China and the Cascading Geopolitics of Lower Mekong Dams

Philip Hirsch
The Asia Pacific Journal, Japan Focus

Much has been written on the downstream impact of China’s dams on the Lancang-Mekong River, which flows through or along the borders of five other countries after exiting China. Most of the discussion relates to the hydrological impact of impounding water in the eight dams along the mainstream Lancang Jiang in Yunnan Province. Particular concern surrounds the recently completed Xiaowan Dam and the recently approved construction of the Nuozhadu Dam, each of which is of a scale to impound quantities of water that can affect river hydrology throughout the basin. The Lancang Cascade, as it is termed, has caused considerable controversy in downstream countries, most notably during the 2008 floods and the 2010 drought. Both the floods and the droughts were blamed by many in Thailand, and some in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, on China’s actions. Recent articles on the downstream implications of altered river hydrology and the need for China to be less disingenuous in its public relations over the issue show the confluence of river hydrology and geopolitics in an international river basin such as the Lancang-Mekong.

The Lancang Dams have major implications for downstream hydrology, with the potential to exacerbate or ameliorate both floods and droughts and to impact on fisheries and other bases for the livelihoods of downstream users of the river. Cumulatively, they have the potential to increase dry season flows by 30 to 50 per cent in the reach of the Mekong River above the Lao capital Vientiane. However, there are also more indirect implications of the Lancang dams that receive less attention despite having a bearing on highly controversial current projects such as the proposed Xayabouri Dam in Laos.

China assures neighbours over Brahmaputra, Mekong dams

BEIJING, November 18, 2010
Ananth Krishnan
The Hindu

The Chinese government on Thursday mounted a defence of its dams on the Brahmaputra and Mekong rivers, assuring its seven neighbours, including India, who have voiced concerns about the projects that downstream flows will remain unaffected.

Besides India, which, this week, raised the construction of a 510 MW dam on the Brahmaputra in talks with the Chinese leadership, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia have recently expressed similar concerns over eight dams being built on the Mekong River.

Referring to the Mekong dams, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said on Thursday that China took into account the considerations of its lower riparian, or downstream-lying, neighbours in planning the projects.

“China has always fully considered the concerns of the countries in the lower reaches of the Mekong River in its water resources exploitation,” he said at a briefing.

Amid concerns that the dams had worsened drought situations in the Mekong region, Cambodia’s Prime Minister said on Wednesday that the drought was caused by natural weather conditions, and not by China’s dams.

“That the Mekong River, or other rivers, have lower or higher levels of water depends on the rain,” he was quoted as saying by AFP, following a meeting with leaders from Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar. “So please don’t be too extreme about the environment and don’t say hydropower dams cause water levels to drop in the lower Mekong. If you think that, it is a mistake.”

While China has stressed that its eight dams would help, and not hinder, flood management, the Mekong River Commission – represented by Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia – has called on China to share more data and be more transparent about its plans. China has been reluctant to join the MRC.

In talks in Beijing this week, India voiced similar concerns, calling on China to continue sharing data regarding its plans for the Brahmaputra, or the Yarlung Tsangpo as it is known in Tibet. While India and China have set up a joint expert-level group to exchange hydrological data, the absence of a water-sharing treaty means the exchange of information is limited.

China has said that the dam on the Brahmaputra will not affect downstream flows, and it would not build a storage reservoir. “The river flow will not be stopped during construction,” Li Chaoyi, chief engineer of China Huaneng Group, which is the contractor for the project, told the official Xinhua news agency. “After it becomes operational, the water will flow downstream through water turbines and sluices, thereby not affecting the downstream water levels.”

The official Global Times newspaper reported that in China too, some environmental groups and some engineers had voiced concerns over the Brahmaputra dam. “The diversified fauna and flora there have evolved over tens of millions of years and will be damaged. Blocking the river may also overturn the balance of the region’s ecosystem,” said Wang Yongchen, of the Beijing-based Green Earth Volunteers.

The newspaper also quoted an engineer with the Sichuan bureau of Geological Exploration and Exploration of Mineral Resources warning that the dam “may not function well at a high altitude, where rivers are likely to be frozen for most of the year” and that the area was “subject to natural disasters such as earthquakes.”

Regardless of these concerns, construction of the dam started on November 12, following the damming of the river on November 8.

China Hydropower Dams in Mekong River Give Shocks to 60 Million

Bu Sonthana, right, sits with other Banmai villagers in Stung Treng Province in northern Cambodia. Photographer: Namas Bhojani/Bloomberg Markets via Bloomberg

A woman fishes in the Mekong River in Laos. Photographer: Namas Bhojani/Bloomberg Markets via Bloomberg

Oct 26, 2010
By Yoolim Lee
Bloomberg Markets Magazine

The Mekong River sparkles in the early morning sun as Somwang Prommin, a stocky fisherman wearing a worn-out black T-shirt and shorts, starts the motor of his boat. As the tiny craft glides on the river’s calm surface in the northeastern Thai district of Chiang Khong, Somwang points to a nearby riverbank. Three days ago, he says, the water levels there were 3 meters (10 feet) higher.

The Mekong, which translates roughly as “mother of the waters” in the Thai language, has become unpredictable since China started building hydropower dams and blasting the rapids upstream, says Somwang, 36, who’s been fishing for a living since he was 8.

In August 2008, there were devastating floods that reduced his catches and income, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its December 2010 issue. Early this year, he witnessed the most severe drought in his life.

Tens of millions of residents are experiencing similar currents of change along the 4,800-kilometer-long (2,980-mile- long) Mekong, which flows through six countries -- Southeast Asia’s longest river.

From its source in the Tibetan plateau, the river traverses China’s Yunnan province, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before pouring into the South China Sea.

Livelihood Threatened

The Mekong and its tributaries provide food, water and transportation to about 60 million people in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Their livelihood is now threatened as their governments turn to hydroelectric dams along the river to generate power and create revenue.

China, hungry for electricity to fuel its breakneck growth, has already built four hydropower dams on the Mekong, completing the first one in 1993 without consulting its downstream neighbors.

As it prepares to overtake Japan as the world’s second- largest economy this year, China wants to almost double its hydropower capacity to at least 300 gigawatts by 2020 by building four more dams on the Mekong, called Lancang Jiang, or Turbulent River, in Chinese. That would give China 15 gigawatts of power on the river.

