Save the Mekong, a coalition to keep the river alive
The Mekong River is
one of the world’s major rivers and flows along 4,350 km (2,703
miles) draining an area of 795,000 km2. (1) As Aviva Imhof from
IRN beautifully describes it, “the Mekong River is a changing kaleidoscope
of cultures, geography and plant and animal life. From a small trickle
in Tibet, the river quickly gathers steam and carves magnificent
gorges through Yunnan Province of China. It then turns into what
it remains for most of the rest of its journey: a fast-flowing,
meandering waterway that forms the heart and soul of mainland Southeast
Asia.” (2)
The river system is
also the base of the regional food security as long as its wealthy
aquatic biodiversity, which is second only to the Amazon, is not
only home to migratory fish stocks and endangered species but also
supports one of the most productive inland fisheries in the world,
especially small-scale fisheries. Also farmers are able to thrive
on rain-fed rice farming and freshwater fish. Thus, over
sixty million villagers from China, Burma, Thailand, Lao
PDR, Cambodia and Vietnam who live in and around and share the Mekong
River depend on it; for them water is more than a source of life,
it is a way of life.
Yet, deaf to all warnings
and blind to the potential harm to the rivers' biological and cultural
richness as well as the survival of villages, the
governments of Cambodia, Laos and Thailand are planning a
series of eleven big hydropower dams for the lower stretches of
the Mekong River. The purpose is to cater for increasing urban electricity
hunger and even export electricity to distant cities. Big consortiums
of hydropower companies might be rubbing their hands at the perspective
of huge profits out of replacing a “river of life” with an industrialized
series of reservoirs.
The dams put in peril
the ecology of both river and forest ecosystems of the Mekong river
system as well as the lives of the millions of riverside people
who depend upon the river for their income and food security (see
WRM Bulletin Nº 136) and each of the water resource development
projects proposed for the Mekong River basin has the potential to
damage the ecology. Evaluation studies by the Mekong Resource Center
have confirmed that the dams threaten the future viability and sustainability
of the Mekong's fish and fisheries as long as they would obstruct
fish migration, degrade aquatic habitats and affect the flow regime.
Studies also revealed that “there is no existing mitigation technology
that can effectively deal with the barrier effect of mainstream
dams on fish migrations” and that “(T)he cost of replacing this
essentially-free resource with another source of food, income and
employment would be prohibitive. With this perspective, it is clear
that the conservation of capture fisheries is crucial to maintaining
food security and social stability.”(3)
Large-scale generation –for whom and for what?-- generated at a
remote site and transported by long distance transmission lines
to the consumer is one of the key underlying issues of the problem.
As
a response, non-government organizations, local people, academics,
journalists, artists and ordinary people from within the Mekong
countries and internationally sharing a concern about the future
of the Mekong River, joined to create a coalition. Save the Mekong
was created “to protect the river, its resources and people’s livelihoods,
and encourage policymakers to adopt more sustainable ways of meeting
people’s energy and water needs.”
The
coalition has created a website <http://www.savethemekong.org>
and carries out a campaign urging Prime Ministers of Cambodia, Laos,
Thailand and Vietnam to keep the Mekong flowing freely.
In March and April, coalition members will be
collecting signed postcards from people in the countries who would
be affected by the projects and around the world. They invite anyone
to support the campaign by adding one’s name to the corresponding
online petition at <http://tinyurl.com/Save-the-Mekong>,
asking the governments to Save the Mekong and protect the livelihoods
of those who depend on it.
(1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mekong
(2)
World Rivers Review, International Rivers Network,
http://www.internationalrivers.org/files/WRRjune2007Final.pdf
(3)
http://www.mekong.es.usyd.edu.au/events/past/Conference
_Nov2008/AMRC%20fish
eries%20Brief%209%20%20Final%20(Engl).pdf
