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Expert Warns Against Dam Projects
By Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
27 April 2009
http://www.voanews.com/khmer/2009-04-27-voa2.cfm
International environmental experts warned this week that hydropower
dams to be built on the Mekong River will have serious and long-term
impacts on the environment and livelihoods of millions of people
living along the river, especially those at its lower reaches in Laos
and Cambodia.
They urged these countries to carefully consider impacts that have
already been experienced in some of the developed world.
The problem is not really about development and rights to development
but it is about what kind of development, a short-term goal versus
long-term cost, Richard Cronin, director of the Southeast Asia
Program of Henry L. Stimson Centre, told an auditorium organized by
East-West Centre in Washington.
The use of hydropower and large dams as a source of energy is
extremely controversial, and particularly one of the most
controversial things about it is old thinking, he said. We are now
in this country trying to undo a lot of the damage that we did to
rivers, especially in fisheries, from these big dams that we put up in
1930s.
There are currently 11 hydropower dams planned for Laos and Cambodia.
Two are in Cambodia. China, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia are main
developers, with China playing a major role by taking four projects.
According to environmental experts, dam construction could affect
water levels and cause erosion. This will subsequently have serious
impacts on fish populations and people who rely on fisheries. It will
also block the flow of fertile soil, which is important for
agriculture.
It actually creates a physical block to fish migration, and there are
many species of fish that migrate from the Tonle Sap and some other
parts of the flooded zone up into the Mekong mainstream, said Blake
Ratner, the regional director of the World Fish Center, an
international organization based in Phnom Penh.
They migrate up into tributaries in the upland within Cambodia, but
also through the mainstream to Laos and even to northern Laos, he
told VOA Khmer by phone. So to put a dam that blocks this fish
migration means that it puts at risk a great majority of the piece
that is important to the commercial catch.
Out of many hydropower dams planned, Laoss Don Sahong dam, located
near the Cambodian border, has caused a lot of controversy and debate.
It is feared that the impacts it has are vast, compared to the 300-
some megawatts of power it is expected to generate.
The Don Sahong dam will seriously affect fish populations, and we are
discussing this with Laos since we are in the Mekong River family,
Sin Niny, vice chairman of Cambodia National Mekong Committee, told
VOA in a phone interview. Laos said that once they have finished
their study, they will share the findings with us in a stakeholder
forum for inputs.
Even as it worries about developments upriver, Cambodia is looking at
the possibility of developing a hydropower dam called Sambo in the
northern province of Kratie, under an investment from China. The study
for that dam is due to finish in 2010.
The oil crises that happened in the past make us realize that we
cannot leave aside resources that we can use to produce a cheap
electrical supply, Sin Niny said. It is sustainable. We dont need
to buy others oil.
The Sambo dam could provide 2,600 megawatts of electricity, and
through other hydro-development schemes, the country is expected to be
energy self-sufficient by 2012 and able to export power four years
after that.
However, Cronin suggested that a regional power supply was a better
choice. A hydropower dam should be built in the upper Mekong, where it
would do no harm to fish migration, the Don Sahong and Sambo dams
abandoned, he said.
You could consider building a dam where the cost benefit is the best
and then sharing that power in the region, he said. Of course you
can build the dam in northern Laos, where it would not have anywhere
near the impacts on fishery that these two other Mekong dams would
have.
The Mekong River flows for 4,880 kilometres from its headwaters in
Tibet, then through Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, one
of the largest sources of freshwater fish in the world |
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