Those projects will have a disastrous impact on Cambodia and Vietnam, says Milton Osborne, a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney and a historian who wrote “The Mekong: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future” (Allen & Unwin, 2006).

‘Selfish Lack of Concern’

“What the Chinese are doing shows a selfish lack of concern for the serious damage their dams will ultimately do to the downstream countries,” Osborne says.

Downriver, other countries are pursuing their own objectives. Communist Laos has proposed building 10 hydropower plants on the mainstream of the Mekong that will export electricity and transform the nation -- one of Asia’s poorest, with a per-capita gross domestic product of $886 -- into what the government calls “the battery of Southeast Asia.”

Cambodia plans to build two dams near the border with Laos. In all, 12 dams are planned by the countries below China along the mainstream of the Mekong.

More than 130 hydropower projects are either operating or projected for the river and its tributaries, according to the Mekong River Commission, the intergovernmental group known as the MRC.

Competition to exploit -- or conserve -- the limited water resources is creating tensions among China, the countries of the MRC and international environmental organizations.

‘Disaster for Fisheries’

“Dams would spell disaster for Mekong fisheries and ecology, a risk that millions of people in the region cannot afford to take,” says Aviva Imhof, campaigns director of International Rivers, a Berkeley, California-based nonprofit group that aims to protect rivers and human rights. “The Mekong mainstream should be off-limits to the region’s dam builders.”

The struggle to develop the Mekong mirrors those around the world where water resources are becoming increasingly scarce. The United Nations estimated last year that almost half the world’s population will live in areas of “water stress” by 2030 as a result of climate change, population growth and increased demand for food, energy and biofuels.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- a group set up by the UN Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization -- says the Mekong’s delta is one of the three on the planet most vulnerable to the impact of climate change, including rising sea levels, saline intrusion and storms that erode the coastline and undermine its ecosystem.

Mekong Delta

Building dams will worsen those effects, says Dekila Chungyalpa, director of the Greater Mekong Program at the World Wildlife Fund in Washington.

Building the proposed 12 mainstream dams with a total installed capacity of 14,697 megawatts would generate as much as $3.7 billion of annual revenue, according to the MRC’s report on the environmental impact of the mainstream dams in the lower Mekong, published this month. As much as 31 percent of the money would accrue to the governments of Cambodia and Laos.

Still, the dams would transform 55 percent of the downstream river into a reservoir, making it into a series of impoundments with slow water movement. The report, prepared by an independent consulting firm in Australia, recommended that MRC delay any decision on constructing the dams for 10 years.

The dams “have the potential to create transboundary impacts and international tensions,” the report says. “One dam across the lower Mekong mainstream commits the river to irrevocable change.”

‘Killing the Tree’

“It’s like cutting the trunk of a tree,” says Richard Cronin, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Stimson Center, an independent research institute in Washington. “It will kill the tree.”

Chinese officials say they are aiding the environment, not harming it. Building dams “is an important step taken by the Chinese government to vigorously develop renewable and clean energy and contribute to the global endeavor to counter climate change,” Song Tao, the country’s vice minister of foreign affairs told a summit meeting of the MRC in April.

China aims to generate 15 percent of its power from non- fossil-fuel sources by 2020, up from about 8 percent now.

The most-controversial projects are the 4,200-megawatt Xiaowan dam in China, the tallest arch dam in the world, and the 1,260-megawatt Xayabouri dam in northern Laos, the first project proposed by the Laotian government to be built in the lower Mekong region.

Controversial Dams

The 240-megawatt Don Sahong, located in the Khone Falls area in southern Laos and 1 kilometer upstream of the Cambodian border, would block the area’s most important fish migration route, undermining fisheries-based livelihoods throughout the basin, environmentalists say.

“The Mekong is very much an interconnected system,” says Jeremy Bird, chief executive officer of the MRC in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. “If you intervene in one area, you see consequences somewhere else,” says Bird, whose office overlooks the river.

Spanning 14 kilometers at its widest point, the Mekong is home to more than 1,200 different species of fish -- making it second in biodiversity only to the Amazon. They include endangered species such as the Mekong giant catfish and the Irrawaddy freshwater dolphin.

The lower Mekong basin is the world’s largest inland source of fish, accounting for almost 20 percent of the world’s freshwater fish yield, worth as much as $9.4 billion a year, according to the WorldFish Center, an international nonprofit research group based in Malaysia.

Source of Protein

Fish from Tonle Sap, a lake and tributary, and the Mekong, for example, provide more than 70 percent of the protein in the diet of Cambodia’s 15 million people.

Following the Mekong’s path downriver from northern Thailand to Laos and Cambodia by boat and car, it’s evident how everyday life is entwined with the river’s natural rhythm.

Mekong waters replenish crops, livestock and households and are used in recreation and transportation. People catch fish by the riverbank or on a narrow long-tail boat by using ubiquitous handmade nets or fish traps made of bamboo; women wash dishes and clothes; children swim, laugh and play. They don’t use any bait; they rest the net on the bottom for just a few minutes before scooping the fish that pass by.

In September in central Laos, a three-day festival is being held along the river to celebrate the annual dragon boat racing. Twenty men wearing bright yellow, orange, red, green and blue shirts row each of the five dragon boats.

Beer Lao, Algae Snacks

While loudspeakers blast local pop songs, children watch the race and men and women drink Beer Lao and munch on snacks of dried algae.

Until the 20th century, the Mekong River remained largely unchanged from the days when it was explored by the French Mekong expedition. Led by Francis Garnier, the team traveled up the river from Vietnam to southern Yunnan in 1866 and 1867.

Plans to develop hydropower along the river have ebbed and flowed since 1954, after Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia gained independence from France.

In the late 1950s, studies by the UN and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation proposed building dams that would help control floods, irrigate crops and improve navigation. Those plans were never carried out because the Mekong became the setting of the Vietnam War.

Greater Mekong Program

After the war ended in 1975, political turbulence in the region prevented any dam projects from proceeding until 1992, when the Asian Development Bank launched the Greater Mekong Subregion Program. Endorsed by the region’s governments, the program envisioned building a railway system, roads and bridges to connect the more than 300 million people who live around the Mekong. When the Asian financial crisis struck in 1997, those plans were halted.

Now the region is again growing rapidly, led by China, which expanded 9.1 percent in 2009 and an estimated 10.5 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. That’s increasing pressure to develop hydropower resources.

