Mekong River seen facing heavy aquaculture losses
 
VietnamNet 17/12/2009
 
VietNamNet Bridge – Aquatic products output from the Mekong River will
be halved to 200,000 tons a year in the coming time due to the impacts
of climate change and the construction of 19 hydropower dams in the
upper reaches of the river, said a researcher.
 
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The 4,900-kilometer river flowing through China, Myanmar, Thailand,
Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam currently supplies over 400,000 tons of
fishery products a year. However, upstream countries are developing 19
dams serving their economic development, said Nguyen Ngoc Anh, head of
the Southern Irrigation Planning Institute.
 
Anh told reporters in an informal meeting last week that in China
alone an eight-dam cascade was already underway in the upper reaches
of the Mekong. International Rivers, an organization which protects
rivers and defends the rights of communities dependent on them, says
on its website that two of the eight dams have been completed and
three are under construction.
 
The Mekong Delta will find itself in the dilemma of rising sea levels
caused by climate change and depleting fresh water from upstream.
 
The ecological catastrophe will surely result in the dying out of rare
fish like the Irrawaddy dolphin and giant catfish of the Mekong River,
thus draining fishery resources of the river by half.
 
The falling of aquatic resources also rings alarm bells for rice-
growing and other agricultural activities, including fish farming, of
the whole region, he said.
 
Anh cited that while one hectare of paddy field needed about 10,000
cubic meters of fresh water, a hectare of shrimp farm needed a ten-
fold water supply.
 
Envisioning the threat, the six countries drinking from the same
river, backed by the Asian Development Bank, have kicked off the
economic cooperation of the expanded Greater Mekong Sub-region, which
also focuses on cooperation in energy and agriculture.
 
More than 60 million people rely on the Mekong, known as the Lancang
in China, and its tributaries for food, water, transport and other
aspects of life, according to International Rivers, and “the river
supports one of the world’s most diverse fisheries, second only to
Brazil’s Amazon River.”