Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha last week asked reporters why non-governmental organisations (NGOs), environmental activists and academics continue to protest against the planned blasting of rapids in the Mekong River.
He said many of these protesters are outsiders, meaning people who do not live by the riverside, do not fish its waters or make a living from the river and do not, in fact, have any stake in the river at all.
South-East Asia includes at least six of the world’s 25 “biodiversity hotspots” – areas of the world with an exceptional concentration of species, which are also under serious threat.
Large dams on the Mekong River in China’s Yunnan Province have considerable impacts on downstream river flows, new research by myself and colleagues at Aalto University in Finland and published recently in the Journal of Hydropower has shown.
The smiles that once brightened faces in Luangtong, a small community in Laos’ northwest Oudomxay province, have disappeared. These days the residents appear defeated, stunned by the knowledge that before long the land that has sustained them for generations will be submerged under the waters behind Pak Beng Dam.
At a time when much of Cambodia is developing at a breakneck speed, where smartphones and BMWs have become almost as ubiquitous on the streets of Phnom Penh as saffron-robed monks, the village of Kbal Romeas inhabits a world apart. Tucked deep into the jungles of the country’s untamed northeast, the village has no convenience stores, streetlights, or paved roads. Instead, a visitor would be more likely to find a stretched snakeskin nailed to a piece of teak, drying in the midday sun as a testament to the animist beliefs of the people who live there.
The construction of the Pak Beng Hydropower Project is expected to begin at the end of this year after reaching agreement among Lower Mekong countries.
After an eighteen month journey, a team of civil society and government experts from across the Mekong Region is poised to transform the way communities are engaged in development.
The team has developed the Guidelines on Public Participation in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in the Mekong Region, which lays out a practical approach for governments, companies and communities looking to improve the social and environmental impacts of development projects such as dams, mines, power plants and economic zones.
The Mekong giant catfish (Pangasianodon gigas) is ranked as critically endangered on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The largest freshwater fish in the world, its natural habitat is the Mekong River from China to Cambodia and Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia.
The Mekong River Commission (MRC) bears an enormous weight on its shoulders, overseeing both the development and the protection of a channel on whom millions of people depend. But the commission has proved powerless in the latter mission, failing to protect or involve communities in hydropower projects that threaten their livelihoods.
Plan to make river accessible to barges ‘will seriously hurt Thailand and Laos. Economic experts have warned that the Mekong-Lancang River navigation-channel improvement project will only benefit China – while having serious negative impacts on Thailand and Laos.
