Chut Wutty, a dedicated Cambodian activist, was shot dead at an illegal logging site by military police, on Thursday. At the time Wutty was driving with two journalists, who wrote a shocking eyewitness account of his death, revealing that he was physically and verbally abused, then shot whilst trying to drive away, and left to die. His death reveals the brutal power of logging syndicates and companies, which are looting the country’s natural wealth, and employing the military to silence their opponents.

Wutty was the director of the Natural Resources Protection Group. He was the most vociferous activist speaking out against illegal logging, particularly active in the Cardamom mountains and in Prey Lang forest. He played a major role supporting the Prey Lang Network, a grassroots forest protection movement that spans four provinces.

Local authorities and officials offer little support in the fight against illegal logging. As Wutty explained, “civil servants, in their uniform, have not performed their role according to their mandate. The only role they play is facilitating business deals to make personal profit. With this they earn from more than one source. First, they get their salary from government, second, they get direct income from selling timber, and third, they make money facilitating business deals.”

“I understand that wealth is important and I want to be wealthy as well. But I also want to see people live with freedom, to be able to maintain their culture, their traditions, to be able to pursue their own life style.”

Deforestation in Cambodia is driven by a juggernaut of powerful interests. Collusion between officials, concessionaires, logging syndicates and the military creates a powerful front. The number of land concessions in Cambodia is rapidly increasing: rubber, mining and dams are major causes of large-scale deforestation. Despite losing out on valuable timber revenue from illegal logging in concession areas, the Cambodian government aims to expand rubber plantations to 400,000 hectares by 2020. Forest dependent communities face losing their land and independence, becoming poorly paid laborers in plantations owned by the wealthy.

Few activists or NGOs have the courage to voice their concerns about this widespread dispossession. Wutty was perfectly aware of the risks he was taking but he was determined to speak out. Sitting next to him as the military approached at the Prey Lang protest in November, Wutty was composed. “They are coming to catch me; should I run away? But where to go?” He looked around for a second, then mildly commented, “Well, I’d like to see what they do.”

On Thursday, Wutty’s death showed just how far those people would go in the face of his courageous and untiring dedication to stop the destruction of Cambodia’s forests. It is a triumph that he kept pursuing justice in the face of threats and violence.

The question now is, who sent the soldiers to apprehend Wutty?

Human rights groups have launched inquiries pursuing precisely this question. Cambodian Centre for Human Rights president Ou Virak said yesterday that his organization had strong leads on which company asked the military police to stop Chut Wutty.

The truth may not come out immediately, but a full investigation should now be launched. The Cambodian government must be pushed to control the illegal logging and land-grabbing in Cambodia, that involve an oppression and violence revealed so tragically by Wutty’s killing.

Fran Lambrick is a filmmaker who recently completed a documentary on deforestation in Cambodia featuring Chut Wutty. You can see his work, including information on the situation with deforestation in Cambodia and interviews with Wutty, at www.rubbernaut.co.uk

The Mekong River - from Mouth to Source

Experts warned yesterday that it was really an uphill task to conduct a transboundary Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) in the Lower Mekong basin to address the consequences of a project in one country that might affect another.

Most development projects in the Lower Mekong basin countries – Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam – have transboundary implications and a significant impact on the environment. Hydropower projects might generate more energy for one country, but they could have a negative impact such as a massive reduction in fish stocks or a deterioration in the environment in another country, Mekong River Commission (MRC)’s environmental governance specialist Nguyen Van Duyen said.

MRC members have their own environment impact assessment laws, but these regulations do not require that transboundary impacts also be addressed, he explained.

Besides, transboundary environmental impact assessments could ignite conflicts among members. For instance, Laos is currently caught in a dispute with Cambodia and Vietnam over the Xayaburi dam, which will be constructed in mainstream Mekong. The two downstream countries want the hydropower project to be halted. Though the MRC facilitated a process to establish a framework for conducting transboundary EIA in 2004, little progress has been made on the issue since then, Duyen told an international conference on transboundary river management in Phuket yesterday.

