A farmer looks out at a flooded paddy field in Laos. Credit: E Souk/IPS

By Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau
BANGKOK, Jun 20 2013 (IPS)

The future of food security in the Mekong region lies at a crossroads, as several development ventures, including the Xayaburi Hydropower Project, threaten to alter fish migration routes, disrupt the flow of sediments and nutrients downstream, and endanger millions whose livelihoods depend on the Mekong River basin’s resources.

Running through China, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Laos, Thailand and Cambodia to the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, this is Asia’s seventh longest transboundary river.

An estimated 60 million people live within the lush river basin, and nearly 80 percent depend on the Lower Mekong’s waters and intricate network of tributaries as a major source of food.

But if all goes according to plan, 88 dams will obstruct the river’s natural course by 2030. Seven have already been completed in the Upper Mekong basin in China, with an estimated twenty more either planned or underway in the northwest Qinghai province, the southwestern region of Yunnan and Tibet.

Construction of the 3.5-billion-dollar Xayaburi Dam on the Lower Mekong in northern Laos is the first of eleven planned dam projects on the main stem of the Mekong River, with nine allocated for Laos and two in Cambodia.

Construction began in 2010 and as of last month the project was 10 percent complete.

At best these development projects will alter the traditional patterns of life here; at worst, they will devastate ecosystems that have thrived for centuries.

Over 850 freshwater fish species call the Mekong home, and several times a year this rich water channel is transformed into a major migration route, with one third of the species travelling over 1,000 kilometres to feed and breed, making the Mekong River basin one of the world’s most productive inland fisheries.

Large-scale water infrastructure development projects such as hydropower dams have already damaged the floodplains in the Lower Mekong and in the Tonlé Sap Lake in Cambodia, affecting water quality and quantity, lowering aquatic productivity, causing agricultural land loss and a 42-percent decline in fish supplies.

This spells danger in a region where fish accounts for 50 to 80 percent of daily consumption and micronutrient intake, Ame Trandem, Southeast Asia programme director for the non-profit International Rivers, told IPS.

Locating alternative protein sources such as livestock and poultry is no easy task and would require 63 percent more pasture lands and more than 17 percent more water.

“Cambodia is the largest fish eating country in the world. Get rid of the fish and you’re going to have serious problems because there is not enough livestock in Cambodia and Laos to compensate for the loss,” Trandem said.

With a total population of over 16 million, the Mekong Delta is known as the ‘rice bowl’ of Vietnam. It nurtures vast paddy fields that are responsible for 50 percent of national rice production and 70 percent of exports.

This low-lying delta depends on a natural cycle of floods and tides, with which Vietnamese farmers have long synchronised their planting and harvesting calendars.

Now, experts like Geoffrey Blate, senior advisor of landscape conservation and climate change for the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Greater Mekong Programme in Thailand, say this delicate ecosystem is vulnerable to changes brought on by global warming and mega development projects.

Rising sea levels and salt water intrusion have already put Vietnamese communities in the Mekong Delta on red alert, “while sediment losses caused by upstream dams will exacerbate these problems. In addition, the increased precipitation and heavier downpours anticipated from climate change may also substantially alter flood regimes in the Delta,” Blate told IPS.

If all the dams are built, experts estimate that 220,000 to 440,000 tonnes of white fish would disappear from the local diet, causing hunger and leading to a rapid decline in rice production.

Electricity over sustainability?

Citing a shortage of energy, Thailand’s leading state-owned utility corporation, EGAT, signed an agreement to purchase 95 percent of the Xayaburi dam’s anticipated 1,285 megawatts (MW) of electricity.

Six Thai commercial banks comprise the financial muscle of the project, while construction is in the hands of Thailand’s CH. Karnchang Public Company Limited, with some support from the Laotian government.

But energy experts like Chuenchom Sangarasri Greacen, author of Thailand’s Alternative Power Development Plan, have poked holes in the claim that the dam is required to meet growing energy needs.

Thailand is a net importer of electricity, but a lot of it is utilised wastefully, she told IPS, adding that countries like Laos and Cambodia have a much more immediate need for electricity: the World Bank estimates that only 84 percent of the population in Laos and 26 percent in Cambodia have access to electricity, compared to 99.3 percent in Thailand.

