Dams Threaten Mekong Livelihoods

Water Works
Twenty-eight dams have been, or are being, built on the Mekong River, despite protests that dams threaten fish populations by blocking off spawning grounds.
Photo by AFP

For thousands of years, the Mekong River has nourished civilizations and housed one of the world’s most diverse populations of fish and plants.

Yet 17 dams recently built on the Mekong and its tributaries in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Thailand, and Viet Nam, as well as 11 more in the planning process, are threatening Mekong fisheries—and thereby the food security they have provided for millions, critics warn.

“People affected could number in the millions, due to the extensive changes expected to the river’s ecosystem downstream,” Aviva Imhof, campaigns director New Flood-Proof, Drought-Tolerant Rice Reward Peaceful Afghan Provinces Dams Threaten Mekong Livelihoods of International Rivers, an NGO based in California, told IRIN.

Most alarming, NGOs say, is a cascade of eight dams being built in the Upper Mekong in the PRC, the origin of Southeast Asia’s largest river, which could alter the ecosystem downstream for Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Thailand.

Of the eight dams in the PRC, four have been completed. NGOs claim they are already undermining fish populations and causing erosion in downstream Myanmar, northern Thailand and northern Lao PDR.

The dams are allegedly blocking Mekong fish from traveling upstream to spawn, threatening fisheries.—IRIN news service •