ENVIRONMENT: United Nations Questions Mekong Dam Planners

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

SAN FRANCISCO, May 18 1996 (IPS) - An international agency that is planning to build dams on the Mekong River in South Asia is under scrutiny from United Nations officials for failing to consult with local people who will be affected by the projects.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is responding to a complaint about the Mekong River Commission that was initiated by the International Rivers Network.

“Funding for the MRC must be halted until the very people to be impacted by MRC policies and programmes are no longer excluded from the MRC’s brand of sustainable human development,” demanded Owen Lammers, executive director of the California-based environmental organisation, in a letter written to the UNDP earlier this year.

Lammers wrote the protest letter after MRC officials allegedly said they had no intention of providing local groups with documents about plans to build dams on the Mekong.

The 4,200 kilometre-long Mekong — the eighth longest river in the world — begins in the mountains of Tibet, meanders through southern China, Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, before emptying into the South China Sea in Vietnam.

For decades, construction companies have urged local governments to give them permission to build dams on the river, which they claim will bring major economic benefits to the region.

Environmentalists disagree, arguing that the dams will be a financial burden that will destroy local fishing grounds and forests, while forcing people out of their homes.

To help advise them on the future of the Mekong, regional governments established the MRC a year ago, with funding from donors such as the UNDP, to replace the 38-year-old Interim Mekong Secretariat.

At a meeting in Bangkok earlier this year, MRC chief executive Yasunobu Matoba reportedly told International Rivers Network officials, “UNDP may be interested in these things, but the MRC is not. Public participation is not the chief responsibility of the MRC but that of its member countries.”

Outraged activists sent a formal letter of complaint to Gus Speth, the head of UNDP, asking him to pull funding for the MRC. The MRC is expected to make a formal request for money at a meeting in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, in October.

Roberto Lenton, UNDP director of the sustainable energy and environment, told IPS that the agency was taking the complaint very seriously.

Lenton said UNDP regional director for Asia and the Pacific Nay Htun took up the matter with MRC officials during a UNDP-sponsored workshop on the Mekong held in Bangkok last week.

The UNDP is “clearly concerned” with the MRC’s apparent failure to recognize the “principles of openness and transparency,” but Lenton said his agency will look at the workshop results “before we decide how we will work with the MRC in the future.”

Htun told IPS that “there is absolutely no question that, as a result of our workshop, he (Matoba) has discovered the importance of such consultations and that the message of public participation has got through loud and clear.”

Lammers, however, remains sceptical. He claimed that the 11 non- governmental groups that attended the Mekong workshop were mostly large international groups that didn’t represent affected local communities.

The charge was denied by Htun, who said the UNDP had invited local environmental groups, such as Bangkok-based Terra, to make presentations on behalf of affected communities, but they declined to participate.

UNDP is no stranger to controversy over local participation in the planning process. Last year the agency came under fire from the International Rivers Network and other groups for not involving affected people in its decision making.

Since then, UNDP has conducted public consultations with affected communities in the Mekong region, as well as in Paraguay- Parana delta, where it is paying to study the impact of widening the rivers for a commercial waterway linking Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

In addition, the agency currently is drafting a new policy that will set rules for distributing information to communities affected by its projects.

Meanwhile, change has already come to the Mekong.

China, which is not a member of MRC, recently completed the 1,250-megawatt Manwan dam in Yunnan to supply electricity to Kunming city. And, it now plans to build 15 dams with a total generating capacity of 20,730 megawatts.

Next in the race to dam the Mekong is Laos, which is working hard to promote the Nam Theun II dam. Laos hopes the dam will generate enough electricity to sell to neighbouring Thailand.

The World Bank — a key source of funding — balked at the project, after environmental groups launched fierce criticisms of the impact the dam would have on the biologically unique Nakay plateau, home to animal species unknown to modern science until three years ago..

Nam Theun II backers hit another major snag last year when engineers discovered that they had been using the wrong set of maps to plan construction. New maps showed that the dam would be flood 447 square-kilometres of land, about a third more than previously predicted.

Critics say the proposed new dams also threaten the 795,000- square-kilometre Mekong River basin, which supports rice and other food production, as well as an estimated 1,000 fish species.