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A Fledgling Local Movement to Manage the "Mother of Waters"
by Curtis Runyan
(Washington, DC, April 2003) The Mekong River system, which runs 4,800 kilometers through China, Laos, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, and Vietnam, is one of the most complex in the world – both ecologically and politically.
International threats to the river – from dam-building to extensive dredging – are pushing a number of the region’s governments, which are not particularly well known for their environmental planning, to take steps to better manage the river as it passes through their countries. The Vietnamese government, for instance, recently passed legislation to begin regulating demands on the Mekong and to address issues of pollution.
“In Vietnam, we did not have any intention of looking at water law, but when the Mekong problems started to happen, we had to come up with some solutions,” said Do Hong Phan, a former Vietnamese government hydrologist who is now the director of the Centre for Resources Development and Environment in Vietnam.
In the past few years fish harvests have begun to decline. A number of species, including the Mekong’s giant catfish, are now close to extinction. And management of dwindling resources is increasingly problematic. In Cambodia, for instance, commercial fishermen have been unable to meet their fish-catch quotas and have turned their anger on local fishers – shooting them, in one case.
“Often governments think that they can solve these environmental problems by national fiat,” said Mairi Dupar, a Southeast Asia expert at the World Resources Institute (WRI). “But the solutions more often lie in getting local leaders and affected parties to the table – there is a crucial link between better governance and better environmental management.” WRI has been working with Phan and a number of other civil society leaders in the region to increase local participation in government decisions.
Each year during the monsoon rains, the Mekong backs up into a tributary and over-runs Cambodia’s Tonle Sap lake, the largest in Southeast Asia. For a couple of months each year the lake rises beyond its banks and floods an area 5 to 6 times its dry-season surface area – covering more than 1.25 million hectares.
However, this timeless cycle of ebbs and flows in Southeast Asia’s longest river may soon grind to a halt. The flow of the Mekong – the name translates into “the Mother of Waters” – has been increasingly erratic in the past few years, in large part due to conflicting national agendas for developing the river’s resources.
China, the world’s most prodigious builder of dams, is now promising to help level out the flow of the river, reduce flooding, and supply hydroelectric power to the region by building eight large hydroelectric dams near the headwaters of the river. Together with Burma, and Laos, the country has also embarked on a program of blasting rapids and shoals to make the river more navigable for commercial ships. Thailand had agreed to the plan as well, but recently put its support on hold.
But these projects have raised considerable alarm from the river’s downstream neighbors. Officials from countries in the lower Mekong basin are concerned that re-engineering the river’s ecology will disrupt the livelihoods of millions of farmers and fishers along the river. Three-quarters of the population of the lower Mekong basin depend on the river for their livelihoods. And demands upon the river are expected to increase significantly in the next two decades, as the basin’s population is expected to increase from 60 million today to 100 million by 2025.
In February, Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen publicly raised concerns that channelizing the river and erecting dams could dry up the Tonle Sap and further threaten fish stocks. The lake provides crucial spawning grounds for an estimated 1,700 different fish species that populate the Mekong.
“Believe me, the drying up of Tonle Sap will not just affect Cambodia but the entire region,” Sen said in an interview with reporters. “The change in the level of water flow is an important factor.” In Cambodia up to 70 percent of the country’s protein intake comes from fish caught in the Tonle Sap.
In response to environmental pressures – and at the behest of the World Bank and other development organizations – Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos formed the Mekong River Commission (MRC) in 1995. The commission’s aim is to coordinate decisions in each country that affect the river, and to promote more sustainable uses of water resources.
But the MRC, driven by outside actors and international agencies, operates largely on the regional level. “For real change to occur these countries need to have the change come from within,” said Dupar.
“Things like water management are new here,” said Phan. “Until 1997 the government only focused on building water projects and simply using water, now people are beginning to talk about things like integrated-water management … and local input into environmental protection.” (WRI Features, 827 words)
Curtis Runyan (features@wri.org) is the managing editor of WRI Features, a monthly international news features service on environment and development issues. |