According to the framework, projects requiring transboundary EIA include hydropower, irrigation, port and river works, industrial and mining projects, aquaculture, navigation and water supply projects, Duyen said.

He added that transboundary EIA should focus on public participation and be accessible to those who might be potentially affected. If a transboundary EIA for Lower Mekong basin is conducted, then it could supplement MRC procedures for notification, prior consultation and agreement, he said. However, he said, little progress had been made in establishing a framework because each country’s laws and regulations on EIA are different, he said.

Some members have proposed that the transboundary EIA framework for the Lower Mekong basin should be a non-binding technical guideline for development projects in member countries. Timo Koivurova, research professor of the Northern Institute for Environment and Minority Law at University of Lapland, suggested that countries in the Mekong basin sign the 1991 Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context, which is widely known as Espoo.

Though the Espoo is a regional convention meant mostly for Europe, it has contributed to the development of transboundary EIA practice globally, he said. More than 30 countries have signed in the Espoo convention since it was implemented in 1997. The International Court of Justice cited that the transboundary EIA is part of the general international law, to which all members of the UN are obliged to commit, he said.

Koivurova used the Baltic Sea Gas Pipeline project as an example for transboundary EIA procedure to be applied to the affected states. More than 300 executives, officials and experts from Mekong countries and other 14 river basins from across the world gathered in Phuket to discuss transboundary river management. One of the topics on the agenda was achieving a balance in development in order to maintain water, food and energy security. The conference, ending with an MRC ministerial meeting today, aims to take a message to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro next month.

Source

Visit The Nation

The Mekong River - from Mouth to Source

Phuket, Thailand –As the Mekong River Commission (MRC) member countries gather today for the MRC’s Mekong 2 Rio International Conference on Transboundary River Basin Management, the Save the Mekong coalition has called upon regional governments to immediately address the ambiguities that have been left unanswered with respect to the future of the Xayaburi Dam and other mainstream dams.

On April 20th, the Save the Mekong coalition sent letters to the MRC’s respective Council members and CEO Mr. Hans Guttman asking for clarification on whether the prior consultation process for the Xayaburi Dam remains open and whether approval has been granted to build the Xayaburi Dam. These concerns follow the April 17th announcement by Xayaburi Dam developer Ch. Karnchang that it had signed a $711 million construction contract with the Xayaburi Power Company, and that construction on the dam commenced on March 15, 2012.

“Ch. Karnchang has no right to build this project because no regional agreement has been made,” said Niwat Roykaew, Chair of the Chiang Khong Conservation Group in Thailand. “In December, the four governments agreed to postpone the decision on the dam, in order to carry out a transboundary impact assessment of the Mekong mainstream dams. Thailand and Laos must act decisively and demand a stop to all construction activities.”

The Save the Mekong coalition also expressed concern over reports that the Thai government had signed the Xayaburi Dam’s power purchase agreement and granted permission for state-owned Krung Thai Bank to fund this dam, which appears to be in direct violation with the 1995 Mekong Agreement. The coalition urged Thailand to immediately withdraw all involvement in the dam.

“The MRC’s prior consultation process is not finished, and yet construction is starting. Thailand and Laos are endangering the entire future of the Mekong River Basin,” said Pianporn Deetes, Thailand Campaign Coordinator for International Rivers. “Before regional cooperation becomes jeopardized, it’s time the four countries renew their commitment to work together to protect the Mekong.”

“The Xayaburi Dam is not on the agenda of the Mekong2Rio conference, but will be the elephant in the room,” said Youra Sun, Executive Director of My Village in Cambodia. “Now is the time to spotlight the urgent need for the Mekong governments to chart a clear political path forward on the Xayaburi Dam.”

Tu Dao Trong, a representative of Vietnam Rivers Network said, “If the Mekong governments really want to discuss the future of transboundary cooperation around the Mekong River, they first need to agree on an immediate halt to the Xayaburi Dam while further studies are underway. We hope this conference becomes an opportunity for real dialogue.”

