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| Image Credit: Flickr/Arian Zwegers |
The Mekong River, one of the world’s
longest and resource-rich rivers, deserves international attention and
recognition as a frontier with governments and developers — who see the river
an industrial production tool — on one side and the people who live along its
vast waterways and backed by environmentalists on the other.
The future of the Mekong will be
underpinned by climate change. This was highlighted by the drought of 2015 and
2016 when China appeared to be playing the hero and
announced it would release water from its upstream dams to alleviate water
shortages in the Mekong Delta.
Of course, that may not have been
necessary in the first place had the dams not been built and the water withheld
upstream. But dams in China and neighboring Southeast Asian states like Laos,
depleted fish stocks, and a changing climate are also undermining the river’s
future.
A recent report found that
net migration out of the lower delta region is increasing with around 1.7
million people migrating out over the last decade, more than double the
national migration average in Vietnam, reshaping life on the banks of the world’s
12th longest river.
“This implies that there is
something else – probably climate-related – going on here,” the authors Alex
Chapman and Van Pham Dang Tri said in the Australian edition of The
Conversation.
It found salt water had intruded up
to 80 kilometers inland during the 2015/16 drought, dangerously close to the
Cambodian border, destroying crops and sugar cane harvests along the way and
causing people to move.
The authors also referred to a
report by Oanh Le Thi Kim and Truong Le Minh of Van Lang University, suggesting
climate change is the dominant factor in the decisions of 14.5 percent of
migrants leaving the Mekong Delta.
“If this figure is correct, climate
change is forcing 24,000 people to leave the region every year. And it’s worth
pointing out the largest factor in individual decisions to leave the Delta was
found to be the desire to escape poverty. As climate change has a growing and
complex relationship with poverty, 14.5 percent may even be an underestimate.”
The annual fish catch in Mekong and
Lower Delta region has been valued, by one estimate, at around $11 billion. But
the harvest has also plummeted over the
last decade or so with rampant overfishing and illegal use of equipment
contributing heavily to the fall alongside dam construction.
And further development is unlikely
to stop with Chinese funded projects, which according to the state-run government mouthpiece Xinhua
will boost “connectivity, water management and industrial production capacity.”
In January, Chinese Premier Li
Keqiang announced Beijing would provide more than $1 billion in concessional loans
within the framework of Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) with the five
downstream Mekong countries. This was on top of previous assistance under the
theme: “Our River of Peace and Sustainable Development.”
But sustainable development is a
prickly term. China has long had issues with the management of its own
environment at home, let alone its conduct abroad on this front which is
becoming even more clear with the development of the Belt and Road Initiative. The
riparian states along the Mekong River are also not free of responsibility in
this respect: their quest for energy and capital has sometimes meant that the
environment and the livelihoods of their own people have taken a backseat.
The writing has long been on the
wall for the Mekong, and we have seen a continued pattern where new evidence
suggests the problem is only worsening. Should we begin to see some of the more
dramatic consequences that have long been predicted, one thing is for sure:
governments will not be able to use lack of evidence or scientific backing as
an excuse.
Luke Hunt can be followed on Twitter
@lukeanthonyhunt
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