“Water represents one of the great diplomatic and development opportunities of our time,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at a speech in March marking World Water Day. Last year, Clinton established the so-called Lower Mekong Initiative as a way to address regional environmental challenges. The U.S. government plans to spend $22 million this year on environmental programs in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.

Record Drought

This year’s record drought has heightened tensions among the nations along the river. In April, prime ministers from the MRC countries held their first summit.

Chinese officials, who also attended the meeting, held at Thailand’s beach resort town of Hua Hin, told the conference that China, too, is 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, Chen Mingzhong, an official at the Water Resources Ministry, told the conference.

“As an upstream country with a high sense of responsibility, we do nothing harming the interest of riparian countries downstream,” Chen said. Chinese officials declined to comment for this article.

China has taken steps to strengthen its cooperation with the MRC in recent years, Bird says. At the height of the drought in March, China agreed for the first time to provide the MRC with dry-season data on water levels and volume from its two hydrological stations. It already had been sharing its data during the flood season since 2002.

Chinese Dams

In June, China, the MRC’s dialogue partner since 1996, invited officials from the four nations and the MRC Secretariat to visit the Jing Hong and Xiaowan dams in Yunnan province.

China says its dams are beneficial because they can store water for the dry season and control flooding in the rainy season.

The Mekong has three seasons. The cool, dry period runs from November to February. March and April are the hottest months, when Thailand, Laos and Cambodia celebrate the New Year.

Then the wet season begins. With the May monsoon the Mekong fills, expanding Cambodia’s Tonle Sap, or Great Lake, to more than five times its dry-season size of 2,700 square kilometers (1,040 square miles). By July, the Khone Falls in southern Laos -- the widest waterfall in the world -- is in full flood, turning its crystal-blue waters to muddy brown.

Vietnam’s Rice Basket

After September, the floodwaters begin to recede. The river flows into the Mekong Delta, allowing Vietnam to have three crops of rice a year.

Like the fishermen in northern Thailand who are experiencing the impact of the Chinese dams upstream, residents in the northern Cambodian province of Stung Treng are facing the consequences of a dam built in a neighboring country: Vietnam.

Bu Sonthana, who fishes and farms in the village of Banmai, says the local Mekong tributary started fluctuating erratically in 1996. Since then, flooding of the Sesan River has destroyed crops and the riverbank gardens where her village of 97 households grows tomatoes and tobacco during the dry season. Bu Sonthana, 59, says it was only in 2001 that her community learned Vietnam was damming the river 80 kilometers upstream.

By then, the $1 billion, 720-megawatt Yali Falls Dam had commenced full operation, according to Ian Baird, an assistant geography professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has carried out research on transboundary impact assessment in the Sesan River basin. MRC data show hourly water level changes in the Sesan River of as much as 1 meter in January 2003.

Unpredictable Floods

Rainy-season flooding, to which communities have long been attuned, has been unusually severe and unpredictable since Vietnam began building the dam, Bu Sonthana says.

“It has become more difficult to catch the fish and farm,” she says, sitting on the dirt floor in front of her wooden shack with a dozen family members and neighbors. “We didn’t mind the floods before because they brought us a lot of fish and we knew the water would recede naturally. Now it takes many more days for the water to recede.”

Vietnamese officials didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story.

“The governments say they are building dams to alleviate poverty,” Baird says. “If you ask the local people, they don’t feel any richer. So whose poverty are they alleviating?”

Nam Theun 2 Dam

International agencies such as the ADB and the World Bank say Laos’s Nam Theun 2 hydropower dam, which started operating in March, is a model for how such projects can help eradicate poverty.

“It is probably the most scrutinized hydropower project to date,” Bird says. “To what extent the lessons from the Nam Theun 2 project will be incorporated to others -- that’s the real test because it shouldn’t be seen as an isolated project.”

The model was long in the making. The Laotian government first targeted Nam Theun 2 and invited the World Bank to participate in the 1980s.

Some 27 Thai and Western banks and export credit agencies financed the project, which has cost $1.3 billion, slightly more than estimated, the World Bank says. The government formed a joint venture to operate the dam, Nam Theun 2 Power Co., whose shareholders include Electricite de France SA, which owns 35 percent, and Electricity Generating Public Co. of Thailand, with 25 percent.

In 2003, Thailand’s state-run utility EGAT agreed to buy power from the 1,070-megawatt dam.

Government Revenue

In June, the Laotian government received $600,000, the first revenue from exporting the dam’s electricity, according to a World Bank report. The government is set to earn an average of $80 million per year during the first 25 years of the dam’s operation, the report says.

About 6,200 villagers were resettled to make way for the reservoir the dam created. Some say their lives have improved. In Nong Boua, 60 kilometers from the dam, 63 households now live in wooden houses built on stilts along the road compared with shacks they lived in before with no roads.

“It’s nice to have a school and a clinic,” says a villager named Khammai. “But it’s become more difficult to irrigate the land.”

Downstream from the dam, where about 120,000 people live, villagers tell a different story. In Veun Sananh, a village of 76 families, a 45-year-old villager who only identified himself by his first name, Kham, says about 35 adults and children suffered from skin rashes after fishing in the river.

Officials from Nam Theun 2 Power visited the village in June with antihistamine creams.

Skin Rashes

In the nearby Boeung Xe village, a 54-year-old villager named Boun says 13 of the 350 people in his village had a skin irritation this year after bathing in the river.

Nam Theun 2 Power has been investigating the skin rash complaints and has brought in dermatologists and other experts to help, according to a company spokesman, Aiden Glendinning. About 4 to 5 percent of the total population of the affected areas suffered from rashes during the peak period of May, and about 20 cases remained as of mid-October, he says.

The company is also monitoring complaints about the fish catch, he says. The dam has increased the flow of water during the dry season.

“Some villagers who are used to catching fish by wading in shallow areas during the dry season will now find this practice more difficult,” he says. “Other people who fish from boats have reported increased fish catch.”

Cambodia

About 700 kilometers south of Nam Theun 2, the Mekong reaches Phnom Penh before flowing into the Mekong Delta and then spilling into the South China Sea. A bustling city of 2 million people dotted with temples and buildings from the French colonial era, the Cambodian capital, too, depends on the river for its livelihood.