The Save the Mekong coalition’s April 20th letter stated that “scientific evidence to date overwhelmingly supports our position that these dams will cause significant and irreparable damage to the Mekong River and the people who depend on it.” The coalition has called upon regional governments to work together to protect the Mekong River as the river is central to the lives, ecology, and cultures of the region.

The Save the Mekong coalition fully supports the actions of Thai villagers from the Mekong region, who have traveled to Phuket and will be presenting a petition to the MRC member governments this morning to raise awareness about the Xayaburi Dam and call for its cancellation.

Mekong 2 Rio is considered a key regional event in the run-up to the United Nations’ Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development that world leaders will attend in Brazil in June. The Xayaburi Dam has become one of the most controversial sustainable development issues in Southeast Asia.

Contacts:
Dr. Tu Dao Trong, Representative of Vietnam Rivers Network. T: +84 913 236 542, E: tudaotrong49@yahoo.com.vn
Ms. Pianporn Deetes, Thailand Campaign Coordinator, International Rivers. T: +66 81 422 0111, E: pai@internationalrivers.org
Mr. Niwat Roykaew, Chair of the Chiang Khong Conservation Group in Thailand. T: +66 89 955 7890, E: mekonglover@hotmail.com
Mr. Sun Youra, Executive Director, My Village, Cambodia, T: +855 16 590 111, E: myvillage@mvicambodia.org

The Mekong River - from Mouth to Source

The Mekong River Basin, site of the biggest inland fishery in the world, is undergoing massive hydropower development. Planned dams will block critical fish migration routes between the river’s downstream floodplains and upstream tributaries. Here we estimate fish biomass and biodiversity losses in numerous damming scenarios using a simple ecological model of fish migration. Our framework allows detailing trade-offs between dam locations, power production, and impacts on fish resources. We find that the completion of 78 dams on tributaries, which have not previously been subject to strategic analysis, would have catastrophic impacts on fish productivity and biodiversity. Our results argue for reassessment of several dams planned, and call for a new regional agreement on tributary development of the Mekong River Basin.

Report here… Source

sustainable development | hydropower planning | fish species richness

The Mekong River - from Mouth to Source

The Tien River, which runs through several provinces in the Mekong Delta, has been severely contaminated, with some pollutants exceeding the limits by up to 1,000 times, seriously affecting the life and health of local people, authorities reported.

The tests of surface water samples recently taken from the river showed that the suspended solids (SS), iron, ammonium (from animal waste and sewer water), chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD) and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5) have exceeded the allowable limits by the country’s standards, the departments of natural resources and environment in Vinh Long and Tien Giang provinces reported.

Last year another test of samples taken from 42 locations on the river in Dong Thap province also showed the samples failed to meet all major safety targets, the authorities said.

The content of grease and oil in the river water was 1.5-75 higher than the permissible limits while the content of Coliform, a bacterium that causes bowel disease, was 100 to 1,000 times higher and that of E. Coli, another bacterium that can cause serious infections, was 22-860 times higher.

Traces of pesticide also were found in the samples, the authorities said.

Luu Minh Manh, head of the Tien Giang Environmental Protection Sub-department, said that the My Tho City discharges into the river about 50,000 cubic meters of untreated household wastewater daily.

A project to build a household wastewater treatment plant for My Tho has been set up, but it has yet to be approved by the competent agency, Manh said.

If all other cities located along the river were taken into account, the total volume of such wastewater would be very large. Meanwhile, no study has been done on how many harmful substances in household wastewater can affect the quality of river water, which is used every day by local people, he said.

According to other experts, the river has also been polluted by untreated industrial waste released into the river by factories and breeding farms located outside industrial parks.

Building a waste treatment system requires large investment, so many companies deliberately discharged untreated waste into the river and were ready to pay fines instead when their violation was discovered by competent agencies, experts said.

Dare not to bathe in the river

Nguyen Van Thu, 84, in Tien Giang’s Chau Thanh District, located along the river, said he and many other local residents have neither dared to bathe in the river nor used its water for washing clothing.