But instead of developing their own generation capacities, these governments have chosen export projects that profit corporations over people.

“Thailand is creating a lot of environmental, social and food issues for local communities by extending its grid to draw power from beyond our borders,” Greacen said.

Already, 333 families from villages like Houay Souy in north-central Laos, who were moved to make way for the dam, are feeling the first hints of greater suffering to come.

Once a self-sufficient community that generated revenues via gold panning and cultivated their own riverbank gardens to produce rice, fruits and vegetables, villagers are now finding themselves without jobs, very little money and not enough food.

“The villagers’ primary source of food was fishing and agriculture. In their new location, about 17 km away from their old homes, they were given small plots of agricultural land but not enough for their daily consumption needs,” said Trandem.

“Ch. Karnchang never compensated them for lost fisheries, fruit trees or the riverbank gardens that were washed away. Their new homes were built with poor quality wood, which was quickly eaten into by termites, so what little compensation they did receive went to fixing their new homes,” she added.

These families, numbering about five members per household, are now barely surviving on 10 dollars per month and symbolise the gap between so-called poverty alleviation programmes and their impact on the ground.

“The Laos government claims that dams will generate revenue but in reality…projects like Xayaburi basically export benefits and profits away from the host country while smaller projects that are more economically sustainable are being ignored,” says Greacen.

She believes the Laotian government should explore small-scale renewable energy projects like biomass and micro-hydro plants that would attract local investment and directly serve local populations.

Blate also suggested building diversion canals for smaller dams, rather than obstructing the main stem of the Mekong River.

Fishermen's boats on the Mekong River in northern Laos, where the building of a controversial dam is planned. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Nov 6 2012 (IPS)

The U.S. government is directly cautioning the Laotian government following Monday’s announcement that the latter will move forward with contentious construction plans for a massive hydroelectric dam on the Mekong River.

“The extent and severity of impacts from the Xayaburi dam on an ecosystem that provides food security and livelihoods for millions are still unknown,” warned the U.S. State Department on Tuesday. “We are concerned that construction is proceeding before impact studies have been completed.”

The 3.5-billion-dollar Xayaburi dam has long been opposed by environmentalists, downstream communities and legal scholars, while the World Bank recently announced sanctions against a Finnish company that approved a disputed environmental assessment in favour of the project.

A major 2011 report by the pan-regional Mekong River Commission expressed concern over several areas in need of further review, and the Laotian government has stated that it would proceed on the Xayaburi project only once those concerns were ameliorated.

However, at the current summit of the inter-regional Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in the Laotian capital, Vientiane, the government made a surprise announcement that it would be moving forward immediately, with groundbreaking at the dam site slated for Wednesday.

“We would hope that senior government officials and heads of state at the Asia-Europe Meeting would express in the strongest possible terms their objections to the Lao government proceeding with the project,” Aviva Imhof, campaigns director with International Rivers, an environment watchdog, told IPS.

“In addition, we would hope that donors to Laos’s electricity and infrastructure sectors, such as the Asian Development Bank and the Japanese government, would reconsider their ongoing development assistance to a government that refuses to comply with its international obligations.”

Tuesday’s statement from the U.S. State Department was unusually direct, cautioning that the United States’ “own experience has made us acutely aware of the economic, social and environmental impacts that large infrastructure can have over the long-term”.

While the U.S. does not say that it opposes the project outright, the State Department highlights that the Mekong River Commission’s members, based in Vientiane, have yet to reach consensus on whether the project should continue. The government urged its Laotian counterpart to “uphold its pledge to work with its neighbours in addressing remaining questions regarding Xayaburi”.

The statement comes a year after a unanimous resolution was passed by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee “calling for the protection of the Mekong River Basin and for delaying mainstream dam construction along the river”.

First of a ‘cascade’

As currently planned, the Xayaburi project would consist of a 1,260 megawatt hydroelectric installation northwest of Vientiane. While there are already three operational dams (with two more under construction) on the narrow northern section of the Mekong that falls within China, the Xayaburi would be the first such project after the river enters the plains and becomes the wide, slow-moving waterway that is central to the lives of tens of millions of Southeast Asians.

Most likely, the dam’s construction would also ease the way for the dozen additional dams that the Mekong River Commission says are currently under consideration along the river.