“I’ve vaguely heard of some dams, but no one is really talking about it here,” says Pich Pov, 28, who operates a small cruise boat and lives aboard it with his family. “The Mekong is my mother. Everyone I know was born on this river, and she provides us with food and shelter.”

If China and its neighbors carry out all their dam-building plans, the Mekong may cease to be the nurturing mother of the waters for Pich Pov and millions more and instead be a turbulent river.

To contact the reporter on this story: Yoolim Lee in Singapore at yoolim@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Laura Colby at lcolby@bloomberg.net

China flexes hydropower muscle

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

When Xiaowan hydropower station sputtered to life this week in China’s south-west Yunnan province, the Asian giant was able to lay claim to having the world’s largest hydropower capacity.

BANGKOK, Aug 27, 2010 (IPS) - After all the turbines in the Xiaowan hydropower station sputtered to life this week in China’s south-west Yunnan province, the Asian giant was able to lay claim to having the world’s largest hydropower capacity.

A "great leap forward" was how Liu Qi, deputy director of the National Energy Administration, described the expanding hydropower muscle of the country, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

"The rapid development of the hydropower industry is of great significance to optimising China’s energy structure and reducing carbon emissions," Sun Yucai, executive vice chairman of the China Electricity Council, said in the same report.

The 700,000-kilowatt scheme of the Xiaowan power station is expected to push China’s installed hydropower capacity to 200 million kilowatts, Xinhua reported. The country’s second largest hydropower project, which cost 5.86 billion U.S. dollars, can "produce 19 billion KW hours of electricity every year, it added.

This power station will receive water from another showpiece of Chinese power: the Xiaowan dam, the world’s tallest double-arch dam with a storage capacity of close to 15 billion cubic metres.

The Xiaowan is the fourth dam that the Chinese have built out among a planned eight cascades of dams in the upper part of the Mekong River - which the Chinese call the Lancang - that flows through the mountainous Yunnan terrain. The Xiaowan Dam began impounding the Mekong's waters in October 2009, nearly two decades after the Manwan, the first among these dams, started to harness the waters of the 4,660-kilometre-long river.

But China’s celebration of its dam-building feats, coming nearly 100 years after it built its first hydropower station near Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan, will not be shared by countries in the lower stretches of the Mekong, say activists.

Many downstream communities have been reporting erratic water levels in the Mekong and blame this on China’s construction of dams on the Lancang.

Following drops to the river’s lowest levels in 50 years, green groups and sections of the media blamed the Chinese dams – particularly the Xiaowan – for affecting the livelihood of riverine villages in Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.

A Chinese government effort in March to explain that these were due to a severe drought did little to ease the worries of villagers who depend ed on the river’s ecosystem and fish catch for an income.

Fishing is the main source of livelihood for the 60 million people living in the Mekong basin, and the annual income from fisheries in the lower Mekong is between two to three billion U.S. dollars.

"Many people living in the lower Mekong region will still believe that the filling of the Xiaowan dam reservoir contributes to a drop in the water level during the dry season," says Ame Trandem, Mekong campaigner for International Rivers, an U.S.-based environmental lobby. "It will remain so until the Chinese make public all the information related to its dam operations."

China’s offer of some information about its dams to the Mekong River Commission (MRC) is insufficient, she told IPS. "China has been taking positive steps to be cooperative by releasing some details. But it still needs to be willing to be more accountable and transparent, since local communities have not seen the information given to the MRC."

The MRC, an inter-governmental organisation whose members include Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, says China’s dams do not have the capacity to influence water levels all the way downstream, because much of the Mekong’s waters come from lower basin countries. "The MRC doesn’t anticipate that the Xiaowan dam will have a significant influence downstream on the lower Mekong," says MRC spokesman Damian Kean, echoing views that the Vientiane-based organisation aired when the Chinese dams were under fire early this year.

But "later on, as more and more dams come online, you are going to see a greater impact," he told IPS from the Lao capital. "All the lower Mekong countries want to see the right decision being made in this sector."

At the same time, China is well aware that the impact of its dams on the Mekong – which flows from the Tibetan plateau, through Yunnan, then passes Burma before snaking its way through the basin to empty out into the South China Sea in southern Vietnam – is not limited to the countries that share South-east Asia’s largest body of water.

Since July, Beijing has also had to contend with the U.S. government, which has been reviving Washington’s involvement in the region after the disengagement by the administration of George W Bush.

In fact, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s push for greater cooperation between Washington and the Mekong basin countries during a visit to Thailand in July 2009 spurred warnings from U.S. experts about the danger that China’s hydropower ambitions pose to other Mekong countries.

China’s dam plans will turn the Mekong into a "Chinese River", warned Richard Cronin, the South-east Asian head of the U.S.-based Stimson Centre, in Bangkok this month.

In an August article, the Washington-based ‘Foreign Policy’ publication urged the U.S. government to step into the fray. "Washington’s willingness to get involved in the Mekong River dispute could create an almost perfect counterweight to China’s strategy," wrote John Lee, visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C. For now, Beijing’s response to growing U.S. criticism is to pursue ‘soft power’ diplomacy, says a regional analyst. "China wants to assure governments in the lower Mekong that they have nothing to fear."

Dams or Drought: An Interview with Milton Osborne

Milton Osborne

2010-08-24
Radio Free Asia

An expert discusses China's influence on its southern neighbors along the Mekong River.

Chinese dams on the upper reaches of the Mekong River are sometimes thought to be responsible for lowered water levels in countries downstream. Here, Australian historian, author, and Southeast Asian affairs consultant Milton Osborne addresses this question in an interview.

April 2010 marked a new low for water levels in the Mekong River. Communities in Chiang Saen and Chiang Khong in northern Thailand who spoke with RFA attributed receding waters to the filling of the Xiaowan dam in Yunnan province, China. We asked Milton Osborne whether there could be a direct correlation between the new Chinese mega-dam and the Mekong downstream in northern Thailand.

“I’ve not been to see the dam. And indeed that’s one of the problems about any discussion at the moment—the fact that neither the Southeast Asian governments—the Mekong Basin governments—nor nongovernmental organization representatives have been able to go and see the dams in person. So my view has to depend on what various people tell me.

"Chief executive officer of the Mekong River Commission Jeremy Bird’s judgment is that the dam, the Xiaowan dam, is not to blame for the low water levels. Since July of last year, we’ve had a really horrendous drought. And that’s really the issue.

