[enviro-vlc] ENVIRONMENT-LAOS: Paying South-east Asia's Power Bill [IPS 25.9.08]

[Vern Weitzel]

Subject: 	[Lancang-Mekong] ENVIRONMENT-LAOS: Paying South-east Asia's
Power Bill [IPS 25.9.08]
Date: 	Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:01:23 +0700
From: 	Carl Middleton <carl at internationalrivers.org>
Reply-To: 	carl at internationalrivers.org
To: 	Lancang-Mekong at googlegroups.com



*ENVIRONMENT-LAOS: Paying South-east Asia's Power Bill*
/By Marwaan Macan-Markar/
(http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43998)
*
VIENTIANE, Sep 25 (IPS) - There is an uneasy calm that swirls through
this South-east Asian capital, which sits on the banks of the Mekong
River. White sandbags piled waist-high over a 13 km stretch along the
river offer the reason why -- floods. *

For now, the swollen waters of this region’s largest river laps at the
embankments, just below the sandbags, which were hurriedly placed in
August to protect the main city of Laos from the rising Mekong. Some of
the city’s outlying areas were not so fortunate, as the waters surged
inland, in one of the worst floods witnessed in decades.

But the story of water in Laos goes beyond floods. This landlocked
country, fed by a vast network of rivers that flow down its mountainous
landscape, is rapidly emerging as the staging ground for a new economic
agenda -- building large dams -- to generate hydroelectric power that
could be exported to its neighbours, such as Thailand and Vietnam.

The Mekong River has been harnessed into the plans of the Laotian
government to create a water-powered future. It views it as a way of
earning much-needed foreign exchange to help lift the country out of
poverty. Over a third of the country’s six million people live on less
than one U.S. dollar a day, placing the country 133rd out of 177 in the
United Nations Human Development Index.

The Laotian government has already identified six new dams to be built
across the Mekong. They will add to 12 other dams, for which plans are
proceeding rapidly. Currently, six large dams are under construction to
help turn Laos into the ‘’battery of South-east Asia.’’

The dams Laos hopes to build across the Mekong will place it ahead of
two other countries that also share this waterway, China and Cambodia,
which are building their own dams. China is building a cascade of six
dams on the upper stretch of the river, while Cambodia, in the lower
basin of the river, has drawn a blueprint for two.

‘’The Mekong River’s potential for hydropower is not used,’’ Wolfgang
Schiefer, chief of international cooperation and communication at the
Mekong River Commission (MRC), told journalists from the Mekong River
countries attending a workshop here, this week, titled ‘Imaging Our
Mekong’. ‘’There is an abundance of water in the Mekong, and a very low
volume is stored in reservoirs.’’

The Vientiane-based MRC, a regional body set up in the mid-1990s to
manage the lower basin of the world’s 10th longest river, is making a
push for its member countries to tap the river for its hydropower
potential. ‘’High oil and gas prices and concerns over climate change
have intensified the focus on hydropower as a renewable technology,’’ it
argues in a background note.

But environmentalists are mounting a challenge against such economic
plans for the Mekong, which begins its 4,880 km-long journey in the
Tibetan plateau, rushes through the mountainous terrain of southern
China’s Yunnan province, curves by Burma and then travels along and
through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam till it flows out into the
South China Sea. Of these six countries, only the latter four are
members of the MRC.

‘’Hundreds of thousands of Laos villagers are likely to lose land,
fisheries and other resources when these large dams are constructed and
Laos does not have a good track record of managing the social and
environmental impact of big dams,’’ warns International Rivers, a
U.S-based global environmental lobby, in a new report released on
Thursday. ‘’The few large hydropower projects now in operation, such as
Houay Ho and Theun-Hinboun dams, have increased poverty for tens of
thousands of Laotians.’’

Such concerns have been fed by worries about the new players in Laos.
‘’The new dam developers are coming from Thailand, Vietnam, China,
Russia and Malaysia, marking a shift away from money coming as aid in
the past to private- and public- sector funding coming from these
countries,’’ says Carl Middleton, Mekong programme coordinator for
International Rivers.

‘’The record of these companies is a problem,’’ he adds. ‘’Their
accountability, environment and social cost standards are low.’’

It is a view echoed by Mekong Watch, a Japanese-based non-governmental
organisation. ‘’Large scale development projects on the river will harm
the Mekong’s richness,’’ said Toshiyuki Doi, senior advisor to this
green group, at this week’s workshop for Mekong journalists.
‘’Development should not come at the expense of the river’s
environmental wealth and the people who depend on the river for their
livelihood.’’

An area of concern is the impact the dams will have on fisheries, since
the nearly 60 million people who live along the Mekong’s banks from
Burma southwards depend on fish to supply between 49-82 percent of their
dietary protein. The annual catch of fish amounts to over two million
tonnes and is valued at two billion dollars, according to the MRC. That
accounts for ‘’20 percent of all fish caught from inland waters of the
world.’’

The MRC admits to the challenge this places on countries like Laos,
prompting a choice between building dams for foreign currency or
maintaining the abundant fisheries sector. ‘’Dam building will have an
impact on the fisheries sector. Dams may not let the fish migrate,’’
admits Schiefer. ‘’There will have to be a trade-off between developing
hydropower for exports or fisheries for protein.’’

(END/2008)