Under regional agreements, none of these can go forward without consent from the rest of the affected countries. Yet despite a 2011 decision among those countries that additional work was necessary before the Xayaburi project should be allowed to proceed, the Laotian government has quietly continued to oversee extensive and expensive groundwork.

“Laos said it would cooperate with neighbouring countries, but this was never genuine,” Ame Trandem, Southeast Asia programme director for International Rivers, said Tuesday. “The international community should not let the Lao government get away with such a blatant violation of international law.”

Trandem is calling on Western donors as well as the governments of Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia to take a “firm stand” against the recent decision.

“The Xayaburi Dam is the first of a cascade of devastating mainstream dams that will severely undermine the region’s development efforts,” she said.

“The food security and jobs of millions of people in the region are now on the line. None of Vietnam and Cambodia’s environmental and social concerns have been taken seriously. Laos has never even collected basic information about the ways that people depend on the river, so how can it say that there will be no impacts?”

Speaking with journalists on Monday, Viraphonh Viravong, the Laotian deputy minister of energy and mining, brushed aside such criticism, saying simply that his government had “addressed most of the concerns”. Construction on an initial diversionary dam should be finished by the middle of next year.

23,000 megawatts

Laos today is a nominally socialist country ruled by one military-backed party, and it remains one of the poorest and least developed countries in Asia. Yet its hydroelectric potential – which the World Bank estimates at 23,000 megawatts, just a tiny percentage of which has thus far been developed – has long been seen as the country’s most significant opportunity to fund its own development.

For this reason, the longstanding opposition to the Xayaburi project has undoubtedly frustrated the country’s political leadership. The dam’s construction is being bankrolled by a Thai company, and current plans would have almost all of its 1,260 megawatts be sold directly to Thailand.

Yet despite the substantial profits projected for the Laotian government, several studies have highlighted significant economic and social costs, including hundreds of millions of dollars in projected lost agricultural and fishery opportunities all the way to the river’s mouth in Vietnam.

Potentially affected communities have put together several petitions to the governments in Vientiane and Bangkok, asking that the Xayaburi project be halted. The Mekong River Commission has gone still farther, suggesting in 2010 that all dam work on the river be subjected to a moratorium of at least a decade, to allow for greater study of the potential impact of such work.

In 2011, the Laotian government hired a Finnish company, the Pöyry Group, to ascertain whether the Xayaburi proposal complied with the Mekong River Commission’s requirements. To the surprise of many observers, the company found that the project was in compliance and advised the government to continue – though it also suggested dozens of additional surveys and studies.

In August, the World Bank announced that it was sanctioning the Pöyry Group for impropriety (though not specifically for its work in Laos). Nonetheless, critics warn that the Laotian government is now proceeding based almost solely on the problematic Pöyry assessment.

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Aug 28 2012 (IPS)

Impoverished Laos is unlikely to cancel a Thai project to build a mega dam across the Mekong River at Xayaburi, despite warnings from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) that it could devastate the region’s rich biodiversity.

Over 1,780 known freshwater fish species have been identified in the ‘Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot’ which includes the Mekong and parts of the Chao Phraya River that flows through Thailand, revealed the 158-page report released last week by the IUCN, ahead of its world congress to be held in Jeju, South Korea from Sep. 6-15.

IUCN, which is based Switzerland and is world’s oldest and largest global environmental network, assists societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and biodiversity of nature and to ensure that the use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable.

“The Mekong ranks third (after the Amazon and Congo) or second in the world in terms of diversity of river fish depending on whether the verified species total or the higher estimate is accepted,” notes the IUCN study,  ‘The Status and Distribution of Freshwater Biodiversity in Indo-Burma’.

The study has strengthened a growing anti-dam movement that has united campaigners from several countries in the region that are likely to be affected by the 1,260-megawatt hydropower project being built at a cost 3.8 billion dollars.

“This is an unprecedented scientific contribution for us to know what is in the river between (the Laotian cities of) Luang Prabang and Vientiane,” Robert Mather, head of IUCN Southeast Asia, told IPS. “It shows how little we understand the river or the impact of the planned dam.”

The report is expected to feed discussions about dams like the Xayaburi at the IUCN gathering at  Jeju, which is expected to include more than 1,200 government and non-government organisations (NGOs) from 160 countries.