“People who have been closely associated with the Mekong over many years, both on the Mekong River Commission and as independent scientists, generally endorse Jeremy Bird’s view. But we simply don’t have the data one way or another to be sure. So it is still an open question. But the best opinion is that the dam probably is not to blame, and that what we’re seeing is a natural event."

Many working on Mekong issues in the region say that downstream countries don’t know what’s happening upstream. And as China and Burma have yet to join the Mekong River Commission, there is no formal structure in place for sharing river information. Is there a lack of information sharing in the region?

“Of course, the sharing of information is terribly important, and the Chinese have not done themselves any favors by being hesitant about sharing information in the past. Some two or three years ago, they agreed for the first time to share information during the flooding period of the year. Previously, they’d give information on flood levels within their own area where the Mekong flows. And they have now agreed to give information, at least for the moment, in the dry season too.

"But there’s another way in which the Chinese have not done themselves any favors, and that is that they have insisted on saying—at least until very recently—‘We can’t be blamed for what’s happening, (a) because there’s been a drought, and (b) because only 12.5 or 13 or 14 percent of the water that flows into the Mekong comes from China.’

“I saw an interesting example of how this particular statistic is used, shortly before I set off overseas in April. At the Lowy Institute we had a visit from a number of very senior Chinese advisers to the Chinese Foreign Ministry. And this figure of only 12 or only 14 percent of the water flowing into the Mekong was trotted out by the very senior members of the delegation. But of course it’s a nonsense. And I was bold enough to point that out to them, although I don’t think I used that word.

“The point is that during the dry season, upwards of 40 percent of the water in the Mekong at Vientiane is water that’s come from China. And even as far down as the Tonle Sap lake in Cambodia, somewhere around about 10 percent of the water in the lake is water that has come from China. So it is not clear whether or not the Chinese fully appreciate just how misleading their statements have been, or whether the people who make these statements in relation to the dams in China are not really attuned to ecological and environmental issues, because they’re all hydrologists, water engineers. Issues of ecology downstream are things that they really don’t understand.”

Your association with the region goes back 51 years. Please tell us about this.

“I was posted to Cambodia as a young Australian diplomat in 1959. I knew very little about Cambodia or the Mekong River at that time, and I came to know the nature of the region in the two and a half years I first spent living in Phnom Penh. I sailed on the river, I swam in it, I water-skiied on it. I didn’t know very much about its character in terms of the environment and ecology. But I knew it was essential to the people of the countries through which it flowed. I was very much aware of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam and the enormous production of agriculture that came from that region.

“When I decided after my posting in Phnom Penh that I was probably not cut out to be a diplomat, I went off to do a Ph.D. at Cornell University to look at the impact of French colonialism in Cambodia and southern Vietnam. In the course of the study I did in archives in Paris and Phnom Penh and Saigon, I came across the story of the exploration of the Mekong by the French Mekong expedition in the middle 1860s. And this led me to writing River Road to China, published in 1975. I came to study the Mekong as much as a political analyst and historian in subsequent years. I decided in the 1990s that the river deserved to have its own biography written.

“In the 1990s, I became aware of what was going on in China, really for the first time: that from the 1980s onwards China was building dams on its section of the river. Most people don’t realize that the Mekong, although it’s referred to as Southeast Asia’s largest river, flows through China for 44 percent of its length. The more I read about what the Chinese were doing with dams, the more I became aware that dams were a fundamental issue for the future of the Mekong.

"The Chinese dams—three completed, the fourth one at Xiaowan close to being completed, and others on the drawing board or under construction—these are going to have a long-term effect on the Mekong. It may not be for five or ten years before that effect becomes significant, but it will have a significant effect—not least because it’s going to alter the flow pattern of the river. There will be fewer really big floods, and there’ll be more water in the river during the dry season.

“Now, at first glance or first hearing, that sounds like a good idea. Floods, many people would think, are a bad thing. In fact they’re not. Provided they’re not horrendous floods, they’re very good things. They bring nutrients down the stream, they flush out pests from paddy fields, they play a very important role. The flood pulse, as it currently exists, plays a very important part in the spawning of fish in the river. So in the long term, the Chinese dams are going to have some very significant negative effects.

“There’s the added and significant worry that the governments in Vientiane and Phnom Penh are talking about building their own dams on the main stream of the river, where none currently exist below China. The really big concern there is that these will interrupt the migratory fish patterns which play such an important part in feeding the populations of both countries in the lower Mekong Basin. Just to take one example, nearly 80 percent, or some would say over 80 percent, of the animal protein intake of the Cambodian population comes from fish taken out of the Mekong and its associated river systems, including the Cambodian great lake.”

China Goes for Friendly Giant Role in Mekong

Analysis by Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, June 14, 2010 (IPS) - The Mekong River is steadily emerging as a testing ground for public diplomacy, Chinese style. Beijing, it appears, wants to reach out to its southern neighbours who share the river more as a friendly giant than an imposing bully.

An unprecedented move to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding two of four dams on the upper stretches of the river that snakes through southern China is only the latest in a diplomatic shift towards openness taking shape since mid-March.

On Jun. 7, senior government officials from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam were offered their first glimpse of the newly built Xiaowan dam and the older Jing Hong dam as part of a fact-finding tour. It was a groundbreaking journey into the mountainous terrain of China’s Yunnan province that had, till this month, been forbidden territory to officials from the Mekong River Basin countries.

The welcome mat was rolled out by Beijing in early April during the first summit of the Mekong River countries, which also include Burma (or Myanmar), in addition to the four river basin countries and China. That summit in the Thai resort town of Hua Hin was to mark the 15th anniversary of the 1995 Mekong Agreement, which paved the way for the creation of the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an inter-governmental body of the four lower Mekong countries tasked to manage and develop the basin area.

"The Chinese government indicated at the summit that they would like to be more open with governments in the lower Mekong countries," Damian Kean, an MRC spokesman, told IPS from his headquarters in Vientiane. "It was keen to address the concerns of the lower basin countries."

March marked a noticeable turning point in China shedding its secretive policies about its designs on the Mekong River, which begins its 4,660- kilometre long journey from the Tibetan plateau, heads through Yunnan, then passes Burma before snaking its way through the basin to empty out into the South China Sea in southern Vietnam.

