information on the zoobenthos diversity and their functions in mangrove ecosystems in the Southeast Asia.
The symposium in Hanoi will be held under the auspice of the Vietnanamese Academy of Sciences and Technology (VAST) in Nghia Do (Nghia Ðo) campus, where nearly all the Hanoi institutes of VAST are concentrated (see map of the site). The place is very well known in the city and even if you occasionally miss the symposium bus, it is always easy to reach the meeting place by taxi (about 4-5 USD). All the Symposium participants will be provided with a ‘survival kit’ including a card with the precise position of the VAST campus in the city (to be shown to Hanoi taxi drivers etc), mobile and city phone numbers of all contact persons, maps with all important positions in the city etc.
Accommodation will be paid by participants, but a
wide range of possibilities will be offered starting from
22-25 USD per night for a single room in modest but
comfortable hotels in the city centre. More comfortable
accommodation (three and four star hotels) can be proposed
for price up to 75 USD. |
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Classified by Nguyen Dinh Tu |