“This study will help to shape the real questions that need to be asked when doing EIAs (environment impact assessments) before building the dam,” Mather said. 

Early August, Thai communities rallying against the Xayaburi dam had lodged a petition against the energy ministry and the state-run Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) in the country’s administrative courts, charging these bodies with failure to inform the public about the environmental and social impacts of the dam.

But, on Aug. 24, Norkun Sitthiphong, permanent secretary in Thailand’s energy ministry, announced that construction work for the Xayaburi dam was on track and that electricity production was scheduled to begin by 2019.

“The Xayaburi power plant plays a crucial role in Thailand’s power development,” the Thai official said, affirming the close link Thailand has as a major investor of this dam, the first of a cascade of 11 dams being planned to harness the lower waters of Southeast Asia’s largest river.

Earlier studies by the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an inter-government agency, estimate that the proposed dams could result in agricultural losses worth more than 500 million dollars annually and reduce dietary fish intake of Thai and Lao people by 30 percent.

It could also result in the creation of reservoirs along the Mekong,  studies by the MRC, in which Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam are members and Myanmar (or Burma) and China are dialogue partners.   

The MRC is yet to clear construction for the dam and announced in December that it would approach international development partners to study the dam’s implications before doing so.

Activists believe that it is not too late to stop the Xayaburi dam especially because of a growing movement against it.

“This is the first time local communities have gone to the Thai courts to stop a cross-border hydropower project,” says Premrudee Daoroung, co-director of Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance, Bangkok-based green lobby.

“They are turning to a clause in the Thai constitution that requires government agencies to conduct public hearings on projects like the Xayaburi dam, which will impact Thai communities and Thailand’s biodiversity,” she told IPS.

“Their biggest concern is that the dam will devastate fishing in the Mekong, which has been their main livelihood for generations,” Daoroung told IPS. “Their campaign began out of fear that the Xayaburi dam will affect the annual fish migration in the Mekong.”

Loss of biodiversity is another concern. “The currency for measuring fish biodiversity is species, not kilograms, dollars or catch per unit of effort,” the IUCN report said.

Grassroots communities in Cambodia and Vietnam have expressed similar concerns in their ‘Save the Mekong’ campaign.

The Xayaburi dam could, they say, threaten the livelihoods of some 60 million people living in the lower Mekong, who harvest an estimated 2.2 to 3.9 billion dollars worth of fish caught annually – or about a quarter of the world’s annual inland-water catch.

Besides food security this campaign, which has now been endorsed by nearly 60,000 people, has also forged other bonds.

“The outcry has been strong because of the centrality of the river to millions of people, as well as to the region’s history and cultural identity,” says Carl Middleton, a Mekong River expert who lectures at the International Development Studies Programme at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.

“Just as the river is shared between the countries, so the proposed Xayaburi dam has brought many people together in opposition to the project,” he told IPS. “The size of the public response opposed to the Xayaburi dam is unprecedented for a hydropower project in the region.”   

But, the protests have produced a mixed response from Laos, one of the poorest of the six countries that shares the Mekong, a 4,880 km-long river that flows through southern China, touching Myanmar (or Burma) and Thailand, and through Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Laos has set its sights on becoming the battery to the region by tapping its rivers through mega-hydropower projects and selling the energy generated to its neighbours, such as Thailand. The foreign exchange, Vientiane argues, can help one-third of the country’s 5.8 million population living in poverty.

Laos had assured neighbours, Western donors and an intergovernmental river development body that it would not proceed with the controversial dam till the cross-border environmental and social impacts have been assessed. In July, Vientiane had even announced suspension of the project.

Ch. Karnchang Plc (CK), one of Thailand’s largest infrastructure builders and owner of 50 percent of the shares of Xayaburi Power, the controversial dam’s developer, suggest otherwise.

In mid-August, CK’s chief executive Plew Trivisvavet confirmed that the dam developer had not skipped a beat in its construction plans. “We’re still working on the project, as no one has told us to stop,” he told journalists.

A fisherman on the Si Phan Don riverine archipelago of the Mekong River. Credit: Courtesy of Suthep Kritsanavarin/Oxfam

By Lawrence Del Gigante
NEW YORK, Aug 18 2012 (IPS)

The Cambodian government has committed to the construction of two dams along the Mekong River in order to meet a huge demand for electricity, but environmental groups warn that severe repercussions loom for this strategy.