“Whenever going near the river bank, I always find grease, discharged by seafood processing facilities nearby, floating on the water. People who bathe in the river will suffer rashes on their skin caused by the water. Last Tet I watered my flower plants using the river water and the flowers withered soon afterwards,” Thu said.

Nguyen Van Tu, a senior fisherman in the district, said the anchovy and lòng tong (a kind of gudgeon) population has decreased in the area, while many species of fish that can survive in contaminated water have become increasingly common.

“The river water is very dirty and I have found nobody here bathing in it anymore. As a fisherman, I frequently have to soak myself in the river, so I often suffer from itches,” he said.

Meanwhile, a large number of people in Tan Hong District and Tram Chim Town in Dong Thap Province are suffering from the untreated wastewater released from fish breeding farms.

Most of the farms have not complied with regulations on treating such wastewater, the Tan Hong natural resources and environment department said.

Source

Visit Tuoi Tre news

The Mekong River - from Mouth to Source

Known as the nation’s rice basket, blessed with fertile soil and favorable climatic conditions, the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta has been at the forefront of Viet Nam’s amazing agricultural transformation in the Doi moi (renewal) period.

The nation went from being a net food importer until the late 1980s to one of the top exporters in the world of rice, pepper, shrimp, coffee, cashew nuts and other produce.

However, this dramatic transformation is now under threat with the Mekong Delta reeling under the impacts of natural and man-made disasters including climate change.

Less rainfall, serious salt water intrusion and more landslides are becoming a fact of life that affects the 18 million residents of the region.

Huynh Minh E, who has spent all his life in An Binh Hamlet on Dat Islet in Ben Tre Province, said things have changed drastically over the last few years.

“In the past, we suffered six months of salt-water intrusion, but now, this has expanded to seven months because of reduced rainfall,” he said.

This means that he has less time to grow his rice crop and that the quality of the crop is also affected.
“Our lives become harder when we have to live longer with salt water which even my coconuts sour,” he said.

The living standard of most delta residents, whose lives are based largely on water resources from the Mekong River, has fallen as production and daily life have become more difficult.

The saline water intrusion brings in sand from the sea and changes the living environment for some trees and plants like water coconuts and mangroves that were planted to fight erosion.

“We have lost over 100ha of land on the island. Water coconuts are not able to protect our land any more,” E said.

Deputy Director of Dong Thap Province’s Agriculture and Rural Development Department, Dang Ngoc Loi, concurred with E. He said that since 2004, the province has spent several billion dong to build a 30m dyke stretching along 4km to protect Sa Dec Town.

“We have to build another 6-7km to protect the whole town. If we don’t, Sa Dec will no longer exist,” Loi said. The town is the commercial hub of Dong Thap Province.

In fact, all eight districts in Dong Thap are facing serious erosion problems.

The salt-water intrusion has had other impacts as well.

The rice snail is a specialty at Phu Da Islet, Vinh Binh Commune, Cho Lach District, Ben Tre. In recent times, the quantity of these snails has been severely reduced and residents have already set up a preservation area on a 3km long section of the Tien River.

“Though we try hard to protect it, we are afraid that the degrading environment will kill it,” said Nguyen Van Hung, chairman of Vinh Tien Aquaculture Co-operative, who manages the preservation area.

Households engage in raising fish in cages of rafts are finding it difficult to continue their vocation.
“Last year, my family had to remove our fish cage to the main Tien River instead of the river’s tributary because the fish could not survive there,” said To Thi Diep, a fish cage owner in Sa Dec.

In an effort to rejuvenate fish stocks, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Viet Nam has released 272,000 local varieties of fish and shrimp, including 5,000 giant carps – an endangered fish indigenous to the Mekong River – late last week into rivers in Ben Tre and Dong Thap.

“All the changes cannot be blamed on climate change. Local economic activities and humans have contributed greatly,” Le Trinh of the Environment and Sustainable Development Institute told Viet Nam News.

