Lack of rain in Cambodia causes worry

A boy walks on parched land on the outskirts of Phnom Penh last year. Photograph: Hong Menea/Phnom Penh Post

Friday, 29 June 2012
Kim Yuthana
The Phnom Penh Post

Despite the woes brought on by 2011’s flood-riddled Year of the Dragon, officials at the National Committee for Disaster Management yesterday expressed concern that if some of those Dragon-like rains fail to appear in the next week, the Kingdom’s crops will suffer.

Anxiety about a potential drought began this week as reports began to filter into the NCDM from north and northeastern provinces that a lack of rain in the past month had already begun to cause damage to rice seedlings and crops.

Keo Vy, deputy director of the Department of Information at the NCDM, said yesterday that it was too early too call conditions a “severe drought”, but that some provinces were beginning to face difficulties with bad rain patterns and that the next week would be crucial.

Drought woes for Kampong Thom farmers

Tuesday, 20 March 2012
Khouth Sophakchakrya
The Phnom Penh Post

Agricultural officials and farmers in Kampong Thom province are increasingly worried about the adverse effect that a severe drought is having on more than 200 hectares of rice crops.

Ou Bosphorn, director of the provincial agricultural department, told the Post yesterday that due to an unusually low amount of rain for this time of year, rice farmers in the high land area were experiencing a severe water shortage.

“Currently, more than 200 hectares of dry rice in Stuong district is experiencing drought,” the provincial director said.

His department is working to alleviate the problem by transferring excess water in low-lying areas, but it still was not enough to meet the needs, he added.

Drought Led to Demise of Ancient City of Angkor

The ancient city of Angkor is best known for its ruined temple of Angkor Wat.
CREDIT: Mary Beth Day, University of Cambridge

02 January 2012
Charles Choi, LiveScience Contributor

"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."

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.

CAMBODIA: Record low water levels threaten livelihoods

Fishing is a major source of livelihood along the Mekong (Photo: Shamsuddin Ahmed/IRIN)

PHNOM PENH, 26 August 2010 (IRIN) - Late rains and record low water levels in Cambodia's two main fresh water systems will affect food security and the livelihoods of millions, government officials and NGOs warn.

"We expect the impact to be very strong," said Nao Thuok, director of the Fisheries Administration, adding that low water levels along the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers were already limiting fish production and migration.

Crucial spawning grounds in floodplains along the rivers remained dry. "The places where the fish usually lay their eggs do not have much water so the fish population will decrease a lot," he warned.

Approximately six million Cambodians or 45 percent of the population depend on fishing in the Mekong and Tonle Sap basins, the government's Inland Fisheries Research and Development Institute, reports.

The annual "flood" season of daily rain usually starts in July but began a month late, local agricultural surveyors say.

According to the Mekong River Commission, which monitors the river at throughout its member states - Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam - this month's levels are among the lowest ever for August. At the port of Phnom Penh, the Mekong plunged to 5.36m on 23 August, against more than 7.5m the same time last year and more than 8.5m in 2000.

Low rice productivity

Not only the fisheries sector is suffering, however.

Rice farmer Meas Chan Thorn in western Pursat Province was only able to plant last week, a month behind schedule, because of the late rains, and predicted yields would be halved.

"It's so difficult for us farmers in Cambodia because we depend entirely on the weather," the 67-year-old said.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Cambodia could experience a 22 percent drop in rice output this year - from 7.6 million MT in 2009 to 5.9 million MT in 2010.

Rice is Cambodia's main crop and its harvesting requires more water than other crops. According to the UN World Food Programme, more than 85 percent of the country's rice production is rain-fed.

Prom Tola, a consultant for Phnom Penh-based Agricultural Development International, who is surveying farmers in Siem Reap Province, said there had been a rise in the number of rural people from Siem Reap leaving for Thailand in search of seasonal labour.

Upstream dams

Som Sitha, who monitors marine life for the NGO Conservation International, said Mekong residents were finding the river levels increasingly unpredictable.

"They complain that it's getting lower every year, especially the last few years, and they say it's preventing them from getting enough fish."

But while observers attribute low river water levels to atypical rainfall patterns this year, others cite upriver dams as the real cause.

Environmentalists blame an increasingly shallow Mekong on China, accusing Cambodia's powerful northern neighbour of hoarding water in its upriver dams.

To date, four dams have been built along the Chinese stretch of the Mekong, with nine more under way or awaiting construction downstream in Laos and Cambodia.

However, according to the Mekong River Commission, the upstream dams have yet to influence downstream water levels.

"There is no doubt that upstream dams, when they do come fully on-line, will have an impact on the water levels, as well as generate other environmental and social concerns," Damian Kean, a spokesman for the Mekong River Commission, said.

"However, at present there is no evidence that Chinese upstream dams are operating at a sufficient intensity to cause these low water levels in Cambodia," he added.

More than 60 million people in the lower Mekong basin rely on the river for food, commerce and transportation, according to the Mekong River Commission. The group says 80 percent of protein consumed by Mekong residents comes from the river.

Salty water, parched earth: Vietnam's Mekong paddies dry up

Saturday, 17 July 2010
AFP

The rivers that should nourish his thirsty rice paddies are too salty, and the rains are late this year.

Dang Roi does not know if he will be able to salvage anything from this spring's crop. Vietnam is the world's second-biggest rice exporter and the Mekong Delta, where Roi farms, accounts for more than half of its production.

But Roi's paddy fields in Ben Tre province are burning up during a drought which meteorologists say is the worst in decades.

The dry season should have ended already, but in the yard of Roi's house in Que Dien commune, barrels that collect rainwater for his family's cooking and washing show the desperate situation. They are half-full, or empty.

Experts say Vietnam is one of the countries most threatened by climate change, whose effects are seen in worsening drought, floods, typhoons, exaggerated tides, and rising sea levels.

The country is planning for a one-metre (three feet) rise in sea levels by 2100, which would flood about 31,000 square kilometres (12,400 square miles) of land - an area about the size of Belgium - unless systems such as dykes are strengthened, said a UN discussion paper released last year.

It said the threat of floods is greatest in the Mekong Delta, where 17 million people live.

If that land becomes unusable there are "serious implications" for the region, Helen Clark, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), told AFP last month.

She said Vietnam faces a "huge challenge" from climate change.

Over the past 50 years the sea level has already risen by 20 centimetres (eight inches) along Vietnam's coast, according to the increasingly worried communist government.

While delta farmers cope with drought, they are also challenged by sea water intrusion, which experts also link to climate change.

There is little water in the rivers near Roi's fields "and it's salty so we can't pump it" for irrigation, he says.

Recalling easier times on his 1.2 hectares (three acres), Roi says, "The rice fields weren't dying like this."

The Vietnamese government emphasises the role of climate change in disrupting its agricultural environment, but experts do not rule out an effect from dams upstream in China. That impact could be worsened by the opening of more dams further south in Laos and Cambodia, they say.

"The Chinese dams have made the system fragile, but the impact of the downstream dams will be cumulative," said Marc Goichot, of the WWF.

Goichot said a delta is influenced by three forces which affect one another: subsidence, which causes the delta's bed to fall; coastal currents; and sediment brought down by rivers.

Dams retain sediment, reducing the amount that collects where the coastal current and waves are strongest downstream, meaning the salty water can more easily penetrate, he said.

The impact of sediment needs to be better understood, Goichot added, calling for a suspension of dam projects pending further research.

China has eight planned or existing dams on the Mekong River, but rejects activists' criticism that the hydropower dams contribute to low water levels downstream.

There are proposals for another twelve dams in the lower Mekong countries.

Vo Tong Xuan, a leading Vietnamese rice expert, said the flow of the Mekong River - whose long journey ends at the delta - is "extremely reduced" this year.

He is concerned about the impact of Chinese dams, but also blames Vietnam's increasingly intensive methods of rice growing.

As the delta's population has expanded, farmers have gone from planting one to two and sometimes three rice crops each year.

Xuan says that too many farmers plant three crops, draining crucial water from provinces such as Ben Tre during the dry season.

Ultimately, he says, the Delta may need new varieties of rice more adapted to a dry and salty environment.

Roi, 64, grows rice only twice a year and is not waiting for new strains.

Squatting beside his sorry-looking paddies, he points out about 30 baby palm trees he has planted along the edge of the rice field. They are better adapted to the delta's harsh environment.

"If one day we can't grow rice any more, we'll grow coconut palms," he says.

Mekong Delta drought hits hard on Vietnam

2010-07-15

HANOI (Commodity Online) : World’s largest rice exporter, Vietnam’s Mekong Delta which accounts for more than half of its output is hit by drastic climate changes, resulting huge losses of crops.

Drought caused by a hot spell over the past month has hurt rice fields in the region with nearly 100,000 hectares destroyed or partly destroyed.

A total of 25,000 hectares of rice was ruined and yields on another 70,000 hectares will drop sharply, the report said, giving no forecast for output losses.

The country saw a bumper harvest of the highest-yielding winter-spring rice crop, with output of unmilled rice rising 2.6 percent from last year to 19.2 million tones.

Vietnam aims to export 2.9 million tonnes of rice in the July-December period, bringing annual shipments to between 6 million and 6.2 million tonnes, a Vietnam Food Association report said

Experts say Vietnam is one of the countries most threatened by climate change, whose effects are seen in worsening drought, floods, typhoons, exaggerated tides, and rising sea levels.

The country is planning for a one-metre rise in sea levels by 2100, which would flood about 31,000 square kilometres of land unless systems such as dykes are strengthened.

The hot weather hit northern and central provinces from early June. On June 16 state forecasters said the temperature in Hanoi reached an average 34.6, the highest since 1961, leading to a surge in demand for electricity and widespread power cuts.

While delta farmers cope with drought, they are also challenged by sea water intrusion, which experts also link to climate change. Over the past 50 years the sea level has already risen by 20 centimeters along Vietnam's coast.

Drought hits 100,000 hectares of Vietnam rice

Reuters

HANOI, July 15 - Drought caused by a hot spell over the past month has hurt rice fields in central Vietnam, with nearly 100,000 hectares (247,100 acres) destroyed or partly destroyed, a state-run newspaper reported on Thursday.

The hot weather hit northern and central provinces from early June. On June 16 state forecasters said the temperature in Hanoi reached an average 34.6 Celcius (94.3 Fahrenheit), the highest since 1961, leading to a surge in demand for electricity and widespread power cuts.

No rain was reported in four provinces in the past month, and the water level in rivers and reservoirs has fallen to the lowest level ever, the Vietnam News daily said, quoting an Agriculture Ministry reports.

A total of 25,000 hectares of rice was ruined and yields on another 70,000 hectares will drop sharply, the report said, giving no forecast for output losses.

"The risk of crop losses due to the widespread drought is very high," the government said in a statement this month, urging central provinces to save water and ensure irrigation for rice fields.

The central region is not Vietnam's main rice area, which lies to the south in the Mekong Delta, but any disruption to production could trigger price rises as paddy from southern fields is moved north because of food shortages.

The country saw a bumper harvest of the highest-yielding winter-spring rice crop, with output of unmilled rice rising 2.6 percent from last year to 19.2 million tonnes, government figures show.

Prices have already started edging up as export firms have begun to stockpile 1 million tonnes of summer-autumn rice under a scheme running for two months until Sept. 15.

Vietnam aims to export 2.9 million tonnes of rice in the July-December period, bringing annual shipments to between 6 million and 6.2 million tonnes, a Vietnam Food Association report said.

Global Rice Output Forecast Cut at UN Food Agency on Dry Spell

July 15 (Bloomberg) -- Global production of rough rice, the staple for half the world’s population, may be less than estimated earlier this year after prolonged dry weather in the Mekong River region hurt crops, the United Nations said.

Output may be 704.4 million metric tons this year, or 470 million tons of milled grain, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization said in a report yesterday after paring estimates for harvests in Asia, including Thailand. That compares with April’s forecast for record output of 710 million tons. Global demand was projected at 461 million tons of milled grain, yesterday’s report said, up from April’s forecast of 454 million.

Dry weather pushed water levels in the Mekong to their lowest level in 30 years near Thailand’s border with Laos, the Thai government said in March. The river also runs through China, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam and the areas that rely on it for irrigation grow enough rice to feed 300 million people, according to the Mekong River Commission website.

“The pattern of the monsoon rains over Asia will hold particular sway” for prices, the e-mailed report said. Rainfall will determine India’s potential return to the global market as a rice supplier or lower the availability of exports from countries including Thailand and Pakistan, it said.

India’s monsoon, the main source of irrigation for the nation’s 235 million farmers, was 13 percent below normal as of yesterday, the India Meteorological Department said on its website. The monsoon was 16 percent below normal in June.

The FAO’s Rice Price Index, a gauge of 16 prices from around the world, fell 15 percent between January and June on better-than-expected output in India, the world’s second-largest grower and consumer of the grain.

Rice futures in Chicago, which peaked last December at $16.27 per 100 pounds on concern that India may become a net importer for the first time in more than two decades, traded today at $9.84 per 100 pounds.

--Editors: Jake Lloyd-Smith, Matt Oakley

Drought Threatens Cambodia, Thailand Rice Output

2009 drought in Cambodia (Photo: AP)

Daniel Schearf, VOA
Bangkok 23 June 2010

A drought in Southeast Asia is threatening rice production in Cambodia and Thailand, the world's biggest rice exporter. The concern about production comes as rice prices have sunk to a two-year low, hurting farmers' incomes.

The lack of rain in Cambodia and Thailand cut rice production by as much as 40 percent. Farmers usually harvest one rice crop in August, and the main rice crop in October.

In Thailand, the government is concerned that farm irrigation will stretch already thin water supplies. Supavud Saicheua, managing director and head of research at Phatra Securities (PATRA), said the government has already asked farmers to delay the planting of the main crop.

"And that means that rice production, rice harvest, will bunch up in November. Now, if there's a sense globally that there's a lot of rice and the price is depressed even more, then Thai farmers will be hit in terms of both price and quantity," he said.

Supavud added while Thailand's economy as a whole has recovered from the global financial crisis and recent political turmoil, agriculture is still suffering.

Last month, rice prices in Thailand, Asia's benchmark, hit a two-year low after a drop in export demand. In response, Thai authorities adjusted a subsidy to offer a guaranteed price for rice farmers.

But Chanchai Rakthananon president of the Thai Rice Mills Association, said that move proved inadequate. The guaranteed price right now is just enough to meet farmers' costs, he said, because they are getting a low yield from the drought. Chanchai said that is affecting their income, so farmers are not making any profit.

Farm market analysts say rice prices should rise as markets feel the effects of the drought.

Chanchai said farmers are now planting more corn and sugar cane to cut their losses from the poor rice crop. But he added it will take a year or two to reclaim farmland for rice once prices recover. In the meantime, government stocks can make up for production shortages.

However, Thailand's rice exports, accounting for about a third of the world total, are expected to drop by up to a million tons this year, which could affect importing countries.

National Food Authority of the Philippines spokesman Rex Estoperez is a spokesman said the shortfall will definitely affext rice supplies for the Philippines, Asia's biggest rice importer.

"But, you know, Thailand is only one of the suppliers of the Philippines. And, over last year, we had our tender in December and our major supplier then was Vietnam," Estoperez said.

The Philippines buys rice from a total of six countries. As long as there are no more major weather calamities, Estoperez said they should not have a problem sourcing enough rice this year.

In 2008, poor weather and low rice stocks led to prices skyrocketing to over $1,000 a ton. Exporting countries put restrictions on overseas rice sales.

United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization senior economist Concepcion Calpe said while drought has lowered Cambodia's expected rice production about 10 percent and Thailand's by about six percent, Asia's crop as a whole will be better than 2009.

"Indonesia, even though they had a bad start and were also affected by drought, they still will record an increase," Calpe said. "India, we foresee a very strong recovery from last year … because it was affected by the erratic monsoon. China we see will increase tremendously their production, Bangladesh also. So, the major players, so far we see that they will have a larger crop in 2010."

With production up and plenty of rice in government reserves, said Calpe, there is little risk of food shortages or price jumps.

But she also pointed out that the drought affecting Cambodia and Thailand may cause more hardship for small producers, urging rice farmers to diversify their crops so they are not so dependent on one product.

A Millennium of Monsoon Failures, Droughts and Famines

By Ananda Gunatilaka
The Island Online (Sri Lanka)

The Asian Summer Monsoon (ASM) has made possible several complex civilizations to flourish over time. The monsoon domain of Asia extending from Oman to Australia affects almost 60 per cent of humanity today. Historical records have mentioned monsoon failures, droughts, famines and extreme flooding events in the past. Scientifically, the two most robust, continuous, terrestrial proxy rainfall archives are preserved in limestone cave deposits (stalagmite columns) and tree-ring growths (both of which record wet and dry phases or pluvials and droughts). Both archives require precise and very high accuracy geological dating techniques in conjunction with oxygen isotope analysis (the proxy for rainfall). During the past five years, the two archival techniques have been perfected to a degree that a yearly resolution of data is now possible with even a cross-check of dates.

Three cave proxy rainfall records from mainland Oman (Hoti), India (Danduk) and from China (the Wanxiang) have shown the past history of spatio-temporal variability of the monsoon. The Danduk record picked up periods of annually resolved, multi-decadal and centennial length episodes of reduced rainfall and drought during the past millennium, which coincided with several of India’s most devastating historical famines (e.g 879; 940-950; 1148-1159; 1344-1346 CE). The best known are two severe famines between 1350-1420, including the famous Durga Devi (1396-1409) that killed off millions of people in India. Comparing the cave proxy record with historical records, Chinese geologists constructed a record of Dynastic failures due to weakened monsoons, droughts, crop failures, famines and peasant revolts (e.g. the Tang- 850-940 CE; the late Yuan- 1350-1380 CE and Ming- 1580-1641 CE).

Decades that experienced the wettest and strongest monsoons of the past 1000 years coincided with the Northern Song Dynasty’s golden age of rich harvests, population recovery and social stability (960 – 1020 CE). This was clearly depicted in the paintings of that time. Interestingly, the demise of the Tang Dynasty and Maya Classic Periods were coeval (early 10th century) – both now related to extended drought phases, though far apart geographically. It is the amount of rainfall and its inter-regional pattern of variability, especially drought that is of importance to human populations.

Last month, the Tree-Ring Laboratory of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, USA (TRL-LDEO) released the Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas (MADA), which also provides an absolutely dated, annually resolved reconstruction of Asian monsoon spatio-temporal variability over the past 1000 years. MADA used tree-ring data from more than 300 sites of the forested regions of monsoon Asia to reconstruct an Index of relative drought and wetness for the region. The major finding of MADA is that historically recorded monsoon failures/excesses in the past 150 years have been exceeded in intensity and duration many times during the past millennium. The Atlas picked the Ming Dynasty Drought of 1638-1641- the worst in 500 years in northern China and its recorded final collapse in 1644; the Strange Parallels Drought (SPD 1756-1768), the East India Drought (EID 1790-1796) and the late Victorian Great Drought (VGD 1876-1878).

The EID that lasted six years coincided with one of the most severe El-Nino events of the late 18th century, which was felt worldwide and resulted in extensive civil unrest and socio-economic disaster. Its effect on India was devastating with several famines. The MADA record highlights its occurrence in the southernmost tip of India and extending to Sri Lanka, but there is no mention of it in the Sri Lankan records (or is there?). The drought is consistent with historical data for the region. The VGD also occurred during one of the most severe El-Nino events of the past 150 years. This drought was felt in much of India, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, parts of Indonesia, Thailand, Borneo and New Guinea according to MADA and is vaguely referred to in our recent historical records. Over 30 million people died across monsoon Asia from the famine (see Davis, M. 2001 –Late Victorian Holocausts, El-Nino famines and the making of the Third World. Versa, London). In the north-central region of Sri Lanka, Mannar and Mullaitivu, apparently there were no rice harvests for nine years and the coffee blight in Uva in the 1870s-1880s may have been due to this drought.

Thailand, Cambodia and Sri Lanka connections

The annually resolved MADA dendro-hydroclimatic record shows that there were persistent weak monsoons and extended decadal droughts in tropical South and Southeast Asia over the past 500-700 years. In the mid-late 14th and early 15th centuries, especially the long period from 1351-1368 CE that was coeval with severe decade long droughts alternating with strong monsoons and floods instigated the collapse of the Khmer civilization in Angkor (Cambodia). The droughts devastated the complicated water supply, management and distribution networks and agricultural base of Angkor, the largest medieval city of the time with upwards of 500,000 people, while flood episodes in turn destroyed the water control infrastructure. Droughts and floods at interdecadal scales are characteristic of the Asian monsoon.

From Sri Lanka’s point of view, it is imperative to mention two references to famines in the late 14th and early 15th century (Gampola Period?) from palm-leaf scrolls in Thailand, where it is mentioned that a contingent of priests from Chiang Mai, Thailand who came here in the early 1400s on a long pilgrimage were forced to return due to a severe drought/famine in Sri Lanka (but where?). This event, as far as is known went unrecorded (?) in our chronicles. The very disappointed priests lamented that they had to turn back as there was "mai mee khao gin" – there


A Millennium of Monsoon Failures was no rice to eat! The references to Sri Lanka are in Thai and from Phitsanulok in Thailand (Wyatt and Wichienkeeo, 1998- The Chiang Mai Chronicles and R.P. Thera, 1967- Jinakalamali Prakor). These droughts were recorded in the state chronicles of the Chao Praya Basin, which mention that the droughts extended west to India and Sri Lanka (see Buckley, B.M. et. al, 2010, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sc., Vol. 107(15): 6748-6752; Cook, E. et. al., 2010., Science, Vol. 328: 486-489).

The year 1403 is recorded by TRL as the most severe in the dendro-record (visit of monks?). Also, six of the twenty wettest years alternated with drought years during the latest 14th and early 15th centuries when the hydraulic infrastructure at Angkor was damaged by flood episodes, just after agricultural productivity was devastated by the preceding decadal droughts. The geological record of the floods is still preserved in the abandoned canal networks of Angkor. Despite over a century of research at Angkor, the ultimate causes of its collapse remained uncertain. The dearth of textual records after the 13th century hindered historical research. This has now been resolved by the detailed hydro-climatic record compiled from tree-ring data.

It was not that repeated droughts and floods were the ultimate cause of civilizational demise. The empire was already under severe pressure from wars, population expansions and social and political upheavals and perhaps even a shift from the Hindu faith, which bestowed unquestioned "godly" powers on the uncompromising rulers (Devaraja), to acceptance of Buddhism due to its more tolerant and democratic outlook that gradually diminished the authority of the weakened rulers. It went into ruin after about five centuries. The hydraulic city had the seeds of its own destruction with a constant battle with droughts and floods. It was a society totally dependent on the annual monsoonal flooding of its lowlands, which supported an extensive rice based agriculture-irrigation infrastructure. It just could not cope with the pressures on its infrastructure and the bureaucracy failed. Decadal droughts alternating with severe floods just pushed it over the edge and never recovered.

Despite the vicissitudes, quite amazingly, the Rajarata hydraulic civilization survived for over a thousand years – far more resilient than any known. It was even resuscitated after more than 600 years of abandonment and its basic infrastructure still functions today. Sri Lanka too had droughts and floods as has been recorded in the chronicles. However, the textual content and detail is very poor. For over 600 years (from 619-628 CE to 1237-1270 CE) there are no references to famines (droughts) when most of monsoon Asia experienced floods/droughts. There is no evidence whatsoever that Rajarata demise had climatic connotations before collapse. However, like in Angkor, it could have been pushed over the edge when the regimes were already weakened in succession by various other pressures and moved out to the southwest for a variety of reasons.

