Dead in the Water: book charts failings of Laos’ World Bank-funded hydro dam
By: Mark Tilly - Posted on: November 8, 2018 | Current Affairs
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0299317900/

A recently released book has shined a spotlight on the failures of the World Bank’s flagship hydropower project in Laos, at a time when the country’s dams are facing increased scrutiny due to a collapse earlier this year

Dead in the Water delves into what lessons can be learned from the development of the World Bank-funded Nam Thuen 2 (NT2) hydropower dam in Laos.

Drawing on research and analysis conducted by experts before, during and after the dam’s completion in 2010, the book highlights the systemic failures to properly address the social and environmental impacts the dam has had on local populations and ecosystems, resulting in the project being widely regarded as failing to better the lives of the people of Laos.

Southeast Asia Globe talks to Bruce Shoemaker, an independent researcher and one of the book’s editors and co-authors, about the future of big hydro in the region in the wake of the Xe Pian-Xe Nam Noy dam collapse in Laos earlier this year and if Southeast Asian governments and developers are reconsidering the need to invest in hydropower...
http://sea-globe.com/dead-in-the-water- ... hydro-dam/

The meetings between the riparian Mekong river countries continue, with no visible conclusions in sight.

Spotlight: Lancang-Mekong Cooperation could play bigger role in regional river protection, development
Source: Xinhua| 2018-12-29
PHNOM PENH, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) could play a bigger role in the protection and development of the Lancang-Mekong river, Cambodian experts and officials said in recent interviews with Xinhua.

Te Navuth, secretary general of the Cambodia National Mekong Committee (CNMC), said that for Cambodia, the main concerns over the Lancang-Mekong river's protection are climate change, natural disasters, irrigation and hydropower development in the basin, rising social demands and expectations for livelihoods, and water, food and energy security.

The official said the LMC mechanism could play a bigger role to address those challenges and Cambodia is committed to cooperation within the platform.

The LMC is a sub-regional cooperation mechanism launched in March 2016 by China, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, all riparian countries of the river called Lancang or Mekong in the upper reach.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-1 ... 707133.htm

Reuters
Sun Jan 13, 2019 / 7:45 PM EST
From Tibet to the 'Nine Dragons', Vietnam's Mekong Delta is losing sand
Mai Nguyen and James Pearson

MO CAY, Vietnam (Reuters) - In the dead of night, the entire front half of shopkeeper Ta Thi Kim Anh's house collapsed. Perched on the sandy banks of the Mekong River, it took just a few minutes for one half of everything she owned to plunge into its murky depths.

"Our kitchen, our laundry room, our two bedrooms, all gone," said Kim Anh, speaking amongst the twisted metal and rubble of her house, from which she still sells eggs, soap and instant noodles to villagers in Ben Tre, a province in Vietnam's Mekong Delta region.

"We'd be better off living in a cave instead," said Kim Anh, who has used coconut husks and old tires to reinforce the riverbank under her home.

Upstream damming and extensive mining of the Mekong's riverbed for sand is causing the land between the sprawling network of rivers and channels near the mouth of one of the world's great rivers to sink at a pace of around 2 cm (0.75 inches) a year, experts and officials said.

The 4,350 km (2,700-mile) river, known as the Lancang in its upper reaches, flows from China's Tibetan Plateau along the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand, through Cambodia and finally Vietnam, where it forms the delta known in Vietnam as the "Nine Dragons".

Reuters visited three provinces straddling different branches of the delta, where it has supported farming and fishing communities for millennia.

Across the region, local authorities are struggling with a rapid pace of erosion that is destroying homes and threatening livelihoods in the Southeast Asian country's largest rice-growing region.

A key cause is the years of upstream damming in Cambodia, Laos and China that has removed crucial sediment, local officials and experts said.

That sediment, vital for checking the mighty Mekong's currents, has also been lost due to an insatiable demand for sand - a key ingredient in concrete and other construction materials in fast-developing Vietnam - that has created a market both at home and abroad for unregulated mining.

"It's not a problem of the lack of water, it's the lack of sediment," said Duong Van Ni, an expert on the Mekong River at the College of Natural Resources Management of Can Tho University, the largest city in the Mekong Delta region.
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/af/idUSKCN1P8018

News Asia
Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam cite concerns over Pak Lay dam project in Laos
6 April 2019
The Mekong River Commission (MRC) has raised concerns with Laos over the Pak Lay hydropower dam on the Mekong River.

While Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam have accepted a prior agreement on the proposed 770 megawatt hydropower project in Laos’ Xayaboury Province, they have jointly released the statement calling on the Lao government to make every effort to address and mitigate potential adverse cross-border impacts of the project.

