Water levels along Thailand’s stretches of the Mekong River have plummeted to alarming lows, causing renewed hardships to fisher folk and farmers living alongside the storied waterway.
In northeastern Nakhon Phanom province, which borders Laos, water in the river stands at a mere five metres, which is eight metres below the spillover level of 13 metres, local officials have reported.
Environmental experts have warned for years that the days of the Mighty Mekong are numbered because Chinese energy policies have failed to take into account the ecological costs of rampant dam building on the upper reaches of the river.
The low level in the river, which is a vital source of water for tens of millions of people in several countries, is especially disconcerting as it comes during the rainy season. At the same time, four main local tributaries of the Mekong in the predominantly rural province have also seen their water levels plummet to between a fifth and less than a third of their usual capacities at this time of year.
Thailand is hardly alone in its predicament. The scarcity of water in the Mekong is causing an ecological disaster in several other Southeast Asian nations and it is no mystery what is behind it: China’s hoarding of water for the reservoirs of its hydroelectric dams upstream (Sunday Examiner, June 5 and July 19).
The government in Beijing frequently pays lip service to the need for sustainable development according to socialist principles, but has been doing the exact opposite of sustainability with the Mekong, which it clearly sees as its own property to trifle with; other countries be damned. By building a cascade of large dams upriver in recent years, China has been dealing a deathblow to the Mekong downstream.
Environmental experts have warned for years that the days of the Mighty Mekong are numbered because Chinese energy policies have failed to take into account the ecological costs of rampant dam building on the upper reaches of the river.
David Stilwell, the United States’ assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, recently gone as far as to dispense with diplomatic niceties and accuse China of subverting the Mekong “for its own profit” and doing so “at great cost to downstream nations” such as Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
However, some of these countries have themselves contributed to the precarious state of the river. Laos for one has built large dams of its own with investments from China and Thailand, and the country is planning even more.
Just like its Chinese counterpart, the communist party in Vientiane has been engaged in a dam-building bonanza with zero environmental oversight and little public consultation. It is keen on turning the impoverished, landlocked nation into the “battery of Southeast Asia” through a series of hydroelectric dams even if they come at grave economic and environmental costs to long-suffering Laotian farmers themselves.
Meanwhile, other Southeast Asian countries, which all depend to varying degrees on Chinese investments to power their economies, can do little beyond voicing concerns now and again.
As Beijing has been economically colonising the region, it wields great political clout over local governments, many of which are happy to sell out to China.
Predictably enough, Beijing has shrugged off criticisms about its role in destroying the Mekong, blaming the chronically low levels of water in the river on climate change and prolonged droughts.
However, experts have stressed that droughts alone do not account for constant water shortages along the river.
For the second year in a row the Lower Mekong Basin has seen water levels drop to record lows. Irrigation, rice production and fisheries have all been badly affected, posing a threat to the food security of tens of millions of people.
In addition, numerous aquatic species from fish to turtles have been badly impacted, especially in places such as Cambodia’s vital Tonle Sap, which depends on the Mekong for much of its water.
The Mekong Basin is “the world’s most productive freshwater fishery, accounting for over 15 per cent of global annual freshwater fish catch,” four environmentalists explained in a recent article. “Meanwhile, (the World Wide Fund for Nature’s researchers) estimate that the contribution actually accounts for a quarter of the world’s freshwater catch.”
Clearly Beijing couldn’t care less. China’s disregard of environmental factors along the Mekong while hoarding water in reservoirs in the name of controlling floodwaters upstream has been an unmitigated disaster.
Beijing’s “efforts to restrict the (river’s natural) pulse in the name of ‘flood control’ threaten the livelihoods of tens of millions of farmers and fishers downstream,” the experts note. “The only beneficiaries of such restrictions are dam operators and electricity markets upstream in China.”
Needless to say, Beijing must be pleased with just such a state of affairs. Sadly, one of the world’s greatest rivers is now disappearing before our eyes because of this benighted attitude.
UCAN/LaCroix
