DAMMING THE MEKONG RIVER FOR HYDROPOWER WILL AFFECT THE FUTURE OF EIGHTY MILLION PEOPLE WHOM DEPEND...

Phong Thanh Bui, Professor Gordon, Business 100 Honor, May 11, 2013

DAMMING THE MEKONG RIVER FOR HYDROPOWER

WILL AFFECT THE FUTURE OF EIGHTY MILLION PEOPLE WHOM

DEPEND UPON THE MEKONG RIVER FOR RESOURCES

Introduction

The Mekong is the eighth largest river in the world, with a

basin covering 800,000 square kilometers of mainland East Asia

(Ang Cheng Guan). It flows from the Tibet Plateau through China,

Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand, finally reaching

the South China Sea. The river and its plentiful tributaries,

lakes, backwaters and swamps support many exclusive ecosystems

and a wide range of globally-threatened species.

Shared water resources recapitulate the dilemmas surrounding

public pool resources, whose use by one party recoups the

potential benefits to others. Rivers are grossly subject to these

conflicts in terms of upper or mid-stream pollution, abstraction

or expropriation, which may reduce the quality and quantity of

water available to downstream users. Additionally, in the case of


an international river as the Mekong, the contradictory between

hydro-ecological and political boundaries leads to conflicts

between the principle of sovereignty as opposed to common

resource issues of ownership, apportionment, security and

environmental degradation.

More than 80 million people depend upon the Mekong River for

resources ranging from drinking water, fish, transportation,

irrigated water to the fertile land and forest products of its

catchment area – mainly agriculturalists who rely on the wild

freshwater fish as a key source of protein in their diets. The

river has largest potential development in hydropower and large-

scale irrigation projects. These potential resources have been

relatively undeveloped until now because of civil wars, but the

relative peace and consequential economic development drive in

the region in the 1990s has boosted a range of national,

bilateral and multilateral plans for building dams on the

mainstream and major tributaries of the Mekong to provide

electricity and water for agricultural irrigation. The troubled

experiences in other large transboundary rivers as the Nile, the

Jordan and the Tigris-Euphrates imply that these developmental


projects will have significant impacts on the environmental

security of, and relations between, the Mekong basin states

(Kliot).

Damming the Mekong River for hydropower – Governance Challenges

The Mekong River is the longest watercourse in Southeast

Asia. Although China has an expansive hydropower program underway

on the upper Mekong river and there are no any hydro-electrical

dams on the lower Mekong river. Nevertheless, 12 additional

projects would produce enduring energy and wealth especially for

Cambodia and Laos. The cumulative effects of the lower Mekong

hydropower projects – if built, and together with existing

Chinese dams – will transform the Mekong by altering natural flow

patterns and breaking through fisheries and other ecosystem

services, to the damage of the millions of people whom depend on

the river for their livelihoods. Propositions for new dam

construction are driven by some factors, including changing human

demographics and development needs, energy and food-security

supply, economic cooperation, and environmental degradation.


The Mekong River Commission, which is an inter-governmental

agency established by Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam via

the 1995 Mekong Agreement over joint management of the

transboundary watershed (“Environment Programme”), has recently

requested Laos to halt construction of the Xayaburi dam on the

lower Mekong (“Vietnam and Cambodia tell Laos”). This news and

the building of the Xayaburi dam is another reminder that

transboundary environmental impact evaluations reflect the ideal

of an environmental safeguard that is not practiced in reality

and will continue to perform as lip service until it is connected

to “substantive prohibition” (Knox 2002) .


Photo 1: Mekong River System (Source: International Rivers Network (ed.)

2002)

To develop on the issue, the Xayaburi is the first of eleven

dams, which will be built in the area, will diminish changes to

natural flow which already exists due to dams constructed in

China (Grubine). Photo 1 demonstrates the extent of the Mekong


River Basin as well as existing dams, planned dams and dams under

construction (“Dams in the Mekong River Basin”). Proponents of

the Xayaburi dam debate that population growth and movement of

people from rural to urban areas calls for hydro-power to reduce

the poverty.

As such, the 12 dam structure is estimated to provide 6-8%

of projected power demand by 2025 as well as bring a gross income

of $3.7 billion to Laos (Grubine). Sadly, the watershed is home

to an estimated 65 million people, with 2/3rds of that population

depending on the Mekong’s fish stocks for comestible. It is one

of the most bio-diverse rivers in the world, second only to the

Amazon, with at least 877 fish species (Ziv). For these reasons

and more, the Mekong River Commission called for a strategic

environmental assessment of the 12 hydropower projects

(“Agreement on the cooperation “) The South East Asia process has

been criticized because construction commenced before the report

was completed and before inter-governmental consultations took

place (“Vietnam and Cambodia tell Laos” and Hirsch).

