Bangkok Post
November 13, 2002

Chinese actions that affect the flow of the Mekong have a bearing on countries further downstream. Clearly, nothing should be done without a careful study beforehand.

China’s central government two weeks ago ratified the country’s first-ever law requiring an environmental impact assessment to be incorporated in the planning and decision-making for all large-scale infrastructure projects.

Last August, the central government instructed the provincial government of Yunnan, in western China, to implement a programme aimed at reducing the local social and ecological impact on people resettled from the reservoir area of the Manwan hydroelectric dam, built on the Lancang (Mekong) river.

China’s efforts have huge potential importance for the governments and tens of millions of people living in the six countries of the Mekong river basin. They point to the emerging recognition among China’s leaders that large-scale infrastructure projects may benefit the country but they also have a social and environmental impact.

China’s central government is also recognising that it needs to be accepted as a good neighbour in the Mekong region, and a partner in managing and conserving the numerous benefits that the people, economies and societies of the region receive from the Mekong river and its tributaries.

This is not to say that the government of China does not need to do more. Similarly, the other countries sharing the Mekong River Basin _ Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma and Vietnam _ clearly need to put in much more of an effort if the ecological and social benefits of the Mekong river are to be sustained.

The Mekong is the largest river in Southeast Asia and the lifeline of 65 million people living in its 800,000sqkm basin. Its natural fisheries supply approximately 80% of the dietary protein consumed by the people in the basin. The livelihood and food security of millions of people living in rural communities are directly dependent on the natural flow and highly
productive fisheries of the Mekong.

The benefits of the Mekong river are clear. But a number of development projects in the Mekong river basin over the past decade have exacted significant and largely uncalculated social, economic and ecological costs on the rivers and people of the basin. The most visible cause of these costs has been the construction of large hydroelectric dams on the tributaries and main stream of the Mekong.

Thailand, Laos and Vietnam have all built large hydroelectric dams on major tributaries of the Mekong. Thailand’s own Pak Moon dam has become synonymous with the severe social and environmental impact of poorly planned hydroelectric projects. The Theun Hinboun dam in Laos and the Yali Falls dam in Vietnam, although perhaps less well-known, have also been the cause of major declines in the food and livelihood security of tens of
thousands of people living in communities along the Theun, Hinboun, and Sesan rivers.

In China’s Yunnan province, two large hydroelectric dams, the Manwan and Dachaoshan, have been built on the Lancang (Mekong) river. Construction of a third dam on the Lancang, the massive 290m-high Xiaowan hydroelectric project, began last year.

Hydroelectric dams are the pillar of development in Yunnan province. Electricity from the Manwan and Dachaoshan dams enters China’s national electricity distribution grid, and much of it is consumed in urban industrial centres such as Guangzhao on the eastern seaboard. However, some of this electricity, and electricity from other dams proposed for the Lancang river, will eventually be sold to Thailand.

All of these projects provide the benefit of electricity supply. But as the government of China is beginning to recognise, these projects also generate significant costs. These costs are the social and environmental impact of these projects, including the permanent loss of fertile land, forests and fisheries, and the disruption of communities and cultures through
resettlement, all of which inevitably become economic costs directly related to these projects.

These costs need to be better understood and incorporated into decision-making about these large projects. But these are not the only costs of these projects.

The impact of the large dams built in Yunnan province has not been studied. Nevertheless, this impact should be considered as a project-related cost, even though this cost is being borne by fishing communities living along the Mekong river in Laos and Thailand.

The governments and international financial institutions that are planning, funding and building large dams in the Mekong river basin must make a much greater effort to study the potential impact and cost of these projects before construction begins.

Local-level governments and local communities have an important role to play in terms of assessing the potential costs of development projects. Informed of why and how a proposed project will be built and how it will operate often allows local communities to forecast how these projects would affect their livelihoods, their natural environment, their economies and culture.

Ultimately, local communities should decide if they will accept (or not accept) the potential costs and benefits of these projects. On this point, the various claims surrounding the benefits and costs of the construction of a navigation channel on the upper Mekong along the Laos-Burma and Laos-Thailand border are instructive. The project would require that 21 rapids and shoals in the Mekong be dynamited and excavated to clear the way for a channel for large cargo boats. The environmental impact assessment for the project has, quite accurately, been criticised for not assessing the project’s potential impact on the river’s fisheries and the food supply and economies of hundreds of fishing communities living along this stretch of the Mekong. Local communities, particularly those in Thailand, are justifiably concerned.

At the same time, some of the people critical of the navigation channel project are suggesting that Thailand would receive no benefits from the project, and that all of the benefits will accrue to Chinese companies based in Yunnan province. Like the environmental impact assessment study that claims there will be no impact on Laos and Thailand, some critics are claiming there will be no benefits to Laos and Thailand.

It is this type of black and white, them and us thinking evident in the environmental impact assessment and in some of the statements of the critics that is causing many problems for the people of the Mekong basin.

Over the past week, representatives of local communities, non-governmental organisations, academics and government officials from the Mekong countries have gathered at the University of Ubon Ratchathani for a dialogue on river basin development and civil society in the Mekong region. Participants discussed their different perspectives with the understanding that the Mekong river is a common resource shared by everyone in this region.

When Zhou Enlai and He Long, of the first generation of Chinese leaders 30 to 40 years ago, used to meet with their counterparts in the Mekong region, they would often say: “I live in the upstream and you live in the downstream.We drink water from the same river, so we are like a close family.” Today, this remains a very popular perspective, and is the
foundation for good international relationships.

Reliable and independent assessments of the potential costs and benefits of proposed projects, full exchange of information between governments and between governments and the public, dialogue and cooperative decision-making would go a long way to solving problems, and preventing problems from happening in the future.

The governments and people of the Mekong river basin deserve nothing less. Yu Xaiogang is director of Green Watershed, an NGO working on environmental protection in Yunnan province, China.