Pending Dam Decision: Killing Local Livelihoods in the Mekong River Region For Power Export

Villages along the Mekong River in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic are sure to see the destruction of their way of life, say environmentalists, if the go-ahead is given during a meeting this Tuesday to decide whether a first of series of dams should be built on the lower mainstream of the river.

A section of the Mekong River in Lao. Photo courtesy of .traveladventures.org.

If built, the Xayaburi Dam would be the largest of eleven large dams proposed to be built on the river. The decision to build must be agreed on by the Mekong River Commission’s member countries of Lao, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

International Rivers, one of the environmental groups working to create public pressure to stop the dam, estimates that “the project would resettle around 2,100 people and directly affect a further 202,000 people living near the dam due to impacts on the river’s ecology and fisheries.”

A preliminary evaluation by the commission in 2009 also highlighted potential concerns including adverse effects to the river’s biodiversity, such as the dam’s potential to “block [fish] migration routes and lead to [the] fragmentation of habitats.”

Mekong giant catfish. Stock photo.

International Rivers expects that if built, “the dam threatens the extinction of more than 41 fish species, including the critically endangered Mekong giant catfish.”

The commission additionally acknowledged that the potential impacts would not only be to fish and aquatic plant life, “but also the floodplains and wetlands watered by the floods, groundwater-dependent ecosystems replenished through river seepage, and where applicable, estuaries.”

The commission recently recommended a 10-year moratorium to further evaluate the potential effects of a multiple-dam system on the river, though that decision is also still pending.

The main motivator for building the dam is to create further wealth for the Lao government and big international investors. The main buyer of the hydroelectric power from the dam would be Thailand.

The commission acknowledges that, “the primary objective of the Xayaburi Dam project is to generate foreign exchange earnings,” adding that the Thailand-based developer Ch. Karnchang Public Co. also negotiated the tariff agreement with the Electric Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) in July 2010.

The proposed project is to be financed by Thailand’s Kasikorn Bank, Bangkok Bank, Siam Commercial Bank, and Krung Thai Bank.

A letter pleading for the cancellation of the dam project – signed by 263 public and environmental advocacy groups and sent to the prime ministers of Lao and Thailand – expressed concern that “95 percent of the project’s electricity will be exported to Thailand, while the impacts will be most acutely felt by riverside communities in Lao PDR and neighboring countries.”

The World Wildlife Fund, which is among the groups strongly opposing the dam project, is warning decision makers to pay attention to the past and learn from the damage done by the Pak Mun Dam on the Mun River in Thailand, which is also a key Mekong tributary.

The WWF fears that this will end up being be a much larger scale repeat of the environmental damage caused by the dam on the Mun River, which the nonprofit says they received, “bland assurances of only low-level impacts to fisheries prior to construction,” but what they saw was very different.

The immediate impact of the dam was to flood nearly 120 square kilometer of land and displace about 3,000 families. The EGAT was forced to pay out relocation compensations and monetary damages for lost fisheries.

“The first decade of the dam’s operation saw damaging impacts on 85 percent of fish species [that were] present before the dam’s construction, 56 species disappearing entirely, and reduced catches for a further 169 species,” said the WWF.

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