Dreaming of a 'Green Mekong'
 
Asia Sentinel, 06 Dec 2009
 
In the first summit meeting between Japan and officials from the five
countries that border the banks of the 4,800-km Mekong River, the
countries pledged to urgently tackle the environmental issues related
to development of the region. It is questionable, however, whether the
meeting will end up as more than lip service despite the attention and
funding from Japanese officials.
 
Tokyo pledged ¥200 billion (US$2.21 billion) to the initiative, called
'A Decade toward the Green Mekong,' which will begin next year and
aims to promote biodiversity and cooperation on water resource
management. In the so-called Tokyo Declaration following the summit,
the five countries and Japan pledged in a remarkably vague agreement
to, among other things, "build a mutually beneficial relationship
based on the spirit of yu-ai, or 'fraternity,' which is a way of
thinking that respects one's own freedom and individual dignity while
also respecting the freedom and individual dignity of others."
 
To those communities whose livelihoods and survival have already been
damaged by the dredging, dams and pollution already in place, the
words at the summit meeting mean very little, especially with 11 more
dams planned for the river's mainstream. The continuing degradation of
the river is vital to the concerns of as many as 70 million people
from its origin in the Tibetan Plateau to the South China Sea. More
than 100 ethnic groups have adapted to the rhythm of the river over
centuries.
 
Those rhythms are now being seriously affected, threatening the lives
of important fish populations as well as the people who live on the
river's banks. And, even though villagers and fishermen complaining of
the effects of dredging have recently protested in front of Cambodian
Prime Minister Hun Sen's private residence in an effort to be heard,
both national and regional leaders remain deaf to their voices and
concerns.
 
Before the summit, Save The Mekong, an NGO coalition based in Thailand
and Cambodia, gave regional leaders attending the Asean forum a
petition against plans for the additional dams to be built. Some
23,110 residents signed the petition postcards protesting against two
dams planned in Cambodia, two in Thailand and seven in Laos.
 
But not one of the region's leaders responded to the petition, nor did
they respond to individual letters from the NGO coalition requesting
further discussions. In some cases country representatives didn't even
show up for the Asean People's Forum meeting, leaving it to flounder
as civil society representatives walked out in protest.
 
Certainly, other agencies established to monitor control development
on the the river have had little effect. A 2007 study of the Mekong
River Commission by the Frittjhof Nansen Institute of Norway, an
independent foundation engaged in research on international
environmental and other issues found that " state actors of the
riparian members states prefer the MRC to be a rather toothless
organisation that identifies development projects and attracts
external funds, whilst the control of the development remains with the
states themselves. The 1995 Agreement (establishing the commission)
has been described as weak, allowing the members to interpret it as
they please or simply sideline it."
 
Without consulting its downstream neighbours, nor any assessment of
the environmental impact, China already has the development of an
eight-dam cascade underway, with two completed and three more under
construction. According to the International Rivers website the
Chinese dams "will drastically change the river's natural flood-
drought cycle and block the transport of sediment, affecting
ecosystems and the livelihoods of millions living downstream in Burma,
Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Impacts to water levels and
fisheries have already been recorded along the Thai-Lao border, the
NGO noted. "Impacts to water levels and fisheries have already been
recorded along the Thai-Lao border. "
 
The Save the Mekong coalition estimates that the new dams will disrupt
fish migratory patterns and the endangered Mekong dolphin breeding and
feeding grounds. Loss of tourist revenues and damage to the $9.4
billion commercial fishing industry on the river could affect
residents' livelihoods by up to 70 percent, it said. Its research also
suggests that many of the dams under discussion also lack public
environmental assessments.
 
"Proposals to build dams on the Mekong River's mainstream epitomize an
out-dated development model that violates affected people's rights and
fails to ensure sustainable development. There are better ways to meet
energy needs without losing the benefits that healthy rivers bring,"
said Dr Carl Middleton, Mekong Program Coordinator of NGO
International Rivers, a member of the coalition.
 
He added that the plans are inconsistent with the Asean charter, as
well as being opposite to the new declaration's commitments to protect
the ecological diversity of the area. International Rivers has also
documented the consistent flouting of national laws protecting
relocated residents and the environment in Laos, the country planning
the most dams. In the face of such development, it is not surprising
that the vague commitments made in the Tokyo Declaration bear little
relevance to the delta's residents.
 
Regional governments maintain that the power produced by the dams will
aid development of a region full of long-suffering poor. But analysts
point out that much of the electricity generated will be sold abroad,
mainly to Vietnam, with little or no benefit to those displaced during
production.
 
"The planned dams for the mainstream Mekong River and its larger
tributaries would have a devastating impact on the world's most
important inland fisheries—those of the Mekong River Basin," Dr Ian
Baird of the University of Victoria, Canada, a prominent scientist on
the Mekong Delta, said in an email.
 
"It is not as if Cambodia and Laos need all these large dams for their
own power generation," Dr Baird said. "A few smaller projects on less
important tributaries would be sufficient for domestic use. I think
that one of the important questions is not whether Cambodia would
benefit from dams, but who would benefit and who would be negatively
impacted."
 
With this in mind, the Tokyo Declaration is likely to be little more
than a failure to the very people it should be protecting. The dream
of a 'Green Mekong' is distant. Should the dams go ahead,
environmental NGOs such as the World Wildlife Fund are already warning
that the Mekong will become as dead a river as the Yangtze. It will
take systematic and sympathetic leadership, they say to prevent such
an environmental disaster from developing, but it seems increasingly
unlikely that there is any will within the Mekong countries to prevent
it, even under Japan's influence.