Mekong could be in danger

Children swim in the Mekong River in Phnom Penh this week. A report released Wednesday says that upstream dams – including one to be constructed in Kratie province – pose a significant threat to the livelihoods of millions who are dependent on the river. (Photo by: AFP)

Thursday, 08 April 2010
Steve Hirsch Washington
The Phnom Penh Post

Report calls dam to be built in Kratie a threat to food security.

A MASSIVE dam slated to be built on the Mekong River in Kratie province is one of two projects that pose an even greater threat to human and food security and livelihoods than similar projects in China, according to a new report that calls for a moratorium on dams along the river.

The report, released Wednesday afternoon in Washington by the Henry L Stimson Centre, a nonpartisan think tank promoting international peace and security, raises an alarm about the US$5 billion Sambor Rapids dam as well as the US$300 million Don Sahong dam project in Laos, even as, in the aftermath of this week’s Mekong River Commission summit, international attention has been focused on the potential harm caused to the river by Chinese-built dams.

“These two dams, more than others planned further north, threaten critical migratory paths for 70 percent of the most commercially valuable species of wild fish,” states the report, titled Mekong Tipping Point: Hydropower Dams, Human Security and Regional Stability.

Richard Cronin, the report’s lead author and a senior associate and director of the Stimson Centre’s Southeast Asia programme, raised similar concerns about the Sambor Rapids project during testimony before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission in February, saying it would “create a total barrier to the spawning migration” of fish that travel through the Hou Sahong channel in the Khone Falls area of southern Laos.

In a prepared statement, Cronin said the Hou Sahong channel is “the only one of 18 channels that allows unimpeded year-round spawning migration by hundreds of fish species that are worth as much as $9 billion or more annually, and which supply up to 80 percent of the animal protein of as many as 60 million people”.

Carl Middleton, Mekong programme coordinator for the International Rivers organisation, emphasised similar points on Wednesday, saying: “The Don Sahong and Sambor dams would block the major fish migrations that provide food security and livelihoods for millions of people who live alongside the Tonle Sap Lake and Mekong River.”

According to International Rivers, the Cambodian government in 2006 granted permission for the China Southern Power Grid Company to prepare a feasibility study for the dam, which it states will have a capacity of 3,300 megawatts and be completed by 2030 at the earliest. About 70 percent of the electricity generated by the dam is expected to be exported to Vietnam.

In comparison, the Don Sahong project, to be developed in southern Laos by the Malaysian company MegaFirst Corporation Berhad, is expected to be completed by 2015 and generate between 240 and 360MW, much of which is expected to go to Thailand.

Call for moratorium
The report says that Mekong River Commission countries – Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam – should impose a moratorium on dam construction on the Mekong and on tributaries that are important for fish reproduction.

That moratorium, it states, should remain in effect until standards are established for environmental and socioeconomic impact studies and cost-benefit analyses of dam proposals, as well as for plans to cope with threats to livelihoods resulting from the projects.

Along with eight dams planned for China’s Yunnan province, the report says, as many as 13 dams planned on the Lower Mekong in Laos, Thailand and Cambodia would “have an incalculable impact on human and food security and livelihoods in the whole Mekong Basin”.

“Incredibly,” it says, “there is no evidence that any country planning to build mainstream dams has made any provisions for alternative livelihoods or new sources of food security.”

Though the harmful effects of the dams – particularly with respect to wild fish stocks – are likely to materialise quickly, the development of alternative employment options will take years, the report states.

In both Laos and Cambodia, it says, power generated by downstream dams will likely aid the industrialisation of Thailand, while Laotians and Cambodians will be forced to either work across the border or find new ways to earn a living.

“These projects also pose a direct threat to the hard earned peace and stability of the Mekong Region and mainland Southeast Asia,” the report states.

Pich Dun, secretary general of the Cambodia National Mekong River Commission, on Wednesday rejected the idea that the dam projects could lead to regional tension.

“It’s impossible to have any conflicts between the countries in the Mekong region,” he said. “The MRC members have the right to develop dams, but in this regard there should be discussions before any building can take place.”

He also said he was not concerned that the Sambor Rapids dam or any other proposed projects for the Lower Mekong would result in undue hardship for those who depend on the river for survival.

“Whenever there is development there will be some damage.... We’ll need to discuss how to minimise the effect,” he said.

