RELEVANT LINKS

• Mekong River Commission

• International Rivers Network

• China's plans for its portions of the Mekong

• Manwan Dam

• Xiaowan Dam

• Boom in Lao Tourism Threatens Local Culture
  

The six South-east Asian countries that share the waters of the Mekong River risk getting sucked into regional tensions if their governments ignore the warning signs that have surfaced and do not coordinate actions that affect the river, experts say.

A potential trigger is the irregular flow of the Mekong's waters, which regional experts say is due to both natural factors and man-made 'development' , including dam construction by China and a navigation agreement set by four governments in June last year.

"Unless we have a mechanism to regulate water use and support and develop it, we are bound to witness conflicts among countries that share the river," said Joern Kristensen, chief executive officer of the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an inter-governmental body that manages the river's lower basin.

The most troubling period for the lower Mekong countries -- Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Laos, is the annual dry season, when changes in river flows during this time hit them the hardest.

Countries that share the Mekong's lower river basin are MRC members. Upstream countries China and Burma are not members of the Phnom-Penh based commission, although they are observers and have a standing invitation to join it.

"In the dry season, if one country upstream takes water for its own purpose, it affects the countries downstream," Kristensen said at a United Nations-sponsored forum on 'Water and Conflict' here in March.

The MRC's research has shown that during the dry months from November through May, the Mekong -- which flows from the Tibetan plateau down to Vietnam and out to the South China Sea -- is reduced to 2,000 cubic metres of flowing water per second. During the monsoon months -- June to September -- the Mekong flows at a rate of 50,000 cubic metres per second.

Thus, the communities dependent on the Mekong downstream, such as those in Vietnam, stand to be affected the most by any changes in the river. This is the case when the river's natural flow drops during the dry season to allow the intrusion of saltwater, which destroys the land set for agricultural use.

More than 50 million people depend upon the Mekong and its tributaries for food, water, transport and other aspects of their daily lives.

"The river's annual flood-drought cycles are essential for the substantial production of food crops on the floodplains and along the banks of the rivers during the dry season," says a briefer by the U.S. based non-government group International Rivers Network (IRN).

Yet experts like Steve Van Beek, an author and filmmaker whose work has focused on the Mekong and other rivers, argue that there is more than the regular shift in weather that has led to countries like Vietnam suffering from a drop in the Mekong's water level.

"In 1997, the Chinese closed down the river for four days to enable work on a dam, thus stopping the flow of large quantities of fresh water into the Mekong delta," says Van Beek. "The Vietnamese claimed to have lost 100,000 dollars a day."

Due to such acts of unilateralism, China's plans for its portion of the Mekong have emerged as a major worry among environmentalists and activists. China has plans for at least eight hydroelectric power projects on what the Mekong, or Lancang as it calls it.

After the Manwan and the Daochaoshan dams, there is the Xiaowan dam that began being built in Januart this year and will be completed by 2012. Targetted to produce 4.2 million kilowatts mainly for export to Thailand, its installed generation capacity would be second only to the Three Gorges dam on the Yangtze river, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported in January.

China's push for more dams in its portions of the Mekong is bound to exacerbate the problems faced by downstream communities that need water during the dry season, analysts say. It is the only country among the six Mekong countries that has a glacial belt.

"The Mekong is fed from two sources, the monsoon rains and the glaciers from China," Van Beek explains. "During the dry season the glaciers melting in China feed the river, ensuring its natural flow. That's why the dams in China are troubling." According to IRN, the planned Chinese dams will add to the more than 100 large dams that have been proposed in the Mekong over the past 10 years, plans that are backed by multilateral financial institutions as well as governments.

Laos, it adds, has been where the pace of dam-building is "fastest", and projects have been geared to supply expected demand from neighbouring Thailand.

Another emerging flashpoint is the initiative by China, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar, under an accord signed last year, to rid the Mekong of some islets in mid-stream, to have easier routes for commercial navigation.

China, news reports say, has already cleared its section of the river to enable big vessels to travel through its waters year round. Thus far, vessels could only reach until Laos from China, but the navigation accord will allow further travel southwards.

China was the first among the countries involved to operate cargo vessels along the waterway, and plans to have cleared the river enough to let 300-tonne vessels operate next year.

Thailand, Laos and Burma have still to make their sections of the river navigable to large vessels.

China seeks to build 14 ports along the river to facilitate greater economic activity in the region. Already, complaints are trickling out of Laos about these projects' impact on communities who depend on the Mekong for their livelihood.

"The Mekong River is not for Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and China. It also flows to Cambodia and Vietnam. If the clearance plans pose problems for the countries downstream, we have to reconsider it," a Laotian diplomat was quoted by the 'Bangkok Post' as saying. "It is unfair if the project yields benefits for four countries but the others get nothing." (Copyright © IPS)