What prompted this move was the withering criticism China’s four completed dams (of a cascade of eight planned on the upper Mekong) came under as the river dried up in the basin, hitting a low not seen in the past 50 years. Among the affected were the 60 million people living in the basin, who depend on fishing in the Mekong for their livelihood.

Thailand was the staging area for Beijing’s offer of an olive branch. After all, it was from this South-east Asian country that most of the anti-dam criticism by environmental and grassroots activists emerged. Groups like Save the Mekong Coalition, a Bangkok-based network, declared that the "changes to the Mekong River’s daily hydrology and sediment load since the early 1990s have already been linked to the operation of the (Chinese) dam cascade."

To calm such opposition, Chen Dehai, a Chinese diplomat from the Bangkok embassy, held a press conference in March, breaking China’s silence about the dams that had prevailed since the Manwan, the first of the Chinese dams in the upper Mekong, came on line in 1992.

The Chinese dams were not the reason for the record drop in the Mekong’s water level during this year’s dry season, Chen told reporters in the Thai capital. "The average annual runoff volume of the Lancang River at the outbound point (of China) is approximately 64 billion cubic metres, accounting for only 13.5 percent of the Mekong’s run off volume at the (South China) sea outlet," he said, using the Chinese name for the Mekong.

This view was echoed by another Chinese diplomat in a rare appearance at a discussion about the Mekong held on Apr. 1 at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. The Xiaowan, the largest of the dams, had begun to impound water since July 2009, but such operations had stopped at the beginning of the dry season, Yao Wen, the first secretary to the Chinese mission in Bangkok, told participants at the ‘Public Forum on Sharing the Mekong River’.

During his visit to Bangkok in March, China’s Assistant Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue had reportedly offered reassuring words of friendship to its Mekong neighbours. "China would not do anything to damage mutual interest with neighbouring countries in the Mekong," Hu was reported to have told Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

"China has realised that its past approach of avoiding public engagement and public diplomacy with the lower Mekong countries has not worked," said Carl Middleton, Mekong programme coordinator for International Rivers, a U.S.- based environmental lobby.

Yet what seems lacking so far is a recognition by Beijing about its past errors in building four dams without consulting communities in the lower Mekong, Middleton told IPS. "People need to be compensated for the past errors."

The information about the dams that China is now willing to share with the lower Mekong countries and the MRC should be given to the communities in the lower Mekong, he added. "China needs to recognise that the Mekong is a shared river if regional peace and prosperity is to be achieved."

Achieving such regional peace is in Beijing’s interest for geo-political reasons, too, say analysts in the wake of new interest shown by the U.S. government to help manage and develop the Mekong river, which Washington lost interest in soon after its defeat during the U.S. war in Vietnam.

In mid-May, the MRC and the Mississippi River Commission inked their first deal for river management cooperation, confirming a plan that was unveiled last July by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the first-ever U.S.- Lower Mekong Ministerial Meeting in the southern Thai resort of Phuket.

During that visit, Clinton also signed the Treaty of Amity, a regional security deal that Beijing had already signed in 2003.

"China’s public diplomacy to reach out to the lower Mekong countries is a direct response to the U.S. signing the Treaty of Amity last year," said Kavi Chongkittavorn, a columnist on regional affairs for ‘The Nation’, an English- language daily in Thailand. "Beijing lost the advantage it had and cannot afford to have a negative image in the region."

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.

China's new dam seen as a water hog

Still under construction, the 66-story-high Xiaowan dam is scheduled to be completed this year. Other countries accuse China of stealing water.

By Calum MacLeod
USA TODAY

XIAOWAN, China — Wearing cloaks of tree bark strands, villagers from the Yi ethnic minority tend wheat terraces that cascade downhill toward the riverbank.

It is a scene unchanged for centuries, and it takes place in the shadow of a modern wall of concrete as high as a 66-story skyscraper that fills a gorge of the Lancang River in remote southwestern China.

The Xiaowan dam in the hills of Yunnan province is one of eight hydroelectric projects that will bring China?s industrial revolution to the impoverished region. It is by far the biggest of the four dams built so far that when done this year will be the biggest arch dam in the world.

But not all of the water is China's. The downstream half of the 2,700-mile-long river winds through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, where it is known as the Mekong.

In those countries, 60 million people rely on the Mekong not for electricity but for food, water and transport. They say the Chinese dams have reduced the river to its lowest levels in 50 years, and environmental groups accuse China of reducing the river flow downstream.

"Many local people and groups that monitor the dams in China point the finger at the dams as one of the main causes of the drying up of the river," says Srisuwan Kuankachorn, co-director of Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance, a Thailand-based environmental group.

Srisuwan says the countries are in a drought caused by China that has killed fisheries, withered croplands and dried up waterway transportation routes.

And the problems are likely to get worse with the completion of the Xiaowan dam. A United Nations report issued in May 2009 warned that China's eight planned dams, of which Xiaowan is the fourth, "may pose the single greatest threat to the river."

"The capability of the new dam is much bigger than the other three combined," Srisuwan says.

Little leverage for compliance

At the plush local offices of dam builders Huaneng Hydrolancang, senior engineer Zhao Meng is unruffled by the dire allegations. Zhao, 58, bears a scientist's conviction that the doubters are wrong.

"However much water arrives, the same amount will leave," Zhao says. "We have no plan to keep the water or use it elsewhere. We will store water for a while as we fill the reservoir (currently 30% full), but this dam will not affect the water flow downstream."

Some regional experts agree that the hydroelectric projects are unrelated to the drought.

"China's dams have not caused this problem," says Jeremy Bird, CEO of the Mekong River Commission, an organization that helps manage the river's resources for Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

But China's refusal to provide data to the commission on the dams already is raising suspicions among analysts. This month, a Chinese delegation to the commission promised deeper cooperation but stopped short of adding to a promise to provide hydrological data for two smaller Yunnan dams.

"The Chinese must come clean on how much water they are diverting at Xiaowan and, in the future, at Nuozhadu," another dam that will boast an even bigger reservoir, says Alan Potkin, a development specialist at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University.

Xiaowan is "an enormously large dam, bigger than anything in North America," says Potkin, who worries that in two years' time both Xiaowan and Nuozhadu could be filling reservoirs simultaneously. Potkin is urging the commission to ask China for the most critical data. But he knows the board can do little if China refuses. "It has very little leverage at all," he says.