Asked about plans to mitigate the effects of the Sambor Rapids project, he said he could not comment on them in detail because he had not seen “the technical documents of the plan”.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY WILL BAXTER AND THARUM BUN

DEVELOPMENT-VIETNAM: Rare Criticism of Dams Surface [-Vietnam gets a dose of its own medicine]

By Tran Dinh Thanh Lam

CAN THO, Nov 21 (IPS) - While arguments against the development of hydropower dams on the Mekong River and its tributaries have from time to time emerged in Vietnam’s state-controlled press, rarely have government officials been as open with their criticism as they have in recent months.

In late September, the ‘Thanh Nien’ newspaper reported the deputy secretary general of the Vietnam National Mekong Committee (VNMC), Dao Trong Tu, telling an international meeting that "the development of dams for hydroelectricity generation (on the Mekong and its tributaries) could have unforeseen negative consequences for a country like Vietnam".

At the meeting, a regional hydropower consultation organised by the Mekong River Commission (MRC) in Vientiane, Laos, Nguyen Van Trong, deputy director of the state-run Research Institute for Agriculture said "20 million Vietnamese people in the Mekong Delta, who rely on fish for export and water for irrigation, would be negatively impacted" by dam building.

Such statements come as Vietnam itself emerges as a key player in the construction of dams in the lower Mekong River and its tributaries. Vietnamese firms are involved in the construction of several dams and are eyeing plans for several more.

"I am so happy to hear for the first time Vietnamese officials claim far and loud that hydropower dams are ruining our fisheries," Nguyen Tu Be, a 45 year-old fisherman from Can Tho, in southern Vietnam, said when asked by IPS for a response.

Be, who has been making a living fishing on the Hau River, a tributary of the Mekong, since he was a young man, reported that his catch has fallen significantly in the last few years. "People say that the dams built upstream have prevented the fish migrating to Vietnam’s section of the Mekong," he said.

Years ago, Vietnamese fishermen could easily catch tonnes of migrating Shutchi and pagasius catfish that take refuge in Vietnam’s stretch of the Mekong during the dry season.

Fishermen used to sell the best mother fish to aquaculture farmers to spawn and grow catfish in cages for export. Now that healthy mother fish are harder to find in Vietnam’s section of the Mekong River, many fishers have been forced to travel upstream as far as Cambodia’s Tonle Sap to fetch them.

But in the Tonle Sap, the situation is no better.

Cambodian fishers do not only report that household catch is declining. They say that the composition of the catch is also changing, so that they are netting less large, high value fish each year.

"Some people also believe that the severe floods that submerged vast regions in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam in the past few years may be the result of Chinese dams in Mekong upstream," said Nguyen Tan, an agriculture expert at Can Tho’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. "My big concern is more for the Mekong sediment."

"The dams’ reservoirs retain a lot of nutrient-rich sediment that would otherwise be spread by annual floods to the lower Mekong," Tan said.

Because the soil becomes less fertile with a reduction of sediment from the Mekong, farmers must rely more and more on pollutive chemical fertiliser, he added.

Some 60 million people along the 4,800-kilometre path of the Mekong, which flows from Tibet, through Burma, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia before flowing out to the South China Sea through Vietnam, depend on the river for transportation, food and water for their crops.

Particularly controversial has been the construction of several dams on the Mekong mainstream, including the Chinese stretch of the river called Lancang, and several plans to develop dams on the Mekong mainstream in Laos, Cambodia and Thailand.

To foster the "environmentally sustainable development" of the Mekong, lower riparian countries Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam formed the MRC in 1995, signing an agreement that stated dam construction on the mainstream must be subject to prior notification between countries.

Any development involving the diversion of water out of the Mekong in the dry season must proceed on the basis of the agreement of all members.

China and Burma, the other two countries sharing the river, are mere observers in the commission. China maintains that its dams help prevent flooding in the Mekong Delta during the wet season.

In the meantime, the four MRC member countries, facing high oil prices and the need for more electricity to sustain economic growth, are revealing plans to construct their own hydropower plants on the Mekong mainstream.

There are different estimates of hydropower projects at various stages of planning, ideas and design, but some put at 80 the projects identified in the lower Mekong basin.

Of these, eight are planned for the lower Mekong mainstream, five in Laos, two in Thailand and one in Cambodia, activists say.

The most controversial of these is the Don Sahong dam, which will be built on the Mekong mainstream in Laos’ Khone Falls, where the river forms a complex network of narrow channels before flowing into Cambodia.