Somkiat Prajamwong, Office of the National Water Resources (ONWR) secretary-general and head of Thailand’s representatives to the MRC Joint Committee Special Session, said that after the conclusion on Pak Lay Dam’s prior consultation process, the three MRC members commented on the potential transboundary impacts to neighbouring countries from the construction and operation of the project.

Somkiat said that Thailand and other two Mekong states asked Laos to prevent the possible adverse impacts of the dam to the river’s hydrology and ecosystems by ensuring that the dam will be properly designed.

“We requested Laos to pay attention on the potential socio­economic and environmental transboundary impacts from the proposed dam to the Thai communities along Mekong River bank in eight North Eastern provinces,” he said.

“We also would like to be assured that the dam is safe and there will be a comprehensive program for monitoring the impacts of the project during construction and operation stages and sharing of information on the river’s hydrology, water quality, and fisheries among the MRC members.”

The proposed site for the dam is about 100 kilometres upstream from the Thai border at Loei’s Chiang Khan District.

Cambodia also said that further assessment on the transboundary environmental impacts and proper mitigation plans and measures are still needed to ensure that the people downstream will not be affected by the dam.
https://www.pattayaone.news/thailand-ca ... m-project/

CEOCambodiaNews wrote: ↑Mon Jan 14, 2019 9:02 am Reuters
Sun Jan 13, 2019 / 7:45 PM EST
From Tibet to the 'Nine Dragons', Vietnam's Mekong Delta is losing sand
Mai Nguyen and James Pearson

MO CAY, Vietnam (Reuters) - In the dead of night, the entire front half of shopkeeper Ta Thi Kim Anh's house collapsed. Perched on the sandy banks of the Mekong River, it took just a few minutes for one half of everything she owned to plunge into its murky depths.

"Our kitchen, our laundry room, our two bedrooms, all gone," said Kim Anh, speaking amongst the twisted metal and rubble of her house, from which she still sells eggs, soap and instant noodles to villagers in Ben Tre, a province in Vietnam's Mekong Delta region.

"We'd be better off living in a cave instead," said Kim Anh, who has used coconut husks and old tires to reinforce the riverbank under her home.

Upstream damming and extensive mining of the Mekong's riverbed for sand is causing the land between the sprawling network of rivers and channels near the mouth of one of the world's great rivers to sink at a pace of around 2 cm (0.75 inches) a year, experts and officials said.

The 4,350 km (2,700-mile) river, known as the Lancang in its upper reaches, flows from China's Tibetan Plateau along the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand, through Cambodia and finally Vietnam, where it forms the delta known in Vietnam as the "Nine Dragons".

Reuters visited three provinces straddling different branches of the delta, where it has supported farming and fishing communities for millennia.

Across the region, local authorities are struggling with a rapid pace of erosion that is destroying homes and threatening livelihoods in the Southeast Asian country's largest rice-growing region.

A key cause is the years of upstream damming in Cambodia, Laos and China that has removed crucial sediment, local officials and experts said.

That sediment, vital for checking the mighty Mekong's currents, has also been lost due to an insatiable demand for sand - a key ingredient in concrete and other construction materials in fast-developing Vietnam - that has created a market both at home and abroad for unregulated mining.

"It's not a problem of the lack of water, it's the lack of sediment," said Duong Van Ni, an expert on the Mekong River at the College of Natural Resources Management of Can Tho University, the largest city in the Mekong Delta region.
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/af/idUSKCN1P8018

The stopping of sediment and nutrient flow are amongst the lesser recognised effects of hydropower dams. It is going to have a catastrophic impact on Koh Kong's crucial mangrove estuary system - and hence very bad news for fish stocks in the Gulf of Thailand and throughout SE Asia. (where billions of Koh Kong bred fish disperse).

Environmentalist Warns of Long-Term Impacts of Reckless Hydropower Development
03 May 2019

WASHINGTON DC — A prominent environmentalist has warned that hydropower-reliant countries will face significant negative impacts in the long-term and could see a repeat of the tragic bursting of the Xe Pian Xe Namnoy dam in Laos last July that killed dozens.

Ian Baird, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, said states and other stakeholders often ignored the potential early-stage impacts of hydropower dams, including the need for evacuation if a major incident happened.

“This is why I’m comparing the level of interest of the catastrophic event to the level of interest to the slow violence this dam has already been causing for many, many years,” Baird told the audience at a meeting at the Stimson Center in Washington in early April. “I’ve written about this since the 1990s, but without getting much attention. So ironically was when the dam broke, all of a sudden everybody cared about this project, but prior to that nobody cared.”

He said the Xe Pian Xe Namnoy case would act as a wake-up call for other governments in the region.

At least 49 people reportedly died after the dam burst; many have since suffered physical and mental health, while their children have dropped out of school due to the impact on their families’ livelihoods.