Additionally, the report does not consider cumulative effects


(such as existing dams in China), residents more than 10

kilometers downstream of the site could not participate even

though the dam will have an impact on the migratory fish they

depend on, and those that participated were not consulted but

rather surveyed (Hirsch).

This potential environmental disaster, which will span over

four countries, is at the discretionary approval of Laos alone

because the Mekong River Commission Agreement, Agreement on the

Cooperation for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong River

Basin, does not offer veto power to countries outside a project,

nor does it offer any form of substantive consequences for

environmental damages to the polluter (“Agreement on the

cooperation”). Articles 34 and 35 of the agreement arguably lie

at the heart of the problem: these articles call for disputes to

be settled through council and, in the case of irreconcilable

differences, through ”democratic channels” such as mediation

(“Agreement on the cooperation”). These are diplomatic avenues

that offer no protection for individuals, communities, even

entire countries that can be affected by dam construction on the


lower Mekong. In order to protect the watershed and people living

within it, decision making ought to occur at the international

level instead of the national level. Some form of substantive

interdict should exist, and some infringements

on sovereignty should occur for international organizations, such

as the Mekong River Commission, and transboundary Environmental

Impact Assessment to succeed in protecting the environment or at

least diminishing environmental degradation.

Environmental degradation, electrical shortage and conflict

In the course of planning and seeking funding for these

covetous hydropower projects, the various governments have not

addressed environmental concerns consistently. Instead,

international research networks have been most active in

disseminating information about actual and potential effects of

these developments on local communities and regional relations.

The policy makers and academics from China working on the subject

are well aware of the international controversy, however, they

argue in favor of the economic imperative in spite of


environmental costs. For example, two leading Chinese experts,

Kung and He, wrote in 1997 that:

“Today, some developed countries such as the United

States are stepping out of the ‘dam building age’… But…

developing countries…have to build dams to satisfy the

requirements of…rapid socio-economic development as

well as…increased population, even though they lack

experience in planning, construction and management of

dams, and are poor in technology and experience in

handling environmental and ecological problems.”

They also debate the cost-effectiveness of developing

hydropower on the Lancang, known as the Mekong River in China,

instead of on the Mekong, calculating that the total cost of

building the Lancang cascade will be 33.5% of that for dams on

the Mekong mainstream because of fewer resettlements, less

calamity of land and higher power generation capacity. These

calculations have the greatest delitescent impact on Laos that is

living in hope to become the hydropower center for mainland

Southeast Asia. He and Kung estimate that Yunnan province will be


able to sell electricity more cheaply to the region than Laos can

– for example, electricity provided from the planned Nam Theun II

dam in Laos to Thailand is set to cost 4.55 cents (0.40 Yuan) per

KWh, as compared to 0.30 Yuan for electricity supplied from the

Jinghong dam to Bangkok.24 If such projections are respectable,

we may expect the regional power market to become even more

demand-led and the exacerbation of Laos’ problems of unbalanced

dependence on the Thai market for its hydropowerled development

action.

Apart from the stark economic crucial evident in Chinese

attitudes towards dam development, there is also a degree of

myopia in considering environmental impacts. Existing Chinese

studies largely do not take into account environmental costs

downstream of the Lancang cascade. This is in part because the

plans were made independently, before Yunnan province was opened

to foreign trade in 1985, and at a time when China’s political

relations with the lower Mekong riparians were cool in the 1980s.

Yet, the few more recent studies of downstream impacts focus

on the potential positive effects and dismiss the likely negative


ones. For example, Chapman and He assert that the overall effect

of the Lancang dams on the river flow will be “negligible” –

except for an augmented dry season flow of 171% at the Laos

border and a reduction of wet season flow by as much as 25%. They

also cast doubt on possible adverse impacts on fisheries, citing

the lack of data, the presence of other causes and the ultimately

lower importance of fish; and emphasise that in some areas, like

the Tonle Sap, environmental degradation “is already far

advanced”.(Chapman and He)

In recent years though, Yunnan province authorities have

paid some attention to environmental protection in the watershed.

For example, after bad floods in 1998, the government banned

logging completely in Xishuanbanna prefecture in the Lancang

basin; there are 111 established protected areas of various types

(5.1% up to 6% of the total land area); new afforestation

initiatives (33% of total land area); attempts to strengthen the

regulatory framework on a variety of fronts; and to control

industrial pollution and waste treatment in ‘Green Mountain and

Clean Water Trans-Century Green Engineering Plan’. Yet, it still

has a long way to go and problems include the lack of data and


analysis, an effective environmental monitoring system, funding,

well-defined policies and strategies on watershed management.