The dam will block the deepest channel on that section of the river and only one migratory fish can easily pass through at the peak of the dry season, April to May, when the water level of the Mekong is at its lowest.

This will effectively stop the dry season migration of fish between the feeding habitats of the Tonle Sap and upstream breeding zones in Laos and Thailand, critics say.

Phnom Penh is also mulling plans to build a dam on the mainstream in Kratie province, central Cambodia. A Chinese company is undertaking a feasibility study of the dam.

Environment groups have criticised the MRC for what they claim is the organisation’s strong pro-hydropower orientation.

In 2007, a coalition of 175 environmental and civic groups has sent an open letter saying it remains "notably silent despite the serious ecological and economic implications of damming the lower Mekong".

In March this year, 51 citizens’ groups and individuals from all six Mekong countries challenged the MRC to deal with what they called the organisation’s "crisis of legitimacy and relevancy, recently exemplified by its failure to respond to civil society concerns over plans to dam the lower Mekong mainstream".

Vietnam’s steady economic growth has fed a massive increase in demand for power. In addition to importing power from China and Laos, Vietnam has built several hydroelectric dams on its own rivers and is involved in projects across the border in Laos and Cambodia.

In Laos, Vietnamese companies are building the Xekamen 1 and Xekamen 3 dams on the Xekamen River, a tributary of the Mekong.

Vietnamese firms are also involved in projects that include a 1,410-megawatt dam scheme being overseen by PetroVietnam Power Co near Luang Prabang. A memorandum of understanding was signed mid-October 2007.

"So far, we have not succeeded in fighting Chinese hydropower dams because China is not a MRC member," said Tan. "But now that huge projects are being planned on the Mekong mainstream, the VNMC is right to ring the alarm on the damages brought by big hydropower dams."

"Too many big dams built on upstream as well as on downstream Mekong will wreak havoc to our fishing and agriculture," he added.

In a speech marking VNMC’s 30th anniversary in September, Pham Khoi Nguyen, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment and committee chair, stressed that VNMC’s role was to "help protect Vietnam’s rights and benefits and reduce the negative impacts of development around the upper reaches of the river".

Study reveals tragic dangers of Mekong dam boom

25 Sep 2008
PeopleAndPlanet.net

A new hard-hitting report exposes the social and environmental damage being done by the unprecedented dam-building boom in river-rich Laos. It is being presented to-day to an official consultation, in Vientiane, on the Mekong River Commission's Hydropower Programme in Vientiane.

The 88-page report by Dr. Carl Middleton, coordinator of the International Rivers Mekong Programme, appeals to the Lao government and donor agencies to change its damming plans.

It wants the Lao Government to:

• explore economic alternatives to hydropower;
• designate the Mekong mainstream off-limits to dam development;
• impose a moratorium on new hydro projects until basin-wide plans are in place; enforce Laos' environmental laws;
• and for dams that proceed, share hydro benefits through life-of-project payments and service provision to all affected people, up and downstream.

Laos 'an opaque, one-party state' has declared it a national priority to spur the country's development through the rapid construction of large dams that export high-risk hydropower to neighbouring Thailand and Vietnam. With six big dams already in operation, seven currently under construction, at least 12 more in the works and development deals pending on another 35, Laos' flood of hydro projects will monopolise the Mekong at the expense of other vital uses, the study warns.

Case studies

Power Surge includes 11 detailed case studies revealing that "Lao villagers are being sold down the river in hydro deals that take their fertile farmland and river fisheries, leaving them without critical sources of food and income. The people of Laos are among the poorest in the region; about 80 per cent are farmers and fishers who have few other means to meet their basic needs and earn a living.

"Big dams don't develop Laos; they destroy invaluable rivers and resources upon which Lao people depend for daily survival" says Shannon Lawrence, Lao Program Director for International Rivers and editor of the report. "Poverty reduction initiatives that support rural communities and promote government accountability need to be prioritized and scaled-up."

According to the report, dam deals appear to be made on a first-come, first-served basis with interested companies, most of which are based in Thailand, China, Vietnam, Russia and Malaysia. The Lao Water Resources and Environment Agency lacks the authority to compel dam developers to pay for the social and environmental costs of their projects or to enforce local law. Laos' biggest hydro project under construction, the French-led Nam Theun 2, has fallen short of promises made by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank that it would set a new sustainability standard for Lao dams, the report says.

