Laos: Playing to win in Mekong hydropower game

Laos: Playing to win in Mekong hydropower game

At a time of deep concern about the ecological future of the Mekong River
(declining fish stocks, reduced water and sedimentation flows, and
destructive saltwater incursion into the Mekong delta), Laos, the minnow of
the participants in the Mekong River Agreement of 1995, is continuing to
pursue its goal of becoming the 'Battery of Southeast Asia' through the
construction of hydropower dams on the river's mainstream.

It has done so by exploiting both the weakness of the agreement and
indecision, policy weakness, and self-interest from its other parties:
Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. This all matters for the 60 million plus
people who live in the Lower Mekong Basin, where eight in every ten people
depend on the river for food and agriculture.

Central to the apparent success of Lao policy has been the skill and drive
of Viraphonh Viravong, the Australian-trained Lao Deputy Minister for Energy
and Mines (he graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the Footscray
Institute of Technology in 1976). He has repeatedly stated his government's
view that 'if Laos is to escape least-developed status by 2020, this
(developing Mekong dams) is our only choice'. He has also emphasised that
the Mekong River Commission (MRC) has no legal mandate to block Lao plans to
build dams on the river. As he tartly observed two years ago:

...the 'Procedures for Notification Prior Consultation and Agreement set
forth in the 1995 (Mekong) Agreement are not a mechanism for approving or
rejecting any particular project. The MRC is not a building permits office.

It now seems unlikely that the Lao government will build all nine dams
projected for construction within its territory. But it has two dams under
construction, Xayaburi and Don Sahong, has announced its intention to
commence construction next year on a third, at Pak Beng, and there are
indications that it is committed to building a fourth dam at Pak Lay. Until
recently there was some uncertainty as to how far construction had advanced
at Don Sahong, but recdent photos show much preparation and preliminary
construction has already taken place.

What does this mean for the Mekong's future and why have Cambodia, Thailand
and Vietnam not been more vigorous in their response to Lao policy? In
Thailand's case, the answer is fairly clear. In contrast to Cambodia and
Vietnam it is less dependent on fish caught in the Mekong for its
population. Moreover, Thailand plans to purchase electricity from the
mainstream Mekong Lao dams, a point reinforced by the fact that the Xayaburi
dam is being constructed by a major Thai company, CH Kamchang. Thailand's
immediate concern in relation to the Mekong is the role the river plays as a
source of large-scale water diversion for its drought-threatened
northeastern region.

The Cambodian government's failure to take a more critical view of Lao
actions is less easily explained, particularly as senior officials have in
the past expressed serious concerns about the impact of the Don Sahong dam
in the far south of Laos on fish stocks, both in public and on several
occasions in private observations to me. The basis for this criticism is
substantial scientific evidence presented by a range of bodies. As long ago
as 2007, the WorldFish Center warned that the Don Sahong dam would have a
major effect on the availability of fish stocks in Cambodia, where 80% of
the population's animal protein intake comes from fish caught in the Mekong
River system.

But more recently Prime Minister Hun Sen has given explicit support to the
dam. There is no obvious reason for this, even taking into account the
assurance given to the Cambodia government earlier this year by a Lao
minister that the dam would not impact on fisheries, a position long
advocated by Viraphonh Viravong and repeated in his statements last year. To
what extent Hun Sen's position reflects a desire to deflect attention away
from the probable deleterious effects on fish stocks resulting from the
construction of Cambodia's own Lower Se San 2 dam on a major Mekong
tributary in Stung Treng province cannot be judged.

In some ways Vietnam's muted reaction is the most puzzling of all, given the
vital importance of the Mekong delta as a productive region for Vietnamese
agriculture. Five or six years ago, a journalist from the Ho Chi Minh
City-based newspaper Thanh Nhien was in frequent touch with me to discuss
stories on the problems facing the Mekong delta region as a consequence of
expected damage from China's dams on the upper reaches of the Mekong River,
but this contact has ceased. It is as if the Vietnamese government places
relations with China and Laos above expressing concerns about what is
happening and might happen in the Mekong delta.

As Dr Ngo The Vinh, an indefatigable US-based commentator on Mekong issues,
has commented:

...the Vietnam National Mekong Committee is still located at 23 Hàng Tre
Street in Hanoi. So far, this organization is unable to enunciate a
consistent policy to prevent or oppose the series of mainstream hydropower
dams in Laos. From its distant location, the Committee cannot or does not
want to hear the death knell and the pounding of nails being driven into the
Mekong Delta¹s coffin that reverberate from a region on its death's throes
and dying a slow death.

It will be somewhere between five and ten years before the full impact of
the Lao dams can be assessed. Whether Minister Viraphonh Viravong will be
justified in claiming the benefits of the hydropower dams built in Laos over
that period is itself a contested issue, as reflected in a very recent
publication from the Stimson Center in Washington DC.

But short-term benefits from the sale of electricity, even if they
eventuate, will have to be judged against long-term ecological costs that
now seem an inevitable result of the Lao embrace of dams that will transform
the Mekong. Laos may have won the game in showing that it has been able to
build dams on the Mekong and that the Mekong Agreement is a seriously week
reed, but in doing so its 'successful' gaming could prove deeply costly for
the people of Cambodia and Vietnam.

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Link to Original Article:
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/laos-playing-win-mekong-hydrop
ower-game?platform=hootsuite

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com