Avoiding Crisis in the Mekong River Basin
PRASHANTH PARAMESWARAN for WORLD POLITICS REVIEW
Earlier this month, the leaders of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and host country Thailand gathered for the first-ever Mekong River Commission (MRC) summit to discuss the future of the Mekong, one of the world’s longest and most resource-rich rivers.
There was much to discuss. The Mekong — which flows through China, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, and provides food, water, and transport for about 65 million people — is now at its lowest level in two decades due to a prolonged drought. Its future is also in peril due to a host of natural and man-made threats. Unless riparian states make a concerted, joint effort to manage the river’s resources prudently and sustainably, their actions risk threatening food security, destroying livelihoods, and heightening regional tensions.
The main threat is from hydropower. China, which already has five operational dams, plans to construct about 15 more large- to mega-sized hydropower dams upstream, while Southeast Asian states themselves mull building 11 of their own further downstream. While these dams do not deplete the river’s water supply outright, they affect the hydrology of the Mekong by altering the natural timing and volume of the river’s seasonal flows. According to a recent report (.pdf) by the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank, resulting reductions in silt deposits downstream could threaten one of the most productive regions of wet rice cultivation, while erratic water currents may block the spawning migration of fish in what is now the world’s largest freshwater fishery.
Other trends are equally, if not more worrying. Demographic and development pressures will further increase demand on the river’s already threatened resources. According to projections (.pdf) by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the population in the Lower Mekong is expected to swell to 90 million by 2025, with over a third living in urban areas. Total irrigation water requirements for the region, which stood at about 43,700 million cubic meters in 2002, will rise to about 56,700 million cubic meters by the end of this year.
Disruptive climate change threats also hover in the longer-term future. Global conservation group WWF predicts intense floods and droughts, coastal erosion, higher seas and heat waves for the Mekong Delta. Vietnam’s own Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment says that if sea levels rise 30 inches by 2100, 20 percent of the Delta and 10 percent of Ho Chi Minh City could be swamped.
Read article… All the links to .pdf documents after the jump.
Prashanth Parameswaran is research assistant at the Project 2049 Institute, a Washington-based think tank that covers Asian security issues. He is also a research fellow for Asia Chronicle, a daily online journal, and blogs about international affairs at GlobalEye.
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