The Central Highlands of Vietnam once held some of Earth's densest jungles, home to tigers, elephants, and monkeys in forests that blotted out the sun. Those triple-canopy ecosystems are largely gone now, cleared since the Vietnam War era. But according to journalist Michael Grunwald in Canary Media, Vietnam faces a less visible but equally urgent crisis in that same region: depleting groundwater. As agriculture expands and development intensifies, the nation is extracting water faster than nature can replenish it—a threat to both food security and the survival of what remains of its natural systems.

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