One of the most destructive dams highlighted is the proposed Don Sahong Hydropower Project, which would be the first dam built on the lower Mekong River mainstream, one of the six that Laos is proposing. The dam would block the main channel passable year-round by fish migrating between Cambodia, Laos and Thailand.

Costly mistake

Mekong mainstream dams - like Don Sahong - would be a tragic and costly mistake, says the report. For only 360 megawatts of electricity, Don Sahong would devastate fisheries that are central to people's food security and the wider economy and undermine the region's growing tourism potential. In a region where wild-capture fisheries are valued at US$2 billion per year and are of critical importance to riparian communities, these dams simply don't add up," says Dr. Middleton.

The Mekong River Commission is a river basin management organization directed by the governments of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam and funded by donor governments such as Australia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Japan and Sweden.

In his presentation to the Commission, Middleton will challenge the dam industry's business-as-usual approach in Laos and the wider Mekong Region. International Rivers is also sending the report and recommendations to other international institutions involved in Laos' hydro boom including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

Commenting beforehand he said:"A healthy Mekong River is priceless. It is not simply the provider of economic commodities such as fish, irrigation water, and hydroelectricity. It is also the lifeblood of the region, its history and inspiration. Instead of choking the Mekong with dams, it is time that this tired old development model is replaced with one that celebrates the region's rich cultural and ecological inheritance."

He was supported by the Lao programme director for International Rivers, Shannon Lawrence, who said: "If companies are going to build dams in a one-party state with no free press and little transparency, they have to take extraordinary measures to make sure that environmental and social standards are met. This is the cost of doing business in places where people's rights are not adequately protected by the rule of law. Dam-affected people must be guaranteed compensation for their losses as well as given a direct share of project benefits."

Click here to download full report. See more news from International Rivers at www.internationalrivers.org

Editor's note: Laos has a population of 5.9 million and a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of around US$4 billion. The estimated commercial value of Mekong River Basin fisheries is US$2 billion according to the Mekong River Commission (2005). The Mekong River provides fish, drinking water, irrigation and transport for more than 60 million people in the lower Mekong basin.

Known as the "Mother of Waters", the Mekong River supports one of the world's most diverse fisheries, rivaled only by the Amazon and the Congo. Fish consumption in Laos is estimated to be more than 200,000 tonnes per year or more than 40 kilograms per person per year, while subsistence agriculture, dominated by rice, accounts for about 40 per cent of GDP and provides 80 per cent of total employment

Laos has 18,000 megawatts of exploitable hydropower potential, less than 5 per cent of which has been developed.

The Damming of the Mekong

Boat on the Mekong River
Khone Falls
River dolphin on the Mekong River

By Daniel Milder
A-WEAR-NESS Blog

I think it's safe to say that Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and I have very little in common. But, for a brief moment on March 29 when our paths crossed at the Phnom Penh Airport, we were on the same wavelength. I was coming from a trip up the Mekong to Khone Falls. Mr. Sen was going to Ventiane to determine the fate of Khone Falls. I had spent the previous week traveling up the Mekong River with aquatic ecologist Zeb Hogan who's on a mission to document the world's megafish. A megafish is any freshwater fish that grows to at least 6.5 feet in length or more then 220 pounds.

We were searching for giant fresh water stingray, and Zeb had heard rumors of a monster near Khone Falls. We spent the week talking to local fishermen and sitting around drinking lukewarm beer waiting for them to call with news of a ray. They didn't, which is not that surprising. Stingrays are very difficult to catch and are rare - technically, they are listed as vulnerable. The Mekong and the stretch just below Khone Falls in particular, is home to more megafish then any other river in the world. Along with stingray, the list includes the Mekong Giant Catfish (critically endangered) and Irrawaddy Dolphin (critically endangered). Life for these rare fish doesn't look to be getting any easier if Laos builds the Don Sahong Dam at Khone Falls, only two kilometers from the Cambodian border. That is bad news for fish living below the falls, and for Cambodians who get two thirds of their protein from fish caught in the Mekong and its tributaries, as well as relying on the river's annual floods to fertilize their fields with nutrient rich sediment. This, presumably, is why Hun Sen was on his way to Ventiane.

The Mekong River starts high in the Tibetan plateau, and makes its way through 6 countries, over a course of more then 3,000 miles. It is the 11th longest river in the world and approximately 90 million people rely on it. One of those is Sok Long, a fisherman we spoke with who lives with his family just north of Kratie not far from a dolphin pool. He is a reserved, serious man with a beautiful wife, a young daughter with wide toothy smile, and an even younger son who followed his daddy everywhere he went, and will no doubt be a fine fisherman himself when he gets older, assuming there are still fish in the river.