Illegal sand exploitation on the rivers has worsened the erosion and landslide problems, while wastewater from residential areas and industrial parks along the Mekong have severely polluted the environment, he said.

“We should distinguish between climate change’s impacts and human impacts on the environment,” said Nguyen Hoang Tri, general secretary of Viet Nam National Committee for the UNESCO Programme “Man and Biosphere”.
“Only then we will get the right direction to solve problems,” he said. Mekong Delta farmers are doing several things to try and adapt the changes that they are confronting.

“We water our fields earlier now to allow trees and rice to retain water longer. The time for rice harvest has been adjusted to minimise salt water intrusion,” said Nguyen Van Nhem, a farmer on Dat Islet.

Farmers in the islet have also planted floating rice to cope with the flooding.

“We are carrying out a project to plant another variety of tree that can live with the sand brought in by the sea so that it can protect our land,” said Le Van Thu, WWF project manager in Ben Tre.

Building dykes, constructing stronger houses, setting up an early alarm system, making proper land use plans, educating children and adults on coping with climate change and increasing the ability of local authorities and residents are still needed.

Viet Nam is one of five countries suffering the most serious consequences of rising sea water and climate change.
More than one-third of the delta – which accounts for nearly half of the country’s rice production, 65 per cent of aquaculture, and 70 per cent of fruit cultivation – could be submerged if sea levels rise by one metre, scientists have warned.

Source

Visit VietNam News

The Mekong River - from Mouth to Source

A Vietnamese duck farmer has become the first person to die of bird flu in Vietnam in nearly two years, while another death from the disease was reported in neighboring Cambodia.

Vietnamese officials said Thursday the 18-year-old farmer from the southern Mekong delta died after reporting a high fever and respiratory problems. Investigators have not determined whether he was infected by his flock.

Meanwhile, Cambodian officials said a two-year-old boy also died of the avian influenza on Wednesday after being exposed to sick or dead poultry.

The virus usually only infects humans that come into direct contact with diseased birds.

Since the H5N1 strain of avian influenza was first detected in 2003, it has killed at least 340 people worldwide.

At the peak of the outbreak in 2006, the virus had spread to 63 nations, before it was eradicated in most of those countries due to a mass culling of domestic poultry.

The virus has killed 17 people in Cambodia and nearly 60 in Vietnam. Human bird flu cases have recently been reported in China, India, Indonesia and Egypt.

Some scientists fear H5N1 could mutate into a form readily transmissible between humans, with the potential to cause millions of deaths.

Source

Visit VOA News

The Mekong River - from Mouth to Source

Four Chinese cargo ships and a Burmese patrol boat were attacked last week on the Mekong River in Burma.

Chinese media reported that the attack on January 4 has heightened security concerns, following an earlier attack in which 13 Chinese sailors were murdered in October.

The People’s Daily reported that a group of Chinese ships was composed of three cargo vessels and an oil tanker. The attack happened less than a month after international shipping resumed on the Mekong River and Chinese border police started patrolling the river with their counterparts from Thailand, Laos and Burma.

A Thai press release said the attackers fired two rockets. One fell into the water while the other exploded near the ships. There were no reports of deaths or injuries.

On Oct 5, 13 Chinese sailors aboard two cargo ships were shot dead by a group of gunmen in a section of the Mekong River near the Golden Triangle. Thai police have said their country’s servicemen were involved in the crime.

China Daily said that from Dec 10, when the shipping resumed, to Jan 3, vessels transported 15,844 tons of cargo on the river. In the first 10 months of the year, an average of 24,280 tons were shipped on the river each month, said Fu Zhiming, Party secretary of the Lancang River Maritime Bureau.

“About two thirds of the 86 freighters that are registered for international shipping on the river have returned to do business and so have many sailors,” he said.

“The joint patrol on the river is more of a ‘deterrent force’, because it is not easy for patrols on the river to fight back,” he said. “If we cannot guarantee safety, the economic value of this waterway will be nothing.”

Statistics show more than 3 million tons of cargo have been transported on the Mekong River since 2001, generating more than 30 billion yuan ($4.8 billion) from imports and exports, the paper reported.