“While each project proposed in Cambodia comes with a different set of impacts, large dams are likely to widen the gap between the rich and the poor, increase malnourishment levels and lead to an environmentally unsustainable future,” Ame Trandem, South East Asia programme director for International Rivers, told IPS.

Four dam projects have been approved so far in Cambodia, with one already operational. All are being developed by Chinese companies on build-operate-transfer agreements, according to Trandem.

The Mekong River runs through six countries, including China and Vietnam, most of which are planning the construction of hydroelectric dams.

“The plans to build a cascade of 11 Mekong mainstream dams is one of the greatest threats currently facing Cambodia,” said Trandem.

The mandate on planning and development of hydropower in Cambodia lies within the ministry of industry, mines and energy, which did not respond to requests for comment.

Another danger of damming the Mekong is the threat to the Mekong delta, an extremely fertile area of land which is responsible for much of the region’s rice supply.

“As the Mekong River feeds and employs millions of people in the region for free, it would be irresponsible to proceed with the Xayaburi and other mainstream dams,” said Trandem.

The Mekong is one of the only rivers in the world to reverse its flow in the dry season. This natural mechanism buffers the intrusion of salt water from the South China Sea into the delta, and could be upset by upstream development.

Dams also block fish migration routes, alter flows, and change aquatic habitats, so these projects are also likely to have an adverse effect on Cambodia’s fisheries.

“The Mekong River Commission’s Strategic Environmental Assessment warned that more than one million fisheries-dependent people in Cambodia would lose their livelihoods and even more would suffer from food insecurity,” said Trandem.

“The loss of even a small percentage of the Mekong’s fisheries can represent in a loss of tens of millions of dollars.”

Partnerships have been established between the countries through which the Mekong runs in order to prevent overharvesting of the river’s resources. However, China is not a signatory to the 1995 Mekong Agreement, and can effectively build these projects independently from downstream countries. The dams in Cambodia are being financed by Chinese investors.

“The impacts of these projects are already being felt downstream,” said Trandem.

Hydroelectricity, even if a successful venture, will not solve the country’s electrification problems, other analysts say.

“Right now it is relatively catastrophic, the power situation in the country,” Alexander Ochs, the director of climate and energy at the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute, told IPS.

Cambodia has one of the lowest electrification rates in Southeast Asia, estimated at only 24 percent, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The government aims to raise the national electrification rate to 70 percent by 2020, according to the ADB, by expanding the grid and sourcing more than half of the needed electricity from the Mekong River.

A large complication is transmitting the electricity, with only the major cities and surrounding areas having access to power lines, meaning people in rural areas will not benefit from the hydro.

“The number of people that are really connected to a grid as we know it, a modern power service or energy line, in rural areas is as little as seven percent of the population. Overall, nationwide, it’s about 15 percent,” said Ochs.

Biomass is very popular for heating and cooking, predominantly burning wood for fires and stoves.

“Everything else comes from off-grid or micro-grid diesel generators and this is very inefficient and very costly, a very expensive, very dirty way to produce electricity,” said Ochs.

Currently, 91 percent of Cambodia’s power plants are fuelled by imported light diesel and heavy fuel oil, not including the diesel it takes to fuel stand-alone generators.

“All of this happens in a country where you have incredible renewable energy potential. It has amazing potential for wind, very, very good potential for solar,” said Ochs.

Importantly, the solar potential in Cambodia is very high where it’s needed, including in the populated areas, meaning solar technologies can be installed domestically, such as solar panels on the roofs of houses, according to Ochs.

Solar technologies could provide off-grid communities with access to power as well as promoting clean energy in the country. However, solar technologies can be expensive, lack the reliability of stand-alone generators and often need constant maintenance.

The situation is exacerbated by the presence of imitation solar products on the market, which often break easily, thereby diminishing consumer trust in the technology.

Cambodia’s potential for renewable energies exceeds many countries in the developed world, analysts say, and Cambodia is in a good position to create favourable economies of scale for renewable energies.

“I wouldn’t argue for building a national grid, giant coal plants and importing coal, or developing only large hydro, as recent actions seem to suggest. Let’s work with the system as it is today, and develop distributed renewable solutions on the ground,” said Ochs.