A major decision looms over the damming of the downstream Mekong River at Xayaburi in
Laos. The decision may affect millions of people in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.
| The Mekong River is the world’s 10th longest river
(4,800 kilometers). It starts in the Tibetan Plateau
and flows through China’s Yunnan province and
Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
More than 60 million people depend on the river
and its tributaries for food, water, transport and many
of their daily lives. The Mekong River basin drains water
from an area of 795,000 square kilometers. The Mekong River
Commission (MRC) is an intergovernmental advisory body
responsible for the sustainable management of the Mekong
Basin. It has no decision-making capability and there are no
international treaties governing trans-boundary rivers.
The plans of Laos to start building dams along
has placed the Greater Mekong Subregion
in the limelight as
the four involved countries are not unanimous in believing that
the dams should be built. Laos, Asean’s poorest member, is
convinced that by building dams and using some of the power
for its development
and selling the majority of the power to
more advanced countries such as Thailand, it will become
more prosperous and create jobs for its people. It’s hard to
dispute that and its also indisputable that hydroelectricity is a
renewable energy resource.
Thailand is also pro-dam as several Thai banks are financing
the project and the proposed developer is Ch. Karnchang
Public Company Ltd, a Thai company. Thailand is looking for
more energy to continue growth in its industrial sector in the
face of declining natural gas reserves. Cambodia plans to build
two dams near the border with Laos.
Opposing the dam is Vietnam over concerns that the
Mekong Delta, its prime rice-growing area will be adversely
affected. China has already built four dams on the Mekong, including
the Xiaowan dam, the world’s tallest. The Vietnamese
and others have blamed the low water levels in the Mekong
on these dams even in times of drought.
Another issue is the
flow of silt that replenishes the delta with a new coating of soil
every flood season. Dams impede the flow of silt.
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
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