A report commissioned by the Mekong River Commission has recommended no dam be built on the main stream of the lower Mekong River in south-east Asia for 10 years.
The commission represents the interests of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam and also includes China, which has built or is building eight dams on the upper Mekong, as well as Burma as dialogue partners.
The release of the 200-page report comes just weeks after Laos formally notified its Mekong neighbours that it wants to go ahead with a major dam at Xayaboury near the Thailand border.
Having weighed the potential risks and economic benefits of a Mekong mainstream hydropower industry, the recommendation of the strategic environmental assessment is to defer any dams for a decade.
This echoes the preferred position of the World Wildlife Fund, which has warned of catastrophic consequences for fish stocks even if only one main stream dam is built.
Ten of the 12 main stream Mekong dams are planned for Laos. The communist government has been an enthusiastic supporter of hydropower on Mekong tributaries because of the income and foreign exchange generated by selling hydroelectricity to Thailand and Vietnam.
The SEA recognises that if most of the mainstream dams are built, then Laos, one of the poorest countries in Asia, will earn billions of dollars annually.
However it also predicts that losses to fisheries would be of the order of $US476 million a year and “in the short to medium term, poverty would be made worse by any of the mainstream projects, especially among the poor in rural and urban areas.”
Environmental damage, according to the SEA, would be severe.
The 200-page report says “the mainstream projects are likely to result in serious and irreversible environmental damage, losses in long-term health and productivity of natural systems and losses in biological diversity and ecological integrity.”
But the report does not damn all dams.
It recommends that in a decade of deferment, governments, banks, dam developers and the Mekong River Commission should investigate innovative ways of tapping the power of the Mekong main stream in ways that do not involve damming the full breadth of the river channel.
