Dams and Development Threaten the Mekong
 
New York Times, 17 Dec 2009
 
Mr. Pornlert — now 32 and the owner of a company that organizes
speedboat outings for tourists in this village in northern Thailand,
where Myanmar and Laos converge — peers across the Mekong today at a
more modern picture: a newly constructed, gold-domed casino where high-
rollers are chauffeured along the riverbanks in a Bentley and a
stretch Cadillac limousine.
 
The Mekong has long held a mystique for outsiders, whether American
G.I.’s in the Delta during the Vietnam War or ill-starred 19th-century
French explorers who searched for the river’s source in Tibet. The
earliest visitors realized the hard way that the river was untamed and
treacherous, its waterfalls and rapids ensuring it would never become
Southeast Asia’s Mississippi or Rhine.
 
But today the river, which courses 3,032 miles through portions of
China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before emptying
into the South China Sea, is rapidly being transformed by a rising
tide of economic development, the region’s thirst for electricity and
the desire to use the river as a cargo thoroughfare. The Mekong has
been spared the pollution that blackens many of Asia’s great rivers,
but it is no longer the backwater of centuries past.
 
China has built three hydroelectric dams on the Mekong (known as the
Lancang in Chinese) and is halfway through a fourth at Xiaowan, which
when completed will be the world’s tallest dam, according to the
United Nations Environment Program.
 
Laos is planning so many dams on the Mekong and its tributaries — 7 of
about 70 have been completed — that government officials have said
that their ambition is to turn the country into “the battery of Asia.”
Cambodia is planning two dams.
 
At the same time, the dashed dreams of French colonizers to use the
river as a southern gateway to China are being partly realized: After
Chinese engineers dynamited a series of rapids and rocks in the early
part of this decade, trade by riverboat between China and Thailand
increased by close to 50 percent.
 
The cargo passes through increasingly populated areas, erstwhile
sleepy cities in Laos that are now teeming with tourists and defying
the economic downturn with swinging construction cranes. Many parts of
the Mekong were once a star-gazer’s dream; now nights on the river are
increasingly aglare with electric lights.
 
Environmentalists worry that the rush to develop the Mekong,
particularly the dams, is not only changing the panorama of the river
but could also destroy the livelihoods of people who have depended on
it for centuries. One of the world’s most bountiful rivers is under
threat, warns a series of reports by the United Nations, environmental
groups and academics.
 
The most controversial aspects of the dams are their effects on
migrating fish and on the rice-growing Mekong Delta in Vietnam, where
half of that country’s food is grown. The delta depends on mineral-
rich silt, which the Chinese dams are partially blocking.
 
Experts say the new crop of dams will block even more sediment and the
many types of fish that travel great distances to spawn, damaging the
$2 billion Mekong fishing industry, according to the Mekong River
Commission, an advisory body set up in 1995 by the governments of
Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Of the hundreds of fish species
in the river, 87 percent are migratory, according to a 2006 study.
 
“The fish will have nowhere to go,” said Kaew Suanpad, a 78-year-old
farmer and fisherman in the village of Nagrasang, Laos, which sits
above the river’s great Khone Falls.
 
“The dams are a very big issue for the 60 million people in the Mekong
basin,” said Milton Osborne, visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute for
International Policy in Sydney and the author of several books on the
Mekong. “People depend in very substantial ways on the bounty of the
Mekong.”
 
Some analysts see the seeds of international conflict in the rush to
dam the river. Civic groups in Thailand say they are frustrated that
China does not seem to care how its dams affect the lives of people
downstream.
 
In August, the Vietnamese province of An Giang began a “Save the
Mekong” campaign that opposes the construction of the dams in the
lower part of the river, according to Carl Middleton, the head of the
Mekong program at International Rivers, an organization campaigning
against the Mekong dams.
 
Neither China nor military-ruled Myanmar, the two northernmost
countries through which the river passes, are members of the Mekong
River Commission, freeing them from the obligation to consult other
countries on issues such as building dams and sharing water.
 
And yet, for now, the dams are not national preoccupations in any of
the countries along the river.
 
“Most of the voices that are shouting in the wilderness about these
dams are still very little heard outside of academic circles,” Mr.
Osbourne said.
 
There have been no major protests and for many people in the region
the dams are the symbol of progress and avenues to greater prosperity.
The development of the Mekong is also an affirmation of a new Asia
that is no longer hidebound by ideological conflict.
 
Jeremy Bird, the chief executive officer of the Mekong River
Commission, says the dams are likely to even out the flow of the
river, mitigating flooding and making the river even more navigable.
 
“You could have launches like you have on the Rhine,” Mr. Bird said.
He added: “With dams there are always negatives and positives.”
 
For Mr. Pornlert, whose boyhood village of Sop Ruak has now grown into
a town with five-star resorts and restaurants catering to tourists,
the negatives seem to outweigh the good.
 
He says the river behaves unpredictably, it is more difficult to catch
fish, and he is uneasy about swimming in the river because there is
“too much trash and pollution.”
 
“The water level used to depend on the seasons,” Mr. Pornlert said.
“Now it depends on how much water China wants and needs.”