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Dam Projects Threaten the Livelihoods of Over 60 Million

David Fullbrook | Chatham House | June 2008

Many governments in Southeast Asia are hoping for better energy security and appreciable increases in public revenue through a number of dam construction projects along the Mekong River. Yet the projected dams do not only produce electricity, inject the empty state treasuries with money from international development programs, or promise long term gains through energy exports. They also reduce the region's fish population and affect the crop harvests of over 60 million people, whose livelihood is directly bound to the huge river. The consequences for those concerned are barely measurable.

The government of Laos is expecting to export the energy produced by 13 dams by 2015 and this way, finally raise the country out of poverty. The Nam Theun II is the largest dam under construction and is meant to be ready by 2009. This project, which is partly financed by the World Bank and being built under the custody of the French energy supplier Electricité de France (EDF), is expected to bring in as much as 1.9 billion US-dollars to the government over the next 25 years. The Luang Prabang dam which is being built by PetroVietnam should provide the government with over 2.6 billion - a multiple of the total Laotian state expenditure, which only amounted to 643 million last year according to the CIA. Cambodia does not want to be left out of such promising developments. In July 2006, the parliament of the Chinese company Sinohydro admitted it was assured of making money with its project in Kampot which cost 280 million. Three months later, representatives of the government and China Southern Power Grid, a state owned Chinese energy provider, agreed to weigh up the pros and cons of a project worth 4 billion and involving the construction of a six miles-long dam in the north of Sambor.

The efforts to achieve energy security by means of hydraulic power could have dramatic consequences for millions of people and deprive them of their basic source of alimentation. The dams in Laos would especially impair the afflux of fish and nutritious water towards Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Today already, Thai fishermen are ever more often faced with empty fishing nets and forced to leave their families and look for a job in Bangkok. Experts fear that the Sambor project in Canbodia will prevent the Mekong tide during the monsoon rainfalls from ever taking place. The tide fills the Tonle Sap with huge amounts of water and spreads nutritious silt all over the region. The Tonle Sap is one of the largest lakes in South East Asia and the most fish abundant fresh water body on the planet. Many fishermen and rural inhabitants will have no other choice but to follow their colleagues to the slums of Bangkok, Phnom Penh, and Ho Chi Min. Yet, how many refugees from the countryside can South East Asia's cities tolerate before considerable problems arise? If one considers the 60 million people whose lives depend on the intact ecological state of the Mekong, the flow of refugees could be staggering.

This summary was prepared by the Atlantic Community editorial team from "Asian Rivers - Food and Power: Dams it is!" published here by Chatham House in "The World Today", June 2008 issue.

Related materials from the Atlantic Community:

• J. F. Laurson & G. A. Pieler: Biofuel for Thought
• Samuel Thernstrom: Resetting Earth's Thermostat
• Leah Strauss: Pollution as a Human Rights Issue