China has already built 6 dams on the upper Mekong, and it has resulted in depleted fish stocks and lower water levels below the dams. The Don Sahong Dam could prove particularly harmful to fish stocks in Cambodia because 87% of fish species in the Mekong, whose behavior is known, are migratory, according to The Worldfish Center. The Don Sahong Dam would prevent those fish from completing their lifecycles. The dam would almost certainly reduce water levels below it affecting Tonle Sap river and Lake, tributaries of the Mekong, which supports nearly half of Cambodia's 13 million citizens.

There is no doubt that Cambodia and its neighbors need affordable energy, but at what cost? The Don Sahong Dam is just one of many more dams planned for the lower Mekong. Another in the planning stage is the Sambor Dam to be built just above one of the last remaining Irrawaddy Dolphin pools, and Sok Long's home. The dolphins almost certainly would not survive the dam. As for Sok Long and his family, I wonder what will happen to them.
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Biography: Daniel Milder is a freelance writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. He most recently wrote about rat catchers in India and motorcycle doctors in Africa for GOOD Magazine. If you know of any people or organizations doing interesting work that are not getting enough attention, he’d like to hear about them.

World's Largest Catfish Species Threatened by Dam

April 8, 2008
Stefan Lovgren at Khone Falls, Cambodia
for National Geographic News

This is the sixth story in a continuing series on the Megafishes Project. Join National Geographic News on the trail with project leader Zeb Hogan as he tracks down the world's largest freshwater fishes.

In the swift currents of the Mekong River in northern Cambodia, fishers expertly navigate their longboats past rock outcroppings and fallen logs.

But soon these wild waters may be tamed. Plans for the construction of a large hydroelectric dam just across the border, at Khone Falls in Laos, would permanently alter one of the most pristine areas in Southeast Asia.

The dam is one of several being planned on the mostly untouched Mekong River, which meanders through six countries—China, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam (see map).

The future of the Mekong was a key issue when the prime ministers of those countries met for a regional summit earlier this week in the Laotian capital of Vientiane.

The Don Sahong dam at Khone Falls, one of five dams that Laos is planning along the Mekong, will block the deepest channel on the section of the river that migratory fish pass through when the water level is at its lowest, conservationists say.

One of those migratory fish is the critically endangered Mekong giant catfish, which holds the record as the largest freshwater fish ever caught. The record catch, made in northern Thailand in 2005, tipped the scales at 646 pounds (293 kilograms).

"An impassable dam at the falls could cause the extinction of the Mekong giant catfish species," said Zeb Hogan, a fisheries biologist at the University of Nevada in Reno.

Hogan, who visited the Khone Falls area last week, heads the Megafishes Project, a three-year effort to document the 20-plus species of freshwater fish that measure at least 6.5 feet (2 meters) in length or 220 pounds (100 kilograms) in weight.

(The Megafishes Project is partly funded by the National Geographic Society, which operates National Geographic News.)

Spawning Ground

Fishers at Khone Falls had long known that the giant catfish traveled through their area.

But in 2007 Thai photographer Suthep Kritsanavarin for the first time photographed a giant catfish caught at Khone Falls.

Giant catfish were once plentiful throughout the Mekong River basin, but in the last century the population has declined 95 to 99 percent, according to Hogan.

The massive fish is not targeted by fishers, but it is sometimes caught as bycatch. In Cambodia, where the largest population of giant catfish is found, eight of the giant fish were caught last year.

Although fishing is the biggest immediate threat to the giant catfish in the Mekong, dams and habitat fragmentation could disrupt the animal's ability to reproduce, Hogan said.

"There is only one known spawning ground for Mekong giant catfish, and that spawning ground is in northern Thailand," he said.

"Until we know better, we have to assume that fish from Cambodia may migrate to Thailand to spawn."

The construction of the Don Sahong dam, which is slated for completion in 2010, would make that migration impossible, Hogan said.

Untouched

Advocates of the dams point to the enormous hydropower potential that the Mekong offers to an energy-hungry region. With oil prices at record levels, the projects have taken on added urgency, they say.

So far the Mekong runs almost uninterrupted; only China has dammed the river at two locations in Yunnan Province.