Source

Visit Mizzima News

The Mekong River - from Mouth to Source

The great city of Angkor in Cambodia, first established in the ninth century, was the capital of the Khmer Empire, the major player in southeast Asia for nearly five centuries.

The ancient city of Angkor — the most famous monument of which is the breathtaking ruined temple of Angkor Wat — might have collapsed due to valiant but ultimately failed efforts to battle drought, scientists find.

The great city of Angkor in Cambodia, first established in the ninth century, was the capital of the Khmer Empire, the major player in southeast Asia for nearly five centuries. It stretched over more than 385 square miles (1,000 square kilometers), making it the most extensive urban complex of the preindustrial world. In comparison, Philadelphia covers 135 square miles (350 sq. km), while Phoenix sprawls across more than 500 square miles (1,300 sq. km), not including the huge suburbs.

Suggested causes for the fall of the Khmer Empire in the late 14th to early 15th centuries have included war and land overexploitation. However, recent evidence suggests that prolonged droughts might have been linked to the decline of Angkor — for instance, tree rings from Vietnam suggest the region experienced long spans of drought interspersed with unusually heavy rainfall.

Angkor possessed a complex network of channels, moats, and embankments and reservoirs known as barays to collect and store water from the summer monsoons for use in rice paddy fields in case of drought. To learn more about how the Khmer managed their water, scientists analyzed a 6-foot (2-meter)-long core sample of sediment taken from the southwest corner of the largest Khmer reservoir, the West Baray, which could hold 1.87 billion cubic feet (53 million cubic meters) of water, more than 20 times the amount of stone making up the Great Pyramid at Giza.

Also, to collect samples from across the greater Angkor region, researcher Mary Beth Day, a paleolimnologist at the University of Cambridge in England, hired a “tuk-tuk” (motorized rickshaw) driver, and was able to convince him to drive her around the countryside, “often on tracks that tuk-tuks probably aren’t designed to travel on,” she recalled. “We nearly got stuck in the sand a couple of times, but my driver was remarkably accommodating given that he probably thought I was crazy.”

The researchers deduced a 1,000-year-long climate history of Angkor from the baray. They found at around the time Angkor collapsed the rate at which sediment was deposited in the baray dropped to one-tenth of what it was before, suggesting that water levels fell dramatically as well. The discovery “really emphasizes how significant the events during this period must have been,” Day said.

As both water levels and sediment deposits ebbed, the ecology of the baray changed as well, with more bottom-dwelling algae and floating plants coming into existence.

“The ecological shift primarily serves to underline how environmental conditions in the West Baray have been fundamentally different since the 17th century, post-collapse, as compared to what the baray was like during Angkorian times,” Day said.

In the end, the water management systems of the Khmer might have been insufficient to cope with sudden and intense variations in climate.

“Angkor can be an example of how technology isn’t always sufficient to prevent major collapse during times of severe instability,” Day told LiveScience. “Angkor had a highly sophisticated water management infrastructure, but this technologic advantage was not enough to prevent its collapse in the face of extreme environmental conditions.”

“It’s important to understand, however, that failure of the water management network was not the sole reason for the downfall of the Khmer Empire,” Day added. “The collapse of Angkor was a complex process brought about by several different factors — social, political and environmental.”

The scientists detailed their findings online Jan. 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and onFacebook.

Source

The Christian Monitor

The Mekong River - from Mouth to Source

When Robert Costanza and colleagues traveled to Laos earlier this year, the decision to build the lower Mekong River’s first mainstream dam seemed close to done.

Then the researchers, most from the Northwest, pointed out the poor history of predicting environmental and social damage from big hydropower dams. Their study (check out interesting comments here-MouthtoSource) also put new dollar signs on the potential cost to the environment and traditional fisheries — figuring the net economic impact of a string of electricity-producing dams could range from a gain of $33 billion to a loss of $274 billion.