Journalists have been kept at bay at Xiaowan. A USA TODAY reporter was detained by police for three hours while trying to get to the site and then refused entry.

Local residents dispute that the drought stems from natural causes.

Here in Yunnan province, White Fish Pond hasn't seen fish for years, says Bi Xiuxian, who heads a small hydropower station on the Weishan River. For the past half-year, the river has hardly seen any water, either. So the privately owned power plant in the village of Lishimo is idle.

"Poor management of water facilities is definitely a major reason for this drought," complains Bi, an ethnic Yi. "We need new wells, better management of old wells, and more maintenance of water canals."

Elders pray for rain

China's thirst for energy will likely keep the projects moving forward without much look back, say activists.

"We need time to see the real results," says Wang Yongchen, founder of Green Earth Volunteers, an environmental group, who has monitored China's dam-building for several years. "China is developing so quickly and needs a lot of energy, but nature is not just for humans."

In Shuanghe village, Nanjian County, Yunnan province, farmer Xu Piqing stands on a bridge above the now-dry water canal that usually rushes into the Weishan River.

"We should be busy now, harvesting corn and beans, but instead we have nothing to do," says Xu, 43.

Some villagers are taking action, though.

This month, more than 100 elders will gather to pray for rain on the hilltop, lighting incense and kowtowing to the earth. It's an annual ritual, but "this year will be the biggest ever," Xu says.

Dams portend grim future for Mekong Delta: experts [... yet Vietnam still insist on building its dams in Cambodia?]

Children walk along the Mekong River in Phnom Penh on April 5. Riparian nations have pledged to step up cooperation over the river’s use amidst fears China's upstream dams are exacerbating a severe regional drought (AFP)

Critics slam China’s hegemonic behavior in the Greater Mekong Sub-region

4/9/2010
Reported by Thanh Nien staff (Hanoi)

Upstream and lower dams could render the Mekong Delta unviable, and China’s intransigence in building them and refusing to share information about their operations will negatively impact the lives of more than 60 million people.

“China has plans to construct up to eight dams in total, some sources say the number could rise to fourteen. It is clear already that Chinese dam construction is having a negative impact on downstream states,” Professor Carlyle Thayer of the Australian Defense Force Academy told Thanh Nien Weekly.

“The ecology of the river system downstream has had wide-ranging effects. Dams prevent the downward flow of alluvium which fertilizes the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. Dam construction interferes with the migration of spawning fish. The impact on fisheries reduces the amount of fish and therefore protein that feeds the people in the Lower Mekong,” he said.

THREATS LESS MENTIONED

Richard Cronin, head of the Southeast Asia program at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, said both the Chinese and Lower Mekong dams will seriously threaten the viability of the Mekong Delta, Vietnam’s most important source of fish and its “rice bowl.”

“The dams will hold back the silt that rebuilds the Delta each year and keeps the East Sea at bay. Already, smaller alterations of the river’s flow in the Delta have created a major problem of seawater infiltration and land submersion.”

“The upstream dams will alter the river’s flow in still unpredictable ways, threatening the rice fields that produce 40 percent of Vietnam’s output and possibly making some population centers uninhabitable,” he said.

He also said the two threats less talked about are an earthquake that would rupture a Chinese dam in Yunnan, a seismically active region, or rains of such magnitude that the sluice gates would have to be opened to save one of these large to mega-sized dams.

“In either case, the consequences downstream would be catastrophic,” he said.

Larry Wortzel, member of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission in Washington also said dams restrict the migration of species that live in salt water but come up-river into fresh water to spawn.

“Thus, some species of fish and crabs will not be available in parts of the Mekong. The other impact is that when you restrict the water flow of a major river system that flows into the ocean, the salt water ends up migrating up the Mekong Delta. This will affect agriculture in the Mekong Delta since water salinity will change,” he said.

The Mekong originates in the Tibetan plateau and flows 4,800 km (2,980 miles) through rice-rich areas of Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia before emptying into the East Sea off Vietnam.

"Mighty Mekong" has dropped to its lowest level in 50 years in northern Thailand and Laos, alarming communities who depend on the critical waterway for food, transport, drinking water and irrigation.

More than 60 million people rely in some way on the river, which is the world's largest inland fishery, producing an annual estimated catch of 3.9 million tons, according to the Mekong River Commission (MRC) – comprising Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, who have agreed to cooperate for sustainable development of the Mekong River.

At a meeting with the heads of four Southeast Asian nations on Monday, China's Deputy Foreign Minister Song Tao denied activists' criticism that the hydropower dams had worsened decades-low water levels downstream.

"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 the hydropower development," he said.

Hegemonic behavior

But China’s critics have taken the issue even further. “Security analysts are increasingly concerned that China is using its geostrategic advantage to unduly influence the government in Laos and Cambodia. Their future livelihood is largely in China’s hands,” Thayer said.

“China condemns great power bullying of smaller countries, but a close look at China’s behavior in the Greater Mekong Sub-region indicates that it is Beijing (that is) acting like a hegemon,” he added.

Richard Cronin, head of the Southeast Asia program at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, expressed concern about “an unhealthy geopolitical shift that is underway that seems to favor China, especially in Southeast Asia.

“China has several goals in constructing a massive eight dam cascade in Yunnan... China is determined to incorporate the natural resources of the Mekong Basin into its manufacturing supply chain, expanding its political and economic influence,” he said in a statement on February 4, titled “China’s activities in Southeast Asia and the implications for US interests.”

Cronin added several countries have their own priority projects and ASEAN itself has shown almost no interest in the issue.

“The only institutional player is MRC which was reconstituted in 1995 out of the long moribund Mekong Committee. In theory the MRC exists to promote cooperative, sustainable and equitable water management, but it cannot really do that so long as the member countries are not willing to surrender even some of their sovereign rights,” he said.

‘As a whole’

Experts have called for more cooperation among Mekong riparian countries to mitigate harmful impacts of dam construction on the river.

“The entire Mekong River Basin must be dealt with as a whole when considering dam construction, economic development, the impact on the environment, ecology and climate change, and the human security of the population that depends on the Mekong River,” Thayer said.

“Up to now China has asserted its rights but not undertaken its obligations. China must be more transparent about technical data collection, including rainfall, the size of catchment areas, amount of water in reservoirs, and the times and amount of water is released downstream.

“China has cooperated in some matters but what is needed is for China itself, not subordinate administrative units, to join in multilateral cooperation,” he said.