One of the dams that China is now building will be second in size only to the Yangtze River's Three Gorges Dam.

"China, as an upstream country, will never do anything that will harm the interests of downstream countries," He Yafei, China's assistant foreign minister, told reporters before last week's regional summit.

But officials in Vietnam, where the Mekong empties into the South China Sea, say water extraction for farm irrigation upstream has already caused ocean salt water to move inland, destroying rice fields.

Conservationists likewise warn that the new dams could harm fish stocks that millions of people throughout the Mekong depend on.

"Fisheries resources are essential to the population of the Mekong Basin," said Eric Baran of the nonprofit World Fish Center in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

"In Cambodia, for instance, the fish catch contributes 65 to 75 percent of the animal protein of households."

More than a thousand fish species live in the Mekong River system, a biodiversity second only to the Amazon in South America, Baran said.

In a report last year, the World Fish Center warned that the economic benefits of the U.S. $300-million Don Sahong dam may be outweighed by losses from local fisheries, whose production has been estimated at over U.S. $2 billion a year.

Deep Channel

At Khone Falls the Mekong River drops up to 100 feet (30 meters) from the Khorat plateau to the Mekong plain, forming a complex network of narrow channels, called hoo in Lao.

Scientists have found that the area supports at least 201 fish species, including several endemic or endangered species.

The area is also home to one of the few remaining concentrations of freshwater dolphins in the Mekong.

The dam will block Hoo Sahong, the deepest channel and the only one that migratory fish can pass through at the peak of the dry season, in April and May, when the Mekong is at its lowest.

Nongovernmental organizations in Cambodia called on their government this month to ask Laos for a construction moratorium on the Don Sahong dam to allow for more environmental assessments.

Hogan admits that dams provide a number of benefits, including flood control, water for irrigation, and electricity.

"But it is also important to consider the costs," he said, "especially in an area where a large part of the population is dependent on fish for food."

"From a migratory fish's perspective, there is nothing worse than a dam."

Planned Lao Dam Raises Concerns on the Mekong

By Andrew Nette
Newsmekong*

PHNOM PENH, Mar 28 (IPS) - The Lao government’s decision earlier this year to press ahead with plans to build the Don Sahong dam on the mainstream of the Mekong River in southern Laos is causing major concern in Cambodia and internationally.

The most advanced of eight hydropower projects mooted for the lower Mekong mainstream, the Don Sahong dam is also ramping up pressure on the Mekong River Commission (MRC), the inter-governmental body charged with managing development on the river.

The Cambodian government appears to be taking the issue seriously. The Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen would pay a one-day visit to Laos to meet with regional officials on issues affecting the Mekong River.

Cambodian NGOs this week called upon their government to ask Laos for an immediate construction moratorium on Dong Sahong to allow for an independent trans-boundary assessment of environmental and social impacts.

In March 2006, the Lao government signed an agreement granting the Malaysian engineering firm Mega First Corp Berhad the exclusive mandate to carry out a feasibility study of the Don Sahong project.

On Feb. 13 this year, the company signed a project development agreement with Vientiane to push ahead with the scheme on a build-own-operate basis.

In a statement to the Malaysian stock exchange, the company said the dam, located in Champassak province two kilometres from the Lao border with Cambodia, would be a run-of-river facility with the capacity to generate between 240 and 360 megawatts of electricity to be sold mainly to Laos and neighbouring countries.

Their statement also said "the feasibility and social/ environmental studies of the proposed Don Sahong Project (show it) to be technically and financially viable." Critics are concerned that these studies have not been publicly released.

The dam will be built on the Mekong mainstream at a location known as Khone Falls, where the River forms a complex network of narrow channels, or ‘hoo’ in Lao, at the point at which it flows into Cambodia.

The dam will block Hoo Sahong, the deepest channel on that section of the river, and the movement of migratory fish that now easily pass through at the peak of the dry season, April to May, when the water level of the Mekong is at its lowest.

This will effectively block the dry season migration of fish between the feeding habitats of the Tonle Sap Lake and upstream breeding zones in Laos and Thailand, critics say. It is also likely to alter water flow patterns in the immediate downstream area, further disrupting migration patterns for fish species sensitive to changes in water levels.

According to a June 2007 briefing paper by the Phnom Penh-based WorldFish Centre, the Khone Falls supports at least 201 fish species, as well as one of the few remaining concentrations of freshwater dolphins in the Mekong.