“There’s a pretty high probability that things are not going to go the way they had planned, given the history of dam projects worldwide and in the Pacific Northwest,” says Costanza, the study’s lead author and a sustainability professor at Portland State University. “All the evidence pointed toward their assumptions being highly optimistic.”

Last week, the Mekong River Commission recommended Laos postpone dam building, citing the need for further study of the “sustainable development and management of the Mekong River.”

Costanza’s study highlights the biological importance of the Mekong, painfully familiar to Americans during the Vietnam War. It also shows how PSU is brokering its sustainability reputation worldwide, with contributions from Costanza and other researchers at its Institute for Sustainable Solutions.

Costanza, 61, got the shoulder tap for the study late last year from U.S. Agency for International Development. After years of discussion, the foreign aid agency wanted a new look at costs and benefits of Mekong dams, which would affect Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Costanza, who arrived at PSU last fall, was a logical choice. In 1997, he helped advance the notion of valuing the world’s environmental capital when he co-authored a study published in the journal Nature that pegged the value of global “ecosystem services” at $33 trillion a year, more than the world’s gross domestic product at the time.

In general, Costanza says, economists have downplayed the importance of maintaining the environment — say a wetland that helps with flood control, or a free-flowing river that supports indigenous fisheries and delivers nutrient-laden sediment to rice fields.
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“If you’re not making the environmental costs explicit, you could make the wrong decisions,” he says. “You don’t understand what you’re trading off.”

The Xayaburi dam, the first of up to 11 proposed for the lower Mekong, would be built in Laos, with power going primarily to Thailand.

The researchers traveled to Thailand and to Vientiane, Laos, last February, returning to Thailand in March and June. In Vientiane, they saw fishermen casting nets, people picking rice in fields fed by side channels, children crossing the river, low at the time, to get to sandbars for pickup soccer games. Fish make up about 70 percent of the protein intake in the region.

“It was pretty amazing,” says Ida Kubiszewski, an assistant professor at Portland State. “From young to old, life revolves around the river.”

Hydropower dams would provide badly needed revenue to Laos. The initial dam would have about the same electric-generating capacity as Bonneville Dam, the first of 14 federal dams in the Columbia and Snake river system.

China has built dams on the upper Mekong, and leaders in Laos consider dam building “an opportunity to become a power generation hub,” says Shpresa Halimi,a member of the study team and an assistant professor at PSU. “They’re also looking at it as a way to combat chronic poverty.”

Even with more realistic estimates of environmental and social costs, Laos would still come out ahead, the study concluded. But Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia could all lose, with foregone fisheries and altered wetlands a big part of the tab.

Proponents say passage facilities at the dams to help migratory fish — including the endangered giant catfish — can minimize damage, and aquaculture can compensate for lost fisheries.

That had a familiar ring to Peter Paquet, wildlife and resident fish manager for the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. Paquet, who was among the study group, has seen hundreds of millions devoted to correct problems with fish passage at Columbia dams. Performance of the Columbia’s aquaculture system, otherwise known as hatcheries, has also fallen short of predictions.

“You can’t go into a place like that and say, ‘Don’t do this,’ because they can turn around and rightly say, ‘Look what you’ve done,’” Paquet says. “We were trying to say, don’t make the mistakes that we’ve made, because fixing these things after the fact is hugely expensive.”

The Mekong hosts some 1,200 fish species, far more than the Columbia, Paquet says. Many are migratory, and none can jump up fish ladders at dams the way salmon and steelhead can.

Laos could still build the dam — the river commission’s opinions are just advisory. Costanza said he hopes the country’s leaders agree to delay the decision and study other carbon-free power, such as wind and solar.

Dam developers could be required to post bonds to cover a worst-case scenario, an incentive to keep environmental effects low. Or other countries in the region and international groups could pay Laos for foregoing the benefits of dam construction.

Costanza says the poor, particularly in fishing villages, could bear the brunt of unexpected damage.

“There’s always uncertainty,” he says. “The real question is who bears the burden. The way it’s setting up now, it’s the public that will pay.”

Source

Visit OregonLive

The Mekong River - from Mouth to Source