HOLDING BACK

China is making things difficult for downstream Mekong riparian countries by not providing accurate and timely information about its interventions in the Mekong River, experts said on April 3 at a conference that preceded the first Mekong River Commission (MRC) summit.

The riparian countries, including Vietnam, have asked China to provide better updates on its interventions, officials said at the conference.

Despite China’s participation at the two-day conference on Water Resource Management, Chaiyuth Sukhsri, lecturer at the Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, said the information that China has provided was not adequate and exact.

Chaiyuth, an engineer, said China never gave all the information at once but only gave it “drop by drop” to see how other countries would react and based its next moves on the reactions.

He suggested that stations be built along the China border to measure water levels and learn how China is operating its dams at particular points of time, for instance to know when the dams are discharging or holding water.

Le Duc Trung, office chief of MRC Vietnam, said “any operation in the river will leave an impact. Power dams that hold water will cause certain effects.”

When China began operating the Man Loan dam in 2003, Laos suffered draught in several areas.

“[The dams] will always cause impacts, the issue is how and how much,” Trung said.

China has agreed to share information on river flows and dam operations, the MRC said in a media release on April 5 on its first summit early this week.

“In a side meeting between the MRC and China at the Summit, China provided further hydro-meteorological data concerning the operation of its dams on the mainstream Mekong during the current dry season,” it said.

The first MRC summit comes at a time large swathes of the river in downstream countries like Laos resemble a desert, affecting fisheries as well as maritime trade. China has also been affected by this, but critics say its rejection of the contention that upstream dams are responsible for the situation makes it difficult to take mitigating steps.

Mistrust lingers over dams

Apr 8, 2010
By Johanna Son
Inter Press Service

BANGKOK - Lost in the deluge of accusations that China's dams are the culprit in the Mekong River's unusually low levels is the fact that Beijing has actually become much less tightlipped about thorny issues with its neighbors than in the past.

Some years ago, China would have been unlikely to discuss such matters at a multilateral, official forum where it would be found to be at fault.

There was a time in the mid-1990s when just about the only response Southeast Asian nations could get from China about the high-profile dispute at that time - the spat over the Spratly islands in the South China Sea - was a statement saying it wanted only bilateral fora to discuss it.

Those days are far different from China's current diplomatic offensive in Southeast Asia, as downstream Mekong communities angrily blame it for pushing the river to record low levels and exacerbating the worst drought they have seen in decades.

The sight of dry, cracked earth and sandy stretches of riverbed is now common in northeast Thailand and Laos down to the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. China's southwest Yunnan province, where its Mekong dams are located, is itself hurting from the drought.

"It is as if the river has gone mad," said Niwat Roykaew of the Chiang Khong Conservation Group in northern Thailand.

The resentment against China for the Mekong's low levels rivals the anger that peaked in 2008, when downstream countries blamed it for record-high floods.

Indeed, the Mekong's erratic behavior is an emotional issue for the 65 million people who depend on it for survival. It is also a major public relations headache for China, which has a "good neighbor" policy toward the countries it shares the Mekong with.

Seeing that the issue will not go away, China sent Vice Foreign Minister Song Tao to attend the two-day Mekong summit that took place in Hua Hin, Thailand, on April 5 and 6, where the drought and China's dams took the limelight.

China is not even a full member of the Mekong River Commission (MRC), which groups the downstream countries of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. As an upstream country like Myanmar, China is an observer.

Song told the prime ministers of the Mekong countries that China's three dams in the upper reaches of the river, which it calls Lancang, and a fourth that is in the reservoir-filling stage, were not bringing water to a trickle downstream.

He repeated Chinese officials' statements that China is responsible for just 13.5% of the Mekong's volume downstream and cannot possibly cause the impact being attributed to its dam projects. It is the drought that is drying up the Mekong, he said.

"Quite the contrary, by way of the regulating effect of the water dams, hydropower development of the Lancang River can improve navigation conditions and help with flood prevention, drought relief and farmland irrigation of the lower reaches," Song said.

His words echo what Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue said when he visited Thailand in March: "China would not do anything to damage mutual interest with neighboring countries in the Mekong."

Yao Wen, first secretary at the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok, told a Mekong forum just before the Hua Hin summit that a few weeks ago, China released 5 million cubic meters of water from its dams to help ease the drought's effects.

MRC chief executive officer Jeremy Bird told the same forum: "We can't say that the severe drought from this year is from dams in China." MRC data show that there is decreased rainfall in the lower Mekong region - the last rainy season ended earlier than usual - as well as the lowest tributary flows in 50 years," Bird explains.

In March too, China said it would share "until the end of the drought" data on water movement from the Manwan and Jinghong dams in Yunnan. Until the downstream protests peaked, China only shared data about water releases in the flood season.

While Bird called this "very positive" news, critics say that what China should share is hydrological information from before Manwan, the first Lancang dam, was completed in 1995 in order to study changes in water levels.

They add that more than data about Manwan and Jinghong, what is key is how China is filling the Xiaowan dam, the most upstream of the Lancang dams and where most of the water would presumably be stored.

Set to be the world's highest dam at 300 meters when it starts operation in 2012, critics suspect it plays a role in the Mekong's low levels. Chinese officials have said they are filling the reservoir only during the wet season.

"But it isn't rocket science to realize that those latter two stations [Manwan and Jinghong] alone provide essentially zero information as to how much water is presently being retained much further upstream to fill the new Xiaowan reservoir," Alan Potkin of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University said in a published commentary.

China's difficulty in getting heard reflects a problem of trust, but it wants to avoid major damage to its ties with Southeast Asian nations. After all, these countries, which used to see China as a threat, now view it as a friendly power.

"Perhaps this is the price of being a superpower, to have all your actions analyzed and criticized," remarked a Chinese journalist.

Witoon Permpongsacharoen of the Mekong Energy and Ecology Network concedes that the Chinese seem more willing to engage these days, but says much remains to be seen. Chinese activists, he said, say that China works in different ways and that "it moves very slowly, but when it moves, it moves".

This matters little to those who are nervously watching the Mekong River they thought they knew.

"We cannot rely on governments, national and international organizations, high-level authorities, and all big bureaucrats to solve this Mekong crisis any more," Niwat argued. "It is enough!"

Sacrava's Political Cartoon: Mekong

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

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