The Danduk cave record shows at least fifteen regional droughts between 1000-1500 CE. The two worst decadal droughts were in the late 14th and early 15th centuries that were also picked up by the dendro-records in the Columbia study quite independently. The references in the Thai records to a major drought in Sri Lanka in the early 1400s were mentioned earlier (same time as the Durgadevi drought in India and decadal droughts in Angkor?). A drought of similar magnitude and extent today with billions more people are unimaginable!

The palaeoclimate archives of monsoon Asia is a very active field of research today. The big gap is between Sri Lanka and Thailand (mostly ocean). However, the continental archives are being added to and refined. The LDEO-dendrochronology survey here was interrupted twice by the civil conflict and the 2004 tsunami event and good analytical material was not found. If the survey restarts and obtains good tree-ring dates, then new interpretations to our climate and social history are possible just as in the cases above.

Early chroniclers recorded only historical events that mattered in state affairs. Droughts and floods were not. It was more important to record alms-giving to priests and mass reciting of pirith to pray for rains. Unlike in India or China, the detail and textual content is lacking when describing famines. This author believes that droughts, famines and floods were as frequent in ancient Sri Lanka as in the rest of Asia and that the chroniclers were indifferent to natural disasters and did not bother to record them. They were only periodically recurring extreme events (as in Angkor) and in the natural order of things. Else, how come major droughts were "missed" here, but were recorded in Thailand and elsewhere? With smaller populations in Sri Lanka, the effects of a disaster may not have been very dramatic unlike in India or China where millions perished at a time. Perhaps our historians will enlighten us on these aspects!

* The author is a retired Professor of Geology

Reservoir runs dry in Cambodia's coastal province

2010-05-24
Associated Press

Several thousand Cambodians in a coastal province are without running water because a drought has caused the local reservoir to run dry.

The head of Koh Kong province's industry department, Pich Siyun, said Monday that late seasonal rains had caused the longest local drought in memory.

He says officials, businessmen and other residents in Koh Kong, about 130 miles (210 kilometers) west of the capital Phnom Penh, have begun purchasing delivered supplies drawn from natural bodies of water. Others traveled long distances to draw water themselves.

Fruit seller Ty Heng said by telephone from the provincial capital his family had to spend the equivalent of about $5 every day for clean water.

Mekong Issue Muddied by China: Experts

Cambodians paddle fishing boats on the Mekong River against the backdrop of only the second bridge to span the waterway in Kampong Cham. (Photo: AP)

The recent drought across southern China and mainland Southeast Asia has caused debate within the region regarding dam issues in the Mekong River Basin.

Soeung Sophat
Washington, DC
Monday, 26 April 2010

“It is international in scope. It affects tens of millions of people.”

The recent drought across southern China and mainland Southeast Asia has caused debate within the region regarding dam issues in the Mekong River Basin. But as the facts are disputed over why there are record-low water levels in the basin, experts say China should share more information.

Richard Cronin heads the Southeast Asia program at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington and is lead author of a recent report about the dangers of damming the Mekong, on which 60 million people depend.

He says countries in the region need to push China to share more information about its management of the Upper Mekong, as the river is facing its lowest water levels in 50 years.

“Right now the situation is it’s dry, everybody’s dry,” he told VOA Khmer. “Everybody is suffering a water shortage, but the question is the Chinese don’t tell us how they’re operating these dams and reservoirs. They don’t tell us whether they’re letting everything go through or whether they’re holding some back, or maybe they even have water in the reservoir that they’re letting through to help their neighbors downstream. We simply don’t know because there’s no transparency.”

The release of the report, “Mekong Tipping Point,” came as a severe drought hit Southeast Asia and southern China, and a first major summit was held by the countries of the Mekong River Commission, which comprises Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The lack of information from China has fueled accusations and suspicion from farmers and fishermen in these Lower Mekong countries that Chinese dams are contributing to the low water levels.

The report warns that failure to fully disclose information between six countries sharing the 4,880-kilometer river makes solving the problems difficult.

The report says getting Burma and China to become full members of the MRC will ensure greater participation and obligations and will strengthen the MRC and help promote transparency in the river’s management.

But making China share more information about its water use will require a stronger MRC, says Pek Koon Heng, director of the newly-established Asean Studies Center at American University.

She says the recent drought has encouraged cooperation and political will among MRC countries to approach China more directly. She said support from non-Mekong Asean countries—Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore—could greatly boost the efforts of the MRC countries, who are also Asean members.

“A common Asean position will give more weight to the MRC countries and bring the full force of Asean behind these negotiations and these discussions in the way that the South China Sea, Spratly Islands and Paracel Islands disputes with China and Asean took a common position,” she said.

Asean “got China to a certain code of conduct. So I think that’s why Asean should think about developing a code of conduct for water management in the Mekong,” she said.

Better cooperation between Asean countries is an important supplement to dependence on the limited role of the United States in the region, experts say.

The US launched the Lower Mekong Initiative in 2009 to better work with the four MRC countries, a plan that included the creation of a “sister river” partnership between the Mekong River Commission and the Mississippi River Commission.

But the new program still lacks a lot of concrete activities, and the US role in Mekong water management will likely be limited to training experts and helping Mekong countries work together better, Cronin said.

Senator Jim Webb, a Democrat from Virginia, told participants at the report launch in Washington that from an American perspective, the solution should involve the international community because its effects are comparable to other regional problems.

“[It’s] a very serious issue,” he said. “It is international in scope. It affects tens of millions of people.”

Cronin agrees, warning that failure of the smaller of the six Mekong countries to work together creates a political disadvantage against China.

“What China wants to do, I think, is it wants to make bilateral arrangements with Laos, with Cambodia especially, separately,” he said. “Because they don’t want to deal with a group of countries.”

Heng, nevertheless, remains hopeful. She says the realization of leaders from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam about the need to work closer together and China’s release of more data at the recent MRC summit are good signs.

She says such momentum will eventually put the Mekong issue on the agenda of an Asean summit later this year.

China debates whether human activity or nature is to blame for drought

An unusually long dry season, along with deforestation, pollution and dam-building, leaves farmers struggling. In some areas, people cannot even wash their hair regularly.

April 26, 2010
By Barbara Demick
Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Beijing

The images are heart-rending, farmers kneeling over the cracked earth that looks to be straight out of a post-apocalyptic movie, the dust swirling in the wind.

But what underlies China's worst drought in nearly a century is a matter of great debate. Is it Mother Nature or human failure?

Beyond the official explanation of "abnormal weather,'' Chinese environmentalists are pointing to deforestation, pollution, dams, overbuilding and other man-made factors. Scientists are searching for clues about why rain hasn't come in some parts of the country.

At its worst, the drought has left parched more than 16 million acres of farmland in more than four provinces, threatening the livelihood of more than 50 million farmers, according to government statistics. Up to 20 million people have been left without drinking water.

The Chinese army and paramilitary have been deployed in some hard-hit areas to deliver water, while residents of some mountainous villages inaccessible by motor vehicle have had to hike hours downhill and climb up again lugging plastic jugs of water in bamboo backpacks.

An unusually long dry season — which has stretched from September to the present — is at least part of the problem, but the underlying reasons are less clear. Some Chinese scientists believe that abnormally cold, wet weather in the north of the country is also linked to the drought in the southwest.

"The Earth is reacting to climate change,'' said Kuang Yaoqiu, a professor with the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, who predicted the drought last year. "China's mainstream meteorologists haven't accepted these theories. It will take time.''

In Chinese government circles, many people still subscribe to Mao Tse-tung's famous dictum that ‘'man should conquer nature,'' but that's proving difficult to accomplish.

The drought-related losses are both economic and highly personal. For all the tea in China, this year's crop is expected to be a fraction of what it was in previous years because of drought conditions in Yunnan and Guangxi provinces, home to much of the tea production.

"There are huge cracks in the ground. The leaves on the trees are so dry they looked like they were set on fire,'' said Wu Liuzhi, manager of a tea processing plant in Guangxi's Lingyun county.

