Lancang-Mekong Initiative A foundation for the long term cooperation and prosperity for China and ASEAN

Phạm Phan Long P.E

February 2011

Lancang-Mekong River is the world’s 11th longest river running through China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. In terms of bio-diversity, Lancang-Mekong is second only after the Amazon. For thousands of years, the river has been providing beneficial floods, fish, alluvial soil, fresh water and food for the people living alongside its route and in its basin.

Today, Lancang-Mekong is no longer the same life- supporting river to the people in the region. The entire Lancang-Mekong basin has seen the historic drought in 2010 and downstream people blamed China dams for the problem. Precipitation and water level throughout the basin dropped to 1 in 50 year low level and even lowest historical level in Vietnam. Last year, Mekong fishermen were mostly empty- handed. Each fisherman used to catch 50 kg of fish per day in the past, but last year, the market fish price in Vietnam delta shot up 10 times right at the peak of the flood season when fish should be plentiful and least expensive.

MEKONG – CỬU LONG 2011 A LOOK FORWARD INTO THE NEXT HALF CENTURY

NGÔ THẾ VINH

Fifty four years have passed since the day the United Nations established the Mekong River Committee (1957) and sixteen years since the birth of the Mekong River Commission (1995). China has and will build mammoth hydroelectric dams on the main current of the Upper Mekong. On the other hand, Thailand entertains plans to divert water from the Mekong. In recent days, the three countries of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia are also evaluating projects to construct twelve dams downstream the river.

To date (2011), China has finished building 4 of the series of fourteen hydroelectric dams in the Mekong Cascades in Yunnan. The fifth and largest dam Nuozhadu is under construction concurrently with the sixth one named Gongguoqio. The first dam named Manwan went into operation almost two decades ago. With the completion of the Nuozhadu Dam, two years from now, we can conclude that China has, for the most part, achieved the objectives it initially set for its series of hydroelectric dams in the Mekong Cascades in Yunnan and becomes the de facto “owner” of the Mekong. 

There are no signs showing that the building pace of hydroelectric dams along the Mekong’s current is slackening. With just four dams in Yunnan in operation, the immediate and undeniable impacts they cause are already being felt by the nations downstream: irregular flood waters during the Rainy Season, sections of the river drained dry in the Dry one, and severe salinization in the Mekong Delta. What should the approximately seventy million inhabitants of the Mekong Basin including about twenty million souls of the Mekong Delta need to do to adapt and survive?