By Tom Fawthrop Chiang Khong, September 14, 2017
Laos' Pak Beng dam,
developed by China and supported by Thailand, has divided riparian nations over
how best to manage the river's resources
Water levels run low on
the Mekong River.
Photo: AFP Forum/Paritta Wangkiat
The sleepy town of Pak
Beng, best known as a stopover for slow boats connecting the Laos-Thailand
border to the ancient Lao capital of Luang Prabang, will be transformed later
this year by the launch of a third major hydro-dam on the lower Mekong River.
Only 180 kilometers away,
Thai communities and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) along another section
of the Mekong are lobbying for the dam to be stopped to prevent negative
impacts on fisheries, crops and livelihoods.
Thailand’s privately held
Electricity Generating PCL, or EGCO, and the Lao Ministry of mines are also key
shareholders in the venture.
The dam’s plan came under
heavy fire during the six-month consultation process concluded in June
organized by the Mekong River Commission – an intergovernmental body that
brings together the four riparian states of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and
Vietnam towards the goal of sustainable development of the region’s water
resources.
The MRC’s panel of experts
found many flaws in the dam’s design and a lack of credible environmental
impact studies, Le Anh Tuan, a Mekong expert at Can Tho University located in
Vietnam’s Mekong delta, told Asia Times.
“Laos should take
additional time for consultation and delay the construction plan for Pak Beng
dam because all the environmental impact figures of the project are very
backward, insufficient and fail to follow international standards.”
The Mekong River at Pak Beng, Laos. Photo: iStock/Getty Images
Those concerns, however,
are not expected to deter its developers. The rush to build a
cascade of 11 mainstream dams on the lower Mekong has been driven by China’s
construction of six dams upstream and Beijing’s eagerness to push development
downstream into Laos as a springboard into mainland Southeast Asia.
With Mekong riparian
neighbors Cambodia, Laos and Thailand all being wooed by Chinese loans, aid and
construction projects, critics say concerns about environmental harm have been
pushed aside in a rush to cash-in on lucrative investment projects.
The Lao government claims
that the income from hydropower exports is essential to lift the country out of
its status as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (Asean) poorest
member. Landlocked and underdeveloped, the country has aimed to position itself
as a hydro-electric “battery” for the region’s rising energy demand.
With Mekong riparian
neighbors Cambodia, Laos and Thailand all being wooed by Chinese loans, aid and
construction projects, critics say concerns about environmental harm have been
pushed aside in a rush to cash-in on lucrative investment projects
Daovong Phonekeo,
permanent secretary at the Lao Ministry of Energy, has argued the Pak Beng dam
would “promote economic growth and reduce the poverty rate.”
In addition to China’s
six upstream dams on the upper Mekong, known in China as the Lancang, the Pak
Beng dam will tighten its hold over the region’s hydrology and Beijing’s rising
geo-political hegemony over Southeast Asia’s longest and most strategically
important river.
China is not a MRC member
and has set up a rival organization – the Lancang Mekong Coordination Mechanism
(LMC) – as an alternative framework for the region’s water resource management.
The biggest challenge to
the Mekong’s dams has been launched in northern Thailand, led by an NGO network
spanning eight provinces known as ‘Chiang Khong Conservation’ based in the
international river border town of the same name.
Niwat Roykaew is the
group’s founder and plaintiff in a court case filed against the Thai Water
Resources Department and the Thai National Mekong Committee, state authorities
that have lent support to the dam.
Environmental activists outside the Administrative Court on June 8, 2017.
Photo: AFP Forum
“We accuse the Thai state
agencies [for] failing to carry out their duties,” he says, insisting they
should have studied impacts before supporting the dam. No hearings have been
held in the case, which was filed on June 8.
Time is of the essence,
experts say. World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Mekong specialist Marc Goichot claims
the river has now reached an ecological “tipping point” due to all the dams
that have been built in recent years.
“Fisheries are
declining, river erosion is increasing at an alarming rate and the Delta
is sinking,” Goichot said. “Many things are contributing to these problems,
including land use change, intensifying agriculture and industry, sand and
gravel mining, and climate change is aggravating all. But large dams are the
prime suspects.”
The simmering conflict
over water resource conservation and power generation projects has exposed that
there never was a shared good governance and environmentally sound vision for
the Mekong
Earlier there was hope
that the MRC, established under the multilateral 1995 Mekong Agreement, could
fulfil its mandate to protect the delicate river region. The first Strategic
Environment Assessment on the Mekong, released by MRC in 2010, recommended a
moratorium on all Mekong mainstream dams for ten years while further scientific
studies were carried out.
Under the 1995
agreement’s established consultation process, major infrastructure projects
like dams on the mainstream of the Mekong must be submitted to the MRC’s
headquarters in Vientiane for consultation and review by member states. Laos, a
signatory to the agreement, refused to even consider the report, according to
Jeremy Bird, the MRC’s chief executive officer at the time.
The MRC secretariat,
meanwhile, allowed the report to gather dust despite the fact Vietnam and
Cambodia endorsed its findings. The simmering conflict over water resource
conservation and power generation projects has exposed that there never was a
shared good governance and environmentally sound vision for the Mekong.
Inside the MRC, the
official Mekong delegations of Cambodia and Vietnam had earlier strongly
opposed the construction of Laos’ Xayaburi dam, another massive hydroproject on
the Mekong that Thailand and Laos support. The Pak Beng dam, backed by the Lao
and Thai governments and opposed by downstream Cambodia and Vietnam, has
followed suit.
A Thai fisherman on the
Mekong river in Wiang Kaen, a district in the northern Thai province of Chiang
Rai bordering Laos. Photo: AFP/Christophe Archambault
In the eyes of civil
society and MRC donor countries, any hope that the commission would resolve
environmental and water conflicts has receded with each new dam’s log-jammed
consultations. The dams’ impact on fisheries is of particular concern.
According to MRC data
released in 2015, wild capture fisheries on the Mekong contributed US$11
billion to the four Mekong countries’ economies. The catch is a crucial source
of protein for the still largely impoverished region.
Pham Tuan Pham, the MRC’s
current chief executive admitted during the Pak Beng consultations that “the
dams on the Mekong River will cause certain impacts to the ecosystems
throughout the basin”, but also made the controversial claim that “hydropower
on the Great Mekong will not kill the river – I think we should understand this
point clearly.”
“I wonder: just how dead
is dead?’” asked Philip Hirsch, former director of the Mekong Research Center
at the University of Sydney, in response to the comment. “The overwhelming
evidence shows that the full cascade of mainstream dams will leave the Mekong
severely disabled.”
He said the MRC is
playing an “overly cautious game” of trying not to offend governments rather
than taking care of the river. Pham has since claimed in email correspondence
with Asia Times that “my remarks have been taken out of context.”
“I wonder: just how dead
is dead?” – Philip Hirsch, former Mekong Research Center director
The US-based Stimson
Center, a think tank, argues that there are several rational cost-effective
alternatives to hydro-power, including solar and wind, to meet the fast-growing
region’s spiking energy needs.
In its 2017
report Mekong Power Shift: Emerging Trends in the GMS Power Sector,
Stimson contends that a policy shift is needed to deal with the environmental
and social fallout of large-scale hydropower development in the region.
Brian Eyler, director of
the Stimson Center’s Southeast Asia program, says there is an urgent need for
new policy thinking. “We try to steer the thinking away from hydropower,” he
said.
But while evidence mounts
of the ill-effects of damming on the Mekong and civil society mount challenges
to the state power driving the lucrative projects, Pak Beng will mostly likely
be the next dam to block the Mekong’s fading flow.
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