At home, it is just as miserable. "People can't brush their teeth every day. If there is a little water you want to wash your face.'' Wu wouldn't say when she last washed her hair — only that "we hold on until you can't stand it anymore.''

In Yunnan province, the traditional water splashing festival practiced by the Dai ethnic minority to celebrate the mid-April New Year's holiday was this year reduced to a "water sprinkling'' festival.

In response, the Chinese government has deployed the mighty arsenal of what is called the weather modification bureau, using rockets and planes to shoot more than 6,000 shells into the clouds in hopes of inducing rain.

Yu Bohan, 27, a tea farmer from Yunnan's Xishuangbanna region, said that her family's crop of 330 pounds is less than one-third of normal and that the government's rain-making efforts may be to blame.

"Some villagers suspect that the weather has become angry with us for shooting too many of those artificial rockets," Yu said.

Some scientists say the fault lies with the destruction of the natural forest and the replanting of cash crops that suck up too much water. Among the notorious water-guzzlers are rubber trees and eucalypts, which are used for paper and pulp production and are so vigorous that farmers sometimes claim to hear them growing at night.

"In the rainy season, the forest holds in the water and releases it slowly in the dry season. That is the natural ecological function of the forest,'' said Ma Jun, a well-known water expert whose writings about China's water crisis have been likened to Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring." "The drought is obviously caused by lack of rainfall, but the deforestation hurts our ability to adapt to unfavorable climate.''

Yunnan, the hardest-hit province, is home to China's last swatch of rain forest and many of its glaciers, which gives it an unusually fragile ecosystem. The largest lake in the province, Dian Chi, which used to supply drinking water to the provincial capital, Kunming, is now so polluted that the water cannot even be used for agriculture.

There are also a large number of dams in the region that critics say have damaged the ecosystem of the province. The most controversial is the still-under-construction Xiaowan dam, which will be the second-largest hydroelectric power station in China after the Three Gorges Dam. Environmentalists say that the dam has reduced the water in the Mekong in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam to its lowest level in 50 years, exacerbating drought conditions in those countries as well.

But Chinese government officials have denied responsibility for the water shortage.

"Statistics show that recent droughts in the Mekong River downstream [are] caused by severely dry weather," Vice Foreign Minister Song Tao said at a Mekong River Council meeting April 5 in Thailand. "The Mekong River's low water level is not related to hydropower plants."

barbara.demick@latimes.com
Tommy Yang of The Times' Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.

Asian drought damage reconstructed

Tree ring scientists Edward Cook (left) and Paul Krusic trekked for nearly two weeks to reach this 1,000-year-old hemlock in the Himalayas of Nepal during their 15-year research. (Brendan Buckley/Columbia University)

Friday, April 23, 2010
CBC News

Scientists at Columbia University's the Earth Institute and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have put together a 700-year record reconstructing the destruction caused by droughts that happened when the Asian monsoon resulted in less than normal rainfall.

The study, Asian Monsoon Failure and Megadrought during the Last Millennium, and the Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas published this week in the journal Science look at the seasonal weather system since 1300, its effects on the continent and how the monsoon's future might impact climate change.

While the monsoon feeds nearly half of the world's population when the rain does fall, when the monsoon fails to provide the usual amount of water and there is a drought, death and destruction are rampant, the study found.

Columbia scientists measured tree data from mature tree rings in 300 locations across the Asian continent, Siberia and northern Australia to come up with the findings.

For most tree species, rainfall determines the width of the species, resulting in annual growth rings, scientists said.

By studying the rings, scientists were able to determine that at least four major droughts led to the devastation in the continent and surrounding areas.

Drought led to fall of China's Ming dynasty

For example, a drought in northeastern China led to the 1644 fall of country's Ming dynasty.

Another drought occurred from 1756-1768, which coincided with the collapse of kingdoms in present-day Burma, Vietnam and Thailand.

The study also looked at the 1876-78 drought known as the "Great Drought," which resulted in widespread famine and the death of a record 30 million people in India, China and present-day Indonesia.

"Global climate models fail to accurately simulate the Asian monsoon, and these limitations have hampered our ability to plan for future, potentially rapid and heretofore unexpected shifts in a warming world," said Edward Cook, the head of Lamont's Tree Ring Lab who ran the study, said in a statement.

"Reliable instrumental data goes back only until 1950. This reconstruction gives climate modellers an enormous dataset that may produce some deep insights into the causes of Asian monsoon variability."

The study follows a similar report in March by the Lamont tree-ring team suggesting that dramatic differences in the monsoon may have influenced the collapse of the ancient Khmer civilization at Angkor — now known as Cambodia — nearly 600 years ago.

That paper, which appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the U.S., showed evidence of a mega-drought in the wider region around Angkor from the 1340s to the 1360s, followed by a more severe but shorter drought from the 1400s to the 1420s.

The droughts were combined with severe flooding, resulting in the kingdom's eventual collapse, researchers of that study found.

The research for the latest study was funded by the U.S National Science Foundation.

Drought turns southern China into arid plain

Dead shellfish are all that remain of the lake in Damoguzhen County, Yunnan (Photograph: Jonathan Watts/Guardian)

The government has embarked on a massive rain-making operation, firing thousands of cloud-seeding rockets into the sky

Wednesday 7 April 2010
Jonathan Watts in Damoguzhen, Yunnan
guardian.co.uk

It is hard to imagine a less fitting environment for a mollusc than the arid plain of Damoguzhen in south-west China.

There is not a drop of water in sight. The baked and fissured earth resembles an ancient desert. Yet shellfish are scattered here in their thousands; all so recently perished that shriveled, blackened bodies are still visible inside cracked, opened shells.

Far out of water, the aquatic animals are not the advance guard of evolutionary progress; but the victims of a drought that has devastated their habitat and now threatens the livelihoods of millions of people in surrounding regions. The Chinese government is so worried about the drought that it has embarked on a massive rain-making operation, involving firing thousands of shells and rockets into the sky to seed clouds.

Until last summer, Damoguzhen was home to a lake that stretched across a mile-wide expanse of water in Yunnan, a southern Chinese province famed for its mighty rivers, moist climate and beautiful views.

Today, it joins 310 reservoirs, 580 rivers and 3,600 pools that have been baked dry by a once-in-a-century drought that is evaporating drinking supplies, devastating crops and stirring up political tensions over dam construction, monoculture plantations and cross-border water management in south-east Asia. Linking specific weather events to human-caused climate change is impossible, but the drought is consistent with what climate scientists expect to see more of in future.

Hardest hit are local farmers such as Ying Yuexian, who has seen her tobacco and rice crop shrivel up over a six-month period that has seen record high temperatures and half the usual amount of rain.

"In February, the water dried up completely," said the 34-year-old, surveying the parched expanse where she once fished. "It turned into this overnight." Instead of drawing water from the lake, she now scrapes soil from its cracked bed in the hope that the nutrients can replenish the earth on her sun-blasted farmland.

Her husband, Zhu Chongqing, estimates that the family's annual income will halve this year and the situation could get worse because the wet season is not due for another month. "We are waiting for the rain. We dare not plant rice or tobacco before that, but the drought continues" he said. "I've never experienced anything like this."

It is a similar story across the region. Older villagers say reservoirs and irrigation channels are dry for the first time in their lives. Mountain communities have to walk hours each day to secure drinking supplies. Rationing has been introduced in many areas, affecting more than 20 million people, 15m animals and 2m hectares of farmland.

With its mighty rivers and steep gorges, south-west China is the world's biggest hydro-electric powerhouse, but reservoir levels have fallen so low this year that 60% of dams report a decline in electricity output. This forces industrial estates and cities to burn more coal and emit more carbon to make up the shortfall.

Commodity values are also rising. In the giant rubber plantations of Xishuangbanna, farmers report a sharp fall in production that has pushed up prices by 40%.

"Less water means less rubber," said Zhang Xiaoping a rubber farmer. "In a good year, I can collect 80kg a day from these 300 trees, but I am down to half that now."

According to local media, sugar prices are up 10% because of the impact on cane fields. Rice and broad beans are also more expensive.

Wildlife is threatened because Yunnan - one of the most biodiverse regions on earth - is a last refuge for many species that are extinct elsewhere. Conservationists say birds have migrated, elephants moved to new territory and many big mammals are ranging further to secure water. Reptiles and plants are most vulnerable.

"We are hearing stories from nature reserves that amphibians are dying," said Wu Yusong of the Worldwide Fund for Nature's Yunnan office. "We are still in the process of monitoring the situation but we know that half the agricultural crops in this region cannot be harvested this year so we can imagine that other plants will be also be similarly affected."

The government says it has earmarked more than 7 billion yuan (£700m) for relief projects, mobilised 7,600 water trucks and dug 180,000 wells to alleviate the impact.

It has also launched a massive weather modification operation. In a single week, the authorities fired over 10,000 silver nitrate shells and over 1,000 rockets into the clouds to induce rain, according to Zheng Guoguang, head of the China Meteorological Administration.

Short bursts of rain have mitigated the problem in some areas, but the overall picture remains grim and the causes contentious.

On stretches of the Mekong river, water levels are at 50-year lows, spurring criticism from downstream nations that China's hydropower expansion has siphoned off supplies that should be preserved for drinking water and fishing.

At the first summit this week of the Mekong River Commission, which comprises Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, the Chinese vice minister, Song Tao, insisted climate change rather than his country was to blame.

"Statistics show that the recent drought that hit the whole river basin is attributable to the extreme dry weather, and the water level decline of the Mekong River has nothing to do with hydropower development," he said.

But environment activists inside China say dams and other forms of accelerated development are taking an excessive ecological toll. "Dams and plantations are not to blame for the extreme weather, but they worsen the impact of the drought and the competition for water resources," said Yang Yong, an explorer and geologist. "The government now realises the problems and should reconsider its plans for water resource management."

"In recent years, the focus of dam construction has been on power generation, but we have neglected the needs of flood prevention and irrigation," said Wang Yongchen of Green Earth Volunteers.

The drought has also raised fresh doubts about the wisdom of China's biggest hydro-engineering project, the South-North water diversion scheme, which is designed to channel billions of tonnes to arid northern cities such as Beijing and Tianjin.

This made sense while the south enjoyed more abundant water resources, but climatologists are now warning that north and south China could suffer simultaneous droughts.

The National Climate Centre estimates 10 downpours will be needed to alleviate the water shortage in the south. This is not forecast for at least another month.

With the prospect of prolonged dry spells in the future, Liu Ning, vice-minister of water resources, told local media it may be necessary to move people from the most vulnerable areas.

"They can go to cities, or places with more water. If droughts continue for several more years, we think we can use the nation's power to relocate them to other provinces."

Additional reporting by Chen Shi and Cui Zheng

China faces its biggest foe

Apr 8, 2010
By Kent Ewing
Asia Times (Hong Kong)

HONG KONG - The Chinese leadership, long obsessed with snuffing out social unrest whenever and wherever it occurs, has encountered a foe that cannot be defeated by its four trillion yuan (US$586 billion) economic stimulus package, its Great Firewall of Internet censorship or even brute force: Mother Nature.

As the nation celebrates the miraculous rescue of 115 miners trapped for eight days in one of the country's notoriously dangerous coal mines in northern Shanxi province, the worst drought in a century continues to seize China's southwest. While state-owned China Central Television trumpeted the heroic rescue effort and provided blanket coverage, the head of drought relief in China last week found himself denying media reports of abandoned villages and an exodus of refugees from stricken areas.

"I don't think there are any refugees," said Liu Ning, secretary general of the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.

But the reports continue, and things could get a lot worse if the hoped-for rainy season does not arrive next month. At least 22 million people and 7.4 million hectares of farmland are affected by the drought in the provinces of Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan and Sichuan and in the sprawling municipality of Chongqing. Moreover, Liu, who is also vice minister of water resources, has admitted that three northern provinces - Shanxi, Hebei and Gansu - have also been hit by drought, as has the autonomous region of Ningxia. That means the livelihoods of millions more farmers are at risk, and that drinking water is becoming an increasingly precious commodity.

As in past disasters, the central government has responded to the crisis by opening its coffers and mobilizing the People's Liberation Army, so far spending 155 million yuan to combat the drought and dispatching 260,000 troops to deliver water and to help dig wells. In addition, a relocation plan is in the works if the drought continues through next month.

Still, angry villagers are likely to regard such measures as too little, too late. Mother Nature may be the cause of their misery, but a woeful lack of government planning seems to have exacerbated it.

Even before the drought, more than half of China's 1.3 billion people did not have access to clean water, causing nearly 200 million unnecessary illnesses annually and 60,000 premature deaths. Although China has 22% of the world's population and only 7% of its fresh water - much of that polluted during the past 30 years of breakneck economic growth - planning for disasters like this was apparently kept on the back burner.

However, the central government has gone full speed ahead with lavishly expensive water projects such as Three Gorges Dam (US$26.4 billion) and the South-North Water Diversion Project (US$17.6 billion) that have brought little benefit to average villagers. Indeed, China's excessive dam-building is likely making the drought worse for many of them, since it prevents water from reaching their remote farmland.

For years, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have blamed Chinese dams for shrinking the Mekong River, known in China as the Lancang River, which originates in the Tibetan Plateau and runs through Yunnan. Now the river - a lifeline not just for people living in those parts of China but also for the tens of millions living downriver in the nations of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam - is at its lowest level in two decades, disrupting cargo traffic.

Underscoring their alarm, members of the Mekong River Commission completed a four-day summit in Thailand on Monday; it was the first such meeting in the commission's 15-year history. China, which has not joined the body, was present as an observer. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Song Tao used the occasion to deny once again that his country was responsible for shrinking the Mekong.

While the debate continues over whether China's dam-building has effectively "hijacked" the Mekong River, China's grandiose water projects seem to have not helped those worst affected by the drought. Hundreds of billions of yuan were spent on the mega-projects as reservoirs fell into disrepair and there was inadequate investment in irrigation systems and water utilities in rural areas.

Despite the mass dash to the riches of the cities that has accompanied China's economic boom, more than half of the nation's population continues to live in rural areas. At least 22 million in the southwest are struggling to find a cup of drinking water. Millions more may be suffering in the north. Their plight seems a bigger threat to social stability than the relatively small band of political reformers and human-rights activists who are routinely rounded up and tossed in jail.

Three decades of economic growth averaging an astounding 9.9% annually has allowed the Chinese government to host the Summer Olympic Games in 2008 and the World Expo (starting next month in Shanghai) while also building enormous hydroelectric dams, a national high-speed express rail line and highways that span the vast nation. However, the leadership apparently could not find the funds to shore up reservoirs and build irrigation systems for its rural poor.

Southwestern China is, in fact, relatively rich in water resources. In Yunnan, there are more than 10,000 cubic meters of water per person, four times the national average. Unfortunately, however, it appears that because the region has a good water supply, investment in water infrastructure has been neglected. Shovel-wielding PLA soldiers are unlikely to make up for the apparent neglect.

According to the World Bank, 65% of China's water goes to agriculture, but less than half of that actually reaches crops because of faulty or non-existent infrastructure. Meanwhile, the lack of recycling in the country means that nearly all of the 25% of the water supply allotted to industry is dumped untreated into China's rivers. In the developed world, 85% of that water would be reused.

Figures from the Ministry of Water Resources show that more than half of China's farmland is without access to irrigation systems and thus dependent on the vicissitudes of the weather for a decent harvest. For farmers who do have access to irrigation, most of that water is wasted before it reaches their crops.

The picture for China's reservoirs is equally bleak. Of the 87,000 that had been built by 2007, 43% were in disrepair. In many cases, this means they are so heavily silted that they dry up when the rains cease and flood during summer when they reach their peak.

For the most part, then, China's rural population of 757 million has been left to their own devices in times of acute water shortages as well as floods. Now, if you believe mainland media reports strenuously denied by government officials, they are abandoning their villages as the worst drought in 100 years bears down on them.

Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached at
kewing@hkis.edu.hk.

Drought grips parts of China, Southeast Asia amid dam concerns

April 7, 2010
By Miranda Leitsinger, CNN

The Mekong is really drying, at some point people seem to be able to even walk across the river, which has never happened before --Srisuwan Kuankajorn, co-director of Terra

Hong Kong, China (CNN) -- Dams have dried up in southwest China, Thai fishermen have almost completely stopped their fishery activities on the Mekong River, and nearly half of northern Vietnam's farmland is under threat because of a regional drought.

The region is facing water shortages and low water levels along the Mekong River -- particularly the tributaries that feed into it -- after a shorter-than-usual monsoon season last year and light rainfall in the dry season, affecting millions of people, livestock and hectares of land, and generating losses in the millions of dollars, officials from various countries and the United Nations say.

"This is a regional drought. It's not just restricted to one area. We expect it to go on now for maybe another two to three weeks before the rainy season starts, and then the water levels on the river will hopefully start to rise," said Jeremy Bird, chief executive officer of the Mekong River Commission, which was formed in 1995 by Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to oversee sustainable development along the waterway.

In southwest China, the drought has lasted for six months and is still spreading, resulting in an economic loss of more than $2.5 million in Yunnan province, according to a presentation made last week by Chen Mingzhong, deputy director general of China's Ministry of Water Resources, to a Mekong River Commission summit.

Less rainfall in the Mekong River basin led to a decline in water levels, with 662 rivers and water at 3,674 small dams drying up, Chen said in the presentation.

Mekong River facts

• More than 60 million people live in Mekong River basin
• Estimated production of Mekong fishery is about 3.9 million tonnes a year
• Agriculture single more important economic activity in the basin
• Doubling of volume of cargo moving on the river between Thailand and China since 2004

SOURCE: Mekong River Commission Fact Box

China's view on dams and drought

• Extreme dry weather has led to decline in the Mekong River's water level
• Hydropower stations will improve the capacity of flood control, drought relief and water supply downstream over long term
• Mekong River dams did not impact the decrease of water flow downstream

SOURCE: China's Ministry of Water Resources

In Thailand, 7.6 million people and 59 of the country's 76 provinces have been affected by the drought, according to the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation. The drought has been severe in the Southeast Asian nation, said Srisuwan Kuankajorn, co-director of the environmental nonprofit Terra in Thailand.

"According to villagers who live along the river in Thailand ... the Mekong is really drying. At some point, people seem to be able to even walk across the river, which has never happened before," he said Monday, adding that some locals have said they couldn't travel by boat or grow crops along banks of the rivers, and some reported cargo getting stuck.

People who live in the north, particularly Chiang Rai province, were in "big trouble," Srisuwan said, citing information received from local nonprofit groups. "They cannot fish. Fisheries are a very important source of income and source of protein ... they have almost completely stopped their fishery activities."

The Mekong is nearly 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) long, stretching from the Tibetan plateau, through southern China, and then along the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand, through Cambodia to Vietnam. Some 60 million people live in the river basin, and Bird said the river's fisheries are the most productive in the world.

Forty percent of northern Vietnam's total farming area was under threat and 22 provinces on high alert for forest fires because of the dry conditions, according to the United Nations. Saltwater has also flowed into southern Vietnam's Mekong Delta in greater amounts than usual because of the low water levels, threatening rice and other crops on 620,000 hectares.

The mainstream Mekong in its upper reaches has now recovered from one-in-50-year low levels reached in February, but problems remain in tributaries that feed into the river, Bird said.

"Those are still running at extreme dry levels, the driest we have seen on record for the 50 years that we have been recording," Bird said. "It's really a question of very low water levels for communities, drinking supplies for agriculture, for livestock."

China's dams on the Upper Mekong Basin -- so far, three are operational and one is being filled with water -- have come under scrutiny amid the drought and river lows, with some critics questioning if Beijing was stocking up water in a bid to battle the drought in that country's southwest.

At the Mekong River Commission meeting last week in Thailand, Chen, the Ministry of Water Resources official, said his country was not to blame.

"The current extreme dry weather in the lower Mekong River Basin is the root cause for the reduced run-off water and declining water level in the main stem Mekong," he said in comments published by the Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency. "The hydropower stations built on the Lancang River (Mekong) will not increase the chance of flood and drought disasters in the downstream. Instead, it will considerably enhance the capacity of flood control, drought relief, irrigation and water supply for the downstream countries."

There are eight existing or planned Mekong dams in China's Yunnan province, and 11 proposed by Cambodia, Laos and Thailand are in various stages of research, according to the Mekong River Commission.

The commission was studying the influence of upstream dams in China, but past studies showed dams can have beneficial and detrimental effects.

For example, Bird said releases of water from dams upstream in China in early March this year helped keep water levels in northern Laos higher than they would have been in natural conditions and helped the upper reaches of the Mekong move from the one-in-50-year lows to one-in-10-year lows.

He also said China shared data at the meeting indicating that more water was being released from its dams rather than stored from December 2009 through March.

"We see the cause as extremely low rainfall, both at the end of the wet season and this dry season -- not due to dam operation," Bird said.

But for Srisuwan Kuankajorn of Terra, the dams are the main problem. He said villagers had detected fluctuations in water levels that they did not believe could be attributed to rainfall, rather thinking it was because of releases of water from dams by China.

"I don't ignore what the Chinese authorities are trying to say -- the drought, the low rainfall," he said, but added that China's actions had "been done without transparency, without taking into consideration the principles of sharing."

CNN Producer Kocha Olarn contributed to this report from Bangkok, Thailand

Angkor's Ancient Drought

By Art Chimes, VOA
Original report from Washington
06 April 2010

For hundreds of years the Khmer empire ruled in what is now Cambodia.

But in the 13th century, the capital city, Angkor, fell into ruin. A new scientific study indicates that climate, specifically decades of drought interspersed with intense monsoons, helped bring down the Khmer capital.

Brendan Buckley, the Columbia University scientist who led the study, says that in the ancient world, Angkor was known for its sophisticated water system.

"Well, Angkor was really the dominant civilization in that part of the world without any question. It was the center of their universe. And it was called the 'hydraulic city' because it had really remarkably massive arrays of barays, which are these giant water tanks and a series of canals and interconnected waterways that was really unparalleled in the ancient world in that part of the world."

Buckley isn't an archaeologist. He studies tree rings, which record the growth history of trees that can be hundreds of years old, or even older. A new ring is added every year, and thicker rings represent a kind of savings account, when the tree collects more nutrients than it can use. Thin rings show the tree is barely getting along, like during a drought year.

Using samples from around Southeast Asia, Buckley and his colleagues saw this pattern in tree rings from recent years, when he could corroborate the rings with other historical climate information. His newest tree ring samples, from [a rare cypress, Fokienia hodginsii, in] southern Vietnam, enabled him to take the climate record back much further.

"We realized we have trees that are more than 1,000 years old. And we started seeing these big, giant periods of drought that took place around that time. And as I started to get more interested in the history of Southeast Asia I realized that that was the time of the collapse of Angkor."

The research team used what are called core samples from hundreds of trees throughout Southeast Asia. Using a hollow tube, they drill into the tree and extract a 5-mm wide cylinder that shows each ring starting with the most recent, just under the bark.

By comparing rings from different trees and with other historical data, you can often identify particular rings with the exact calendar year that they grew.

"We were able to match up the narrow and wide rings exactly so that we can assign the exact calendar dates to the exact rings of every tree. In the tropics, a lot of tree species don't even form rings that we can see. So to be able to get a tree that, first of all, has very clear rings that we're able to visually match to each other and then go through and produce these long records was remarkable."

The rings tell a story of decades of drought, which dried up Angkor's extensive water works, followed by monsoons that overwhelmed the 'hydraulic city.'

But the climate shifts weren't the only factor at work in the decline of the Khmer capital, which was a long time coming. Buckley quotes his co-author, Daniel Penny, as saying the climate was the "final nail in a coffin that took about 200 years to build," as Angkor and the Khmer empire were being buffeted by political, social, and economic stress.

"The times were changing, [shifting] toward an economic system that was taking them more to the coastline so they could trade with Chinamore readily. I believe that drought was one of the things that piled onto the pile of things that were affecting the Angkorians at that time. And it may very well have provided that final impetus to really kind of kill off this inland agricultural system."

The idea of a civilization being pushed over the edge by climate change resonates in the modern world, of course, and Brendan Buckley says his research on 13th century Southeast Asia has some lessons for us today.

"We probably have more abilities to adapt than they did at the time. But one of our biggest problems is a very large agrarian based population in places like India or Southeast Asia. And it's very hard to adapt to that giant population being in an area that is likely to be hit by these kinds of problems. The other thing is that rising sea level, which we're already seeing the evidence of in places like Ho Chi Minh City is a great example. So this is becoming an actual problem that we can see in real time on the ground. I guess that remains to be seen how we're going to cope with it."

Prof. Brendan Buckley's paper on climate's contribution to the demise of Angkor in present-day Cambodia was published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Mekong nations join forces on shrinking river

April 5, 2010
RACHEL O'BRIEN
AFP

Southeast Asian nations on the Mekong River pledged Monday to step up cooperation over the shrinking waterway amid fears China's dams are exacerbating a severe regional drought.

Leaders of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam -- the member-states of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) -- convened in the Thai coastal town of Hua Hin to discuss management of the river, on which more than 60 million people rely.

"Without good and careful management of the Mekong river as well as its natural resources, this great river will not survive," Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said as he opened the summit, the first in the MRC's history.

"The Mekong river is being threatened by serious problems arising from both the unsustainable use of water and the effects of climate change," he warned.

China -- itself suffering the worst drought in a century in its southwest, with more than 24 million people short of drinking water -- attended the talks as a dialogue partner of the MRC, as did military-ruled Myanmar.

Vice Foreign Minister Song Tao led the Beijing delegation to the summit, which comes after river levels in northern Thailand and Laos hit five-decade lows, according to the commission.

The situation has alarmed communities along the Mekong, which is the world's largest inland fishery and vital for the region's transport, drinking water and irrigation.

The abnormally low levels have raised fears over already endangered species such as the Mekong giant catfish.

The Chinese arrived Sunday and met for talks with MRC countries seeking more information about the economic power's hydropower dams, seen by activists as being behind the current water shortage.

"Sharing knowledge and data is among the crucial measures to mitigate problems... in each country as well as helping alleviate poverty in the region as a whole," Abhisit said.

He thanked Beijing, which has eight planned or existing dams on the mainstream river, for recently agreeing to share data from two stations during this dry season.

"I also hope that such genuine effort of cooperation would become more regular," said Abhisit.

China insists extreme dry conditions have caused the current ebbing flows -- a claim backed up by the MRC's own analysis.

MRC member-states ratified a Hua Hin declaration Monday committing to sustainable development of the river basin.

The MRC has warned that the health of the Mekong Basin and the river's eco-systems could be threatened by proposed dams and expanding populations.

Thailand has invoked a tough security law and has deployed thousands of troops in Hua Hin to ensure protesters do not disrupt the summit, in light of mass anti-government "Red Shirt" rallies in Bangkok since mid-March.

Abhisit arrived at the summit Sunday from a tense Bangkok, where tens of thousands of red-shirted supporters of fugitive ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra have paralysed the capital's tourist heartland, seeking snap elections.

Mekong Nations Call for China Assistance Amid Drought

By Daniel Ten Kate

April 5 (Bloomberg) -- Downstream nations along Asia’s Mekong River hailed China’s move to share data on reservoir levels and called for more cooperation as a severe drought heightens concerns that its dams have distorted water flows.

The dry weather has reduced Mekong water levels to their lowest in three decades, affecting more than 60 million people in the river’s lower basin, an area larger than the U.S. state of Texas. China agreed on March 25 to share water-level data at two dams to ease pressure from nations downstream, including Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

“I would like to thank the Chinese government for this valuable cooperation,” Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said today in an opening speech at the first-ever summit of Mekong nations in Hua Hin, Thailand. “I also hope that such genuine effort of cooperation would become more regular.”

The drought has raised scrutiny about management of the river as governments aim to harness its potential to provide food and generate electricity. Mainstream dams constitute “the single largest threat” to the Mekong’s wetlands, home to the world’s largest inland fishery, the Mekong River Commission said in an April 2 report.

China’s capacity to improve water flows is “limited” as the river’s low levels are mainly due to a shortage of rainfall, said Jeremy Bird, chief executive officer of the commission, a regional body that advises governments on managing the basin. Increased flows from China’s dams in January did help alleviate the severity of the water shortage, he said.

‘Fluctuating Unnaturally’

“The water in the Mekong River is not only drying up, but the water levels are fluctuating unnaturally,” Pianporn Deetes, an activist with environmental group International Rivers, said at a seminar at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok last week. “Since the first dam was built, local people have seen a loss of fish catch and the destruction of aquatic resources.”

China and Myanmar, dialogue partners of the Mekong River Commission, both sent envoys to join the prime ministers of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam at today’s meeting.

The meeting “serves as an important wake-up call that the problems and challenges being faced by the Mekong River and states need to be addressed at the highest level,” Abhisit said. “The Mekong River is being threatened by serious problems arising from both the unsustainable use of water and the effects of climate change.”

Chinese officials have defended the country’s water management, stressing that it is also suffering from drought. Most rivers in southern China are at about 40 percent of normal levels and more than 600 have dried up completely, leaving almost 20 million people short of drinking water, said Chen Mingzhong, a ministry of water resources official.

‘Upstream Country’

“As an upstream country with a high sense of responsibility, we do nothing harming the interest of riparian countries downstream,” Chen said in a presentation to counterparts at the summit in Thailand. China contributes about 13.5 percent of water flows to the lower Mekong.

China has pledged to strengthen communication with downstream countries, inviting them to a training program on flood management in June. Floods on the 2,700-mile river in August 2008 claimed lives in Thailand and Laos.

China has completed four dams to date and another four are planned before 2025 for a total of 15,200 megawatts, enough to provide electricity for 75 million people. Another 11 dams are in various stages of development downstream in the lower Mekong that would deliver the same amount of electricity.

Not All Bad

“The Mekong has become one of the most active regions in the world for hydropower development,” the Mekong River Commission said in its State of the Basin report issued every five to seven years. The dams will “effectively stop” river fish migration, “leading to reduced production, substantial economic cost and social deprivation,” the report said.

“You cannot say all dams are bad,” said Thanin Bumrungsap, vice president of Italian-Thai Development Pcl, Thailand’s biggest construction company. Thai farmers, for instance, “couldn’t grow rice two or three times a year as they do now if there were no dams, no irrigation systems.”

Rice production in Thailand, the world’s largest exporter, may decline as drier-than-normal weather curbs yields. Officials have blamed the drought on the El Nino weather phenomenon, characterized by warmer sea-surface temperatures across the equatorial Pacific that can cut rainfall in Asia.

China’s first upstream dam became operational in 1993, with subsequent openings in 2003 and 2008. The country started sharing data on rainy season reservoir levels in 2002. Last month was the first time it shared data in the dry season.

Fish Catch

In the northern Thai province of Chiang Rai, the closest point in the country downstream from China, fishermen say their catches have declined in recent years. River levels can change by a few meters per day without warning, an occurrence they blame on the upstream dams.

“In the past few years it’s been hard to catch a lot of fish because of China’s dams,” said fisherman Sompon Kumla, who makes about 3,000 baht ($97) per month, down from 10,000 baht in previous years. “The government needs to talk to the Chinese and tell them to release the water.”

--With reporting by Supunnabul Suwannakij in Bangkok. Editors: John Brinsley, Patrick Harrington.

To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Ten Kate in Bangkok at dtenkate@bloomberg.net