Far Eastern Economic Review
August 26, 2004

Drought, dam-building and over-fishing are suffocating the Mekong, one of Asia’s mighty, life-giving arteries. Can countries along its banks rally to save it?

Boat owner Odd Boontha is one of millions who make their living on the Mekong. The sunburned 38-year-old in the northern Thai port of Chiang Khong has his own way of gauging the health of the river: Passengers who a few years ago used concrete steps to board his shallow-draught vessel now must scramble over rocks to reach it. The
water level is at its lowest in 20 years, Odd says, and Chinese dams upstream are to blame. “If they build more dams, the Mekong will be like a canal,” he laments.

Scientists at the Mekong River Commission’s secretariat in Vientiane have a more benign explanation: River levels are low only because it hasn’t rained much since last year. But that does not console or convince riverside communities in six countries that depend on the
Mekong for the essentials of life–water, food and transport.

The sight of the mighty Mekong so depleted has galvanized international agencies, local environmentalists and a few government officials to take a fresh look at the state of the waterway that links China with Southeast Asia. The picture that emerges is of a
river subjected to neglect, abuse and haphazard development–and heading for a crisis, says David Jezeph, a Bangkok-based water specialist with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. “The drought has brought to our attention the need to start collaborative planning for the benefit of the region,” he says.

For decades, war, revolution and isolation protected the Mekong River, which begins its 4,800-kilometre journey high in southwest China, tumbles through the misty mountains of China’s Yunnan province and surges through the flood plains of Burma, Laos, Thailand,
Cambodia and Vietnam, before emptying into the South China Sea. Along its course there is little industry and no major city, and the water quality is generally good, despite its muddy appearance.

But that is changing fast as socialist countries adopt market policies and private investors seek opportunity in previously inaccessible places. The Asian Development Bank, meanwhile, is promoting an ambitious infrastructure programme to link the five
countries and Yunnan with roads, railways and power lines carved out of deep jungle and rugged hills.

These developments hold the promise of improved living conditions for the estimated 70 million people living in the Mekong basin, most of whom are subsistence farmers supplementing the rice they grow with the fish they catch and animals and plants foraged from nearby forests and wetlands. But the river’s ecological system on which they depend may be permanently damaged in the development process.

“The danger is that the more vulnerable people will be left out and will be worse off,” says Joern Kristensen, former head of the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an intergovernmental body set up in 1995 by Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam to be responsible for the governance of the Mekong river basin.

The most immediate concern is fish stocks. As Sydney-based Mekong specialist Milton Osborne notes: “It is impossible to overestimate the importance of fish as an essential feature of the diet of people living in the lower Mekong basin.” Fish is their main source of
animal protein. Only Japanese and Icelanders consume more fish per capita than Cambodians, for example.

Statistically, the fish catch has risen over the years. The MRC estimates that the wild catch will reach 2.5 million tonnes this year, with another 500,000 tonnes drawn from reservoirs and ponds.

But with millions more people fishing now than a few decades ago, “the catch per fisherman has decreased a lot,” says Eric Baran, a fish expert at the WorldFish Centre, which researches tropical aquatic resources.

With illegal fishing rife and the use of banned hi-tech fishing gear increasing, the Mekong is showing classic signs of being over-fished.

Large species that are easy to catch have begun to disappear, leaving “more and more trash fish that are less and less valuable,” as Baran puts it. The Mekong giant catfish–the world’s largest freshwater fish that grows to three metres and weighs as much as 300
kilograms–was put on the critically endangered list last year.

As the population of the lower basin soars in the next 20 years, human encroachment is likely to denude forests, wipe out wetlands, and drain off water for industrial and agricultural use. “Unless growth is regulated, continued pressure might lead to the collapse” of fishing, says Kristensen, who retired from the MRC last September.

The most visible threat is posed by the dams being built in Yunnan’s steep gorges to feed China’s insatiable appetite for electricity. Two hydroelectric dams are already operating, two more are being built and another four are planned. The Xiaowan dam, now under construction, will be huge, with its reservoir stretching 169 kilometres when filled in 2013.

Because of these dams, water levels in the Mekong are rising and falling as much as one metre an hour, wrecking fish habitats, eroding river banks, and draining sediment and nutrients from the river as it flows southward, say environmental groups and researchers. “The Chinese dams get the blame for almost everything,” says Ian Campbell, senior environmental officer at the MRC. But in the absence of scientific study, the extent of the impact remains largely speculative, he says.

Anti-Chinese sentiment is particularly strong in northern Thailand, where villagers are battling to stop a Beijing-led navigation scheme on the Mekong. And in the first half of this year, the Chinese often shut the gates of their two operating dams on the Mekong for dyke
construction. As a result, the river fell to only 45 centimetres at Chiang Khong, the lowest for years, says the Southeast Asia Rivers Network, a group that opposes threats to riverine ecosystems. Laotian tour operators were forced to cancel 10 river excursions in March
alone. Chainarong Sretthachau, the network director, says this confirms “that China has the power to control the Mekong already.”

China, however, insists the dams will benefit people living along the river’s lower reaches. Earlier this year, the Foreign Ministry said China had paid great attention to protecting the environment of the Mekong drainage area. As only 18% of the Mekong’s total water volume originates in China, its hydropower facilities won’t reduce the volume flowing to the ocean or negatively affect downstream countries, the ministry said. In fact, it said, the dams would help prevent flooding, and improve irrigation and navigation in those countries.

Gu Hao, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Water Resources, said no international rules require a country to solicit opinions from its neighbours for every dam it builds. But he agreed that “communication” is necessary when a project may “significantly impact” neighbours.

China isn’t the only offender. In 1998 Vietnam completed the Yali Falls dam on the Sesan, the Mekong’s biggest tributary, which has “negatively impacted” 50,000 Cambodian villagers 80 kilometres downstream, according to studies commissioned by Oxfam America.

Accidental and unannounced water releases during and after construction killed 39 Cambodians. Most died in one incident in February 2000. Belatedly accepting responsibility for the deaths, Tran Minh Huan, an official of the Vietnam National Mekong Committee, said in November 2002: “We are very sorry for the losses of the people living downstream on the Sesan River in Cambodia, caused of course by releasing water from the Yali Falls dam’s reservoir in February 2000.” Uffe Poulsen, an independent researcher, says that fish, once abundant, have now almost gone from the Sesan.

Still, Hanoi’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs insists Yali Falls has had “no substantial environment impact,” and confirms it is going ahead with three more dams on the Sesan. Two other dams are already planned.

Laos also has built two dams in a tributary of the Mekong, with the intention of selling electricity to Thailand. Osborne, the Mekong specialist, says the second dam has caused a dramatic drop in the downstream fish catch and harmed fragile ecosystems. Despite this,
Laos has four hydropower projects under construction and about a dozen others being assessed for their environmental effects.

MRC officials say it still isn’t too late to choose between a pristine Mekong basin and a polluted river reduced to a chain of reservoirs. But with most governments showing little inclination to compromise or cooperate, the choices–like the river itself–appear to be dwindling fast.

Nancy Zhang in Beijing contributed to this article.