Tag Archives: rivers

Mekong Delta suffers severe freshwater shortage

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Saigon Daily

Over the past five months, seawater has penetrated deep into many coastal provinces in the Mekong Delta, affecting thousands of hectares of rice and causing a severe shortage of fresh water.

Seawater has entered areas as far inland as 50-70 km from the sea, making average salinity of bodies of freshwater 2-3 percent higher than normal.

About 40 percent of the rice production has been affected by saltwater and one-third of the rural population in the region have not enough freshwater for daily activities.

In provinces upstream of the Tien and Hau rivers, numerous canals have dried up because of the prolonged dry and hot season. People in An Giang and Dong Thap Provinces have had no choice but to use unsafe water – from contaminated canals or stagnant pools – to meet their daily needs.

A home to some largest rivers sourced from the sea, Ben Tre Province appears to have suffered the most from the phenomena; saltwater erosion there is more severe than that elsewhere in the region.

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Singapore sand demand damaging Cambodia environment

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Dredging at dawn on The Tatai River, Koh Kong. Cambodia.

By Neil Chatterjee in Singapore, for Reuters

Singapore’s thirst for sand to increase land reclamation and construction is driving an ecologically damaging sand-dredging industry in Cambodia, according to a report by a non-governmental organisation.

London-based Global Witness said that Cambodia’s sand-dredging industry threatened endangered species, fish stocks and local livelihoods, despite the government’s May 2009 ban on sand-dredging.

“This situation highlights the continued failure of Cambodia’s international donors to use their leverage to hold the small elite surrounding the Prime Minister to account,” said George Boden, campaigner at Global Witness.

“Cambodia’s natural resource wealth should be lifting its population out of poverty.”

Koy Koung, the spokesman and undersecretary of state at Cambodia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, said he was unable to comment as the government had not seen the Global Witness report.

The report said Singapore was the world’s largest importer of sand in 2008 and has used sand imports to increase its landmass by 22 per cent since the 1960s.

It said this development has wreaked havoc on the region’s coastlines, with Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia having all announced bans on sand dredging for export due to environmental concerns.

Global Witness said it had tracked boats being loaded with sand in Cambodia to their destinations in Singapore, a regional base for manufacturers and banks that is expanding its financial centre and leisure attractions onto reclaimed land.

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Rivers and waterfalls run dry in Laos; tourism affected

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DPA

Vientiane – Unusually low levels in Laos’ waterways have put a stop to cruise-boat tourism on the Mekong River and dried up several waterfalls, media reports said Tuesday.

The Mekong River – which starts in southern China’s Yunnan province and winds through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam – reached its lowest level in decades this hot season after five months of unusually low rainfall.

In Laos, the low levels have started to have an impact on tourism, the Vientiane Times reported.

“We are seeing many sandbanks appear that we never knew were there,” said Khamphoui Phommavong, head of the Luang Prabang provincial Tourism Department in the north of the country.

“The operation of larger cruise boats for tourism on the Mekong from Luang Prabang to Bokeo province [around 200 kilometres away in the north-east] has stopped,” he told the state-run daily newspaper.

Even some smaller craft were finding it difficult to navigate the low river, he said.

In the Vangvieng district of Vientiane province, around 200 kilometres further south, the Xong River is 1 metre lower than average, said Phouvieng Sikaysone, Head of the Vangvieng Tourism Office.

He noted that the low level had yet to discourage tourists from kayaking and tubing on the river.

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Mekong Delta flooded choked by rice husks

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Tien Phong reports from The Mekong Delta in Vietnam…

VietNamNet Bridge – In the Mekong Delta nearly 4 million tones of rice husk is discharged to rivers and canals each year, causing serious pollution.

According to local people, several years ago, rice husking factories often sold rice husks to brick and sugar kilns as fuel but since brick and sugar kilns were dissolved, rice husks are poured into rivers and canals.

Big rice husking enterprises hire workers to spill rice husks to rivers at the price of 30,000 to 50,000 dong per tonne at night. Smaller enterprises directly discharge rice husk to rivers.

Local official Huynh Minh Hieu said there are 15 rice husking enterprises in Thoi Lai district, Can Tho city. The local government has received many complaints from the local people that rice husking enterprises are polluting rivers by spilling rice husks to rivers. The local authorities have inspected and fined some enterprises but the situation has not improved.

Hieu said the volume of rice husks is huge and their warehouses are full so enterprises are willing to shoulder fines just to get rid of the husks.

“They (rice husking businesses) complained that they don’t know what to do with rice husks. It is also a headache for us (local government),” Hieu said.

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New species discovered in the Greater Mekong at risk of extinction due to climate change

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Yet again, fab WWF discovers new species in the Greater Mekong region.

Greater Mekong – A bird eating fanged frog, a gecko that looks like it’s from another planet and a bird which would rather walk than fly, are among the 163 new species discovered in the Greater Mekong region last year that are now at risk of extinction due to climate change, says a new report launched by WWF ahead of UN climate talks in Bangkok.

During 2008 alone, scientists identified these rare and unique species within the jungles and rivers of the Greater Mekong, including a bird eating fanged frog that lies in streams waiting for prey, one of only four new species of musk shrew to be described in recent times, and a leopard gecko whose “other world” appearance – orange eyes, spindly limbs and technicolour skin – inspired the report’s title Close Encounters.

Such is the immense biodiversity of this region that some discoveries such as the tiger-striped pitviper were made by accident.

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A river becoming a road to ruin

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From The Nation | Bangkok

China is constructing a series of eight dams on the upper half of the Mekong, where the river passes through the high gorges of Yunnan. These include the recently completed Xiowan Dam which, at 292 metres high, is the world’s tallest. Its storage capacity is equal to all of Southeast Asia’s reservoirs combined, the UN report said. The dams are needed to meet China’s rapacious energy demands.

Laos, meanwhile, has started construction on 23 dams on the Mekong and its tributaries, expected to be finished by 2010, the UN said. They will act as a means to spur development and lift the country from poverty. Cambodia and Vietnam also have ambitious dam-building plans.

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Assault on the Mekong: ‘the worries are real’ says Thai activist

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VietNamNet Bridge

The co-director of a Thai NGO, TERRA (Towards Ecological Recovery & Regional Alliance), Premrudee Daoroung, talked with Tuoi Tre Daily about dams on the Mekong River. TERRA is a lead organizer in the campaign to collect signatures for the “Save the Mekong” petition.

What’s the impact on Thailand of damming the main channel of the Mekong River?

Premrudee answers the questions here

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Mekong body starts evaluating mainstream dams

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saigon-gpdaily.com.vn

“The MRC is faced with perhaps its most important strategic challenge since the Mekong Agreement was signed in 1995 because of increased interest in building hydropower dams in the mainstream of the lower Mekong River Basin,” said Mr. Bird.

While there are already 3,235 MW of electricity being generated by hydropower on Mekong tributaries – and dams with an operational capacity of 3,209 MW are under construction, what is new is the interest of the private sector in seriously considering developing hydropower schemes on the mainstream.

The Mekong is one of the most active regions in the world for hydropower with eight existing or planned Mekong mainstream dams in Yunnan Province in China, where the Mekong is called the Lancang River, and 11 proposed by Cambodia, Laos and Thailand – all in various stages of investigation or feasibility study.

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Expert Warns Against Dam Projects

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From Washington, Men Kimseng reports for VOA Khmer…

“The problem is not really about development and rights to development but it is about what kind of development, a short-term goal versus long-term cost,” Richard Cronin, director of the Southeast Asia Program of Henry L. Stimson Centre, told an auditorium organized by East-West Centre in Washington.

The use of hydropower and large dams as a source of energy “is extremely controversial, and particularly one of the most controversial things about it is old thinking,” he said. “We are now in this country trying to undo a lot of the damage that we did to rivers, especially in fisheries, from these big dams that we put up in 1930s.”

There are currently 11 hydropower dams planned for Laos and Cambodia. Two are in Cambodia. China, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia are main developers, with China playing a major role by taking four projects.

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Nearly two million at risk of arsenic poisoning

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Radio Australia – Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

The UN says 1.7 million people living along the Mekong River are at risk of arsenic poisoning from their drinking water supplies.

The risk assessment is part of ongoing efforts to survey wells and other water sources in Southeast Asia. …

Listen to the interview or read the transcript from this page…

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