The Xe Pian Xe Namnoy was the second dam in Laos to break within a year. In September 2017, the Nam Ao Hydroelectric dam in Xiangkhouang province also failed but drew less international attention as it was on a smaller scale.

Baird blamed leaders of the Mekong countries, including Laos and Cambodia, for turning a blind eye to these impacts for their own economic benefit.

“Cambodia, because they were impacted by this project, you’d think that they would have been calling for compensation for all the impacts that had occurred there, but they didn’t actually call for that,” he said. “All they called for was more cross-border disaster management and that’s largely I think because Cambodia hasn’t planned for their own dams. So, you know, if they start complaining about Laos dams, maybe Laos will complain about Cambodian dams. So, it's become the lowest common denominator. Nobody wants to complain about the fear that they will become the subject of complaints from other people.”

More than 2,000 families on the Cambodia side of the border in Stung Treng province were affected had to be evacuated to safe ground. But local authorities claimed it's typical annual flooding and did not ask Laos to provide compensation.

"The impact was not too serious to affect the lives of local people, and it did not last long,” said Men Kung, spokesman for Stung Treng province. “Therefore, solving this problem was only through intervention from local authorities and generous donors in the country."

But Baird argued that Cambodians deserve compensation.

“Well, I do think that this was something that was caused by a private company in Laos, that this had direct impacts on Cambodian people in a very serious way and that company in Laos should have to be paying compensation to those people in Cambodia because they were the direct cause of those impacts,” he said.
https://www.voacambodia.com/a/environme ... 02666.html

Youths to Hold Story-Telling Event on ‘Wonders of the Mekong’
Dozens of Cambodian youths are coming together to raise public awareness about the environmental threats facing the life-giving river.
By VOA Cambodia -
June 3, 2019

Washington, D.C – As concerns over the future of the Mekong River continue to grow, dozens of Cambodian youths are coming together to raise public awareness about the environmental threats facing the life-giving river.

The group, called Young Eco Ambassadors, is organizing a full-day event on June 15 attended by government officials, civil society groups, international NGOs, local communities and the public, in which they will call for better protection of the Mekong.

Held at the Cambodia-Korea Cooperation Center in Phnom Penh, they said, the event is centered on story-telling and cultural performances to promote greater appreciation for “the wonders of the Mekong.”

In full: https://www.voacambodia.com/a/youths-to ... 42435.html

Conference promotes cooperation to protect Mekong River
By Vietnam+ -
June 30, 2019
Hanoi – A conference on how to enhance cooperation in protecting the Mekong River via smarter water energy planning approaches and wide application of renewable energy throughout the Mekong region was held in Hanoi on June 28.

The event was jointly organised by the Stimson Centre, the International Union for Conservation (IUCN) and the US Embassy in Vietnam.

Brian Eyler from the Stimson Centre said an initiative on a Mekong connection programme was built by the Stimson Centre, IUCN, Nature Conservancy (TNC), the University of California Berkeley (UCB), the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam with financial assistance from the US Embassy in Vietnam and the project “Building River Dialogue and Governance” (BRIDGE).

In full: https://en.vietnamplus.vn/conference-pr ... 155246.vnp

July 31, 2019
Mekong river countries urged to reconsider hydropower dams
Activists representing Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam yesterday urged their respective governments to consider the lives of people living around the Mekong River when building infrastructure projects.

Some of the activists urged governments to increase impact assessment initiatives, while others called for the suspension of all ongoing hydropower dam projects.

The push was made during a Mekong public forum in Phnom Penh. About 200 researchers, members of civil society organisations and government officials from the three Mekong River countries attended the forum.

Kong Chanthy, a local community representative from Stung Treng province, said the construction of hydropower dams in China, Laos and Thailand has made people living downstream lose access to natural resources, such as fish. Mr Chanthy also said that the construction of the dams has affected biodiversity.
Full article: https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50628833/m ... ower-dams/

Mekong runs dry as politics, business fail local communities
Aug 02. 2019
By Piyaporn Wongruang

“The most disastrous situation in history,” was one expert’s stark verdict when shown images of the dry Mekong River bed and dead aquatic animals. Dr Chainarong Setthachua, a lecturer and ecology expert at Maha Sarakham University, was at a loss when asked to describe the ongoing Mekong crisis.

However, little is being done by governments despite recent photos of the dried-bed of a river that passes through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Chainarong puts this inaction down to the adverse impact of development in the Mekong Basin.

“The Mekong River is part of our history, when we struggled against Communism and joined a capitalist, neo-liberal world. We used the river as a political tool and an asset for economic development. Yet, we did not supervise its development, which has resulted in a real disaster. I don’t see any solutions because every government is only focusing on building dams, but not on the scars these development plans are leaving behind,” said Chainarong, who has been monitoring Mekong River development plans for more than two decades.

Full article: https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30374055