(Zhou and Yang).

Conclusion

The approach taken in solving water issues often depends on

the perspective or paradigm that is adopted. Emeritus Professor

Clarence Schoenfeld from the University of Wisconsin at Madison

once said “Water management is 10% water management and 90%

people management”. Water, being an essential substance for all

living organisms and practically much of human activities, is

power just like knowledge is. While water flows naturally

downstream, it is equally self-evident that the power to control

water lies upstream. As people are the sources of essentially all

water resource conflicts, the solutions to these problems also

lie with human beings and their institutions to put in place

fair, efficient and tenable systems of water governance. The

proposed approach of building upon the Integrated Water Resources

Management principles and incorporating these into the

appropriate geo-political-institutional setting at the proper


time, could serve as a model for confidence-building as well as

conflict prevention and management on a transboundary water-based

issue such as the Mekong River Basin. The Mekong Committee was

formed in 1957 bringing together the four lower riparian

countries of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam under a common

legally-binding framework for the coordination and management of

the Lower Mekong River. Interestingly, the former Chinese Foreign

Minister Marshal Chen Yi, during a visit to Burma (Myanmar) in

1957, wrote a poem in dedication to the mutual friendship between

the peoples of the two countries:

“I live in the upstream and you live in the

downstream,

Our friendship flows with the river we both

drink.”

In a way, one could interpret that the “Lancang-Mekong

Cooperation Spirit” was expressed back in 1957 in both the upper

and lower basins but in a pluralistic fashion, i.e. the lower

riparian countries decided to take a more legal and institutional

approach while the upper two riparian nations taking a more


political and less formal approach. Perhaps this type of

cooperative spirit should be continuously fostered to serve as

the guiding light to inspire us to work towards sustainable and

equitable development of the Mekong region. What is further

required are leadership, political and good will and pluralistic

societies and champions to help make it happen.

Cited Works

1. Ang, Cheng Guan. “Vietnam-China Relations Since The End of

The Cold War.” 1998.

2. Desmond, Ball. “Multilateral Security Cooperation in the

Asia-Pacific Region: Prospects and Possibilities.” 1999.

3. E.C. Chapman & He Daming, “Downstream Implications of

China’s Dams on the Lancang, Jiang (Upper Mekong) and their

Potential Significance for Greater Regional Cooperation

Basin-wide’, mimeo, 2000.

4. Goh, Evelyn. “Constructing the U.S Rapprochement with

China”, 1961-1974: From Red Menace to Tacit Ally (New York:

Cambridge University Press, 2005).


5. Grubine, R.E., J. Dore, and J. Xu. “Mekong hydropower:

drivers of change and governance challenges.” Frontiers in

Ecology and the Environment. 10(2): 91-98. 2012.

6. Hirsch, P. Review of Xayaburi Dam EIA incorporation into

regional consultation on impacts. 2012.

7. Institute for Environmental Security. “Dams in the Mekong

River Basin”. Environmental Security Assessments. 2009.

8. Kliot, Nurit. “Water Resources and Conflict in the Middle

East” (London: Routledge, 1994).

9. Knox, J.H. “The Myth and Reality of Transboundary

Environmental Impact Assessment”. American Journal of

International Law 96(2): 291-319. 2002.

10. Kung and He 1997

11. Mekong River Commission. “Agreement on the cooperation

for the sustainable development of the Mekong River basin.”

1995.

12. Mekong River Commission. “Environment Programme:

Transboundary EIA.” 2012.


13. Reuters. "Vietnam and Cambodia Tell Laos to Stop $3.5bn

Mekong River Dam Project." The Guardian. Guardian News and

Media, 18 Jan. 2013. Web. 16 May 2013.

14. Zhou Bo & Yang Weimin, ‘Priorities of the Greater

Mekong Subregion: Issues, Strategies and Realities: Views of

China’s Yunnan Province’, 2000.

15. Ziv, G., E. Baran, S. Nam, I. Rodriguez-Iturbe, and

S.A. Levin. “Trading-off fish biodiversity, food security,

and hydropower in the Mekong River Basin. Proceedings of the

National Academy of Sciences” . 2012.

DAMMING THE MEKONG RIVER FOR HYDROPOWER WILL AFFECT THE FUTURE OF EIGHTY MILLION PEOPLE WHOM DEPEND...

Documents

Transcript of DAMMING THE MEKONG RIVER FOR HYDROPOWER WILL AFFECT THE FUTURE OF EIGHTY MILLION PEOPLE WHOM DEPEND...