"In the absence of detailed design information it is not possible to provide a full assessment of the impact of the proposed Don Sahong dam on the Mekong basin fisheries," the brief stated, although "this review of available information shows that the risks are very high."

While no economic valuation of the amount of fish that pass through the channel in the April to May period has been made, fisheries experts believe it is significant.

According to the WordFish Centre brief, 87 percent of the fish species in the Mekong whose behaviour is known, including some of the most commercially important species, are migratory.

Experts believe that the loss of even small percentage of Cambodia’s fisheries catch represents tens of thousands of tonnes and millions of dollars worth of fish.

In an open letter on Don Sahong dam in May 2007, over 30 fisheries scientists stated that Don Sahong "will have grave environmental impacts, particularly on fish and fisheries but also on tourism and other significant aspects of the economy and livelihoods, causing damage that will far exceed net returns from the project".

The Lao government has previously considered the channel of critical importance to migratory fish and specifically banned fishing there at various times between 1960 and 1990.

Informed sources say the project had been the subject of significant discussion in Lao government until the signing of the project development agreement in February put a halt to this.

Don Sahong was the subject of intense debate at a meeting of the Vientiane-based MRC in Siem Reap, Cambodia in November 2007. According to one media report, Cambodian delegates made their frustration clear with what they claimed was a lack of transparency on the part of Laos in relation to the dam.

In response to the February announcement, Lim Kean Hor, Minister for Water Resources and Meteorology and chair of the Cambodian National Mekong Committee (CNMC), said the MRC is studying the impact of the dam and would release a report at the end of 2008.

"The MRC have not ignored the potential problems with the fisheries on the Cambodian side," he said. "After the study is finished we will talk about the benefits and negatives because it is a multi-purpose project." CNMC officials were unavailable to be interviewed at this time about Don Sahong.

Nao Thuok, director general of Fisheries Administration at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Phnom Penh, confirmed that there have been discussions between the Cambodian and Lao governments about the potential impacts of the dam.

"We have suggested to Lao counterparts that they should study (Don Sahong) carefully before damming and they promised to do so. We just heard recently that they decided to build the dam soon, so it is not clear what the situation is."

It is understood that the MRC has prepared an analysis of the draft environment impact assessment for Don Sahong and economic valuation of the potential impact on fisheries from the project. These documents have not been publicly released.

The issue will also be discussed at the upcoming Joint Committee meeting of the MRC in Vietnam in early April.

In a letter sent this week to CNMC, Cambodian NGOs have requested that their government ask for a moratorium on the dam construction. "During the moratorium period, a comprehensive and participatory scientific transboundary environmental and social impact assessment must be carried out by an independent party," the letter said.

"As part of this scientific assessment, there should be public consultations and discussion between the countries of the lower Mekong region that examine and assess the future costs and benefits of this project to each country, and the poor and vulnerable communities living in affected areas," it added.

While China has completed two dams on the upper Mekong mainstream and construction on a further much larger project is underway, the lower reaches of the river have remained free from dam development until now.

Of the eight dam projects planned for the lower Mekong mainstream, five are in Laos including Don Sahong, two in Thailand and one in Cambodia.

A Chinese company has been undertaking a feasibility study of the Sambor dam in the central Cambodia, although there are mixed reports as to whether the government intends to move ahead on the project.

The English-language ‘Vientiane’ Times reported this week that Laos and Thailand have signed an agreement to allow a private firm to commence feasibility studies into the 1,800-megawatt Ban Kum Kun hydropower dam located on the Mekong mainstream on their border. "The need for a credible and effective river basin management organisation in the Mekong Region has never been more apparent, yet for the MRC a crisis of legitimacy and relevancy is looming," said a statement signed by 51 citizens’ groups and individuals from the six Mekong countries, sent on Mar. 27 to newly appointed MRC Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Bird.

The prospect of extensive hydropower development on the Mekong puts the MRC in a catch-22 situation, said Carl Middleton, a research analyst with Rivers International.

"If the MRC provides advice to government agencies that is perceived as critical of proposed hydropower projects, this advice could be unwelcome, ignored, and then no longer sought, undermining the MRC's relevance in the eyes of the government agencies it considers itself primarily answerable to."

"Yet, by not providing this objective analysis and releasing it into the public domain, as it should do, the MRC faces a crisis of legitimacy in the eyes of the wider public that it is also intended to serve," Middleton added.

(*This story was written for the Imaging Our Mekong Programme coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific)