The worst drought in 90 years has lowered water levels and put millions of people living along the Mekong at risk. A situation made worse by the dam-building boom.
Intact until the 1990s, the "sweet serpent" of Southeast Asia is today wounded at multiple points. Twenty years of climate change and dam construction have been enough to put the Mekong river at risk — a river that descends from the Chinese Himalayas through Tibet, Yunnan, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. But the dry season of 2016 has dealt the most severe blow to date. An intense and prolonged El Niño caused the worst drought in 90 years across the entire region. The arrival of the monsoons is expected by June, but it will take months to repair the damage caused by desertification and salinisation.
However, the waters of the Mekong did not fall to their lowest level in a century solely because of climate change, including the warming of the Pacific Ocean known as El Niño. According to various organisations, such as International Rivers, the dam-building boom — which began quietly in 1993 and accelerated from 2009 — is said to have had a severe impact on the river, on communities and on the ecosystem. At present there are six dams on the upper Mekong in Chinese territory, but a further eleven are under construction or already planned between Vietnam and Laos.
"Experts fear that the current crisis will become the new normal for Cambodia and its neighbours," writes Jennifer Rigby in Irin News. Water is scarce in 18 of Cambodia's 25 provinces. More than 93,000 poor families are going hungry and thirsty. "This year is terrible," fisherman Kreun Phear, who lives on Lake Tonle Sap — fed by the tributaries of the Mekong — tells the Irin journalist. "We can no longer find fish. No one is helping us and we are almost starving." The man lives in Chong Prey Lay, one of the villages that becomes floating when water levels rise during the rainy season. Here everything depends on the lake — livelihoods and sustenance alike. The houses are built on stilts, the markets float on the water. Locals say they have never seen such a natural disaster.
The United Nations reports that in Vietnam 10 per cent of rice paddies have been destroyed. The low river level has allowed salt water to penetrate far beyond its normal limits into the delta region. Two million Vietnamese people, mostly farmers, are without drinking water. Scientists from various Asian countries are creating more resilient varieties of rice and studying new techniques for desalinating fields. Adapting to climate changes that have already occurred is essential. In addition, to mitigate the effects of drought, the World Economic Forum had suggested some years ago that rainwater harvesting be managed more effectively.
A few days ago, Jane Perlez of the New York Times explained how the "first rice policy" is under debate — that is, Hanoi's policy, pursued since the 1970s, of putting "rice first" to drive the country's growth. The intensive cultivation of three varieties of rice, in place of the traditional two, is said to have depleted the soil, further worsening the effects of the drought.
Energy markets expert Tim Daiss writes in Forbes: "In the first four months of 2016, Vietnamese economic growth fell to 5.6 per cent […] In the same period of 2015, GDP had grown by 6.17 per cent." Rice is one of the staple foods and the leading export product (by volume) for India, Thailand and Vietnam. Daiss recounts how inhabitants of rural Vietnamese areas are becoming environmental refugees: "In the Mekong Delta, many farmers have been unable to cope with the poverty created by the drought and have left the area to seek employment in manufacturing companies or elsewhere. Families have been split apart and most of these people have lost not only their livelihoods, but also their hope."
Some, such as the Save the Mekong coalition (Stm), accuse the dams of exacerbating the effects of climate change. On the group's website one reads: "The governments of Cambodia, Laos and Thailand are planning eleven large hydroelectric dams on the Mekong. If they are built, they will block the main fish migrations and destroy the life of this important river, putting at risk millions of people who depend on it for their food security and their livelihoods." The coalition explains that some species, such as the Irrawaddy dolphin, could become extinct, and that the dams on the Chinese stretch have already made water levels unpredictable further south, in Burma, Laos and Thailand. At the river's mouth, moreover, the river could cease to carry with it the sediments needed to keep the delta alive. According to the Stm, the energy economy that powers distant, electricity-hungry megacities through hydroelectric dam schemes needs to be reformed. To meet urban demand, the path of energy efficiency should be taken — that is, "doing more with less" — waste should be eliminated and investment made in new decentralised technologies.
Another risk is that the inhabitants of the Mekong valley — mostly farmers and fishermen living on the equivalent of a few euros a day — will come into conflict with one another. The Mekong river commission (Mrc) had said as much back in 2004, yet agreements to build new dams have continued. The International rivers network recalls that it was the Mrc itself — the inter-governmental agency comprising Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia — that proposed, together with China and Burma, which are not members of the Mrc, the construction of over 100 dams over the past twenty years.