Nhiêu Lộc – Thị Nghè Canal — Ho Chi Minh City's World Bank–Financed Waterway Revival

By the 1990s, the Nhiêu Lộc–Thị Nghè canal running through five districts of Ho Chi Minh City had become a heavily polluted, sewage-choked waterway lined with informal housing, contributing to chronic urban flooding.

An initial ~$120M phase began in 1993; a larger World Bank-financed project launched in 2002 (over VND 8.6 trillion, ~$374M) dredged roughly 1.1 million tons of contaminated mud from the nearly 9 km canal, built sewer interceptors to stop raw wastewater discharge, and relocated more than 7,000 households (about 50,000 people) under World Bank resettlement-safeguard procedures.

The canal now supports improved water flow, reduced flood risk in surrounding districts, and waterfront parks used for recreation and tourism; the city has continued the same model on other canals, including Tàu Hủ–Bến Nghé, Xuyên Tâm and Đôi.

Published sources document dredging volumes, project cost and resettlement scale in detail, but do not report independently measured water-quality indicators (e.g. BOD, dissolved oxygen) or biodiversity outcomes, so ecological recovery cannot be quantified from available evidence.