River Deal May Help Dam Debate in Mekong Region

HO CHI MINH CITY — The Mississippi River may be on the other side of the world from the Mekong River, but Vietnamese environmentalists say they hope a new link between the agencies that look after these two river systems can lead to new thinking about ways to manage water resources in the Mekong region.

They were referring to a move by the Mississippi River Commission (MiRC) and the Vientiane-based Mekong River Commission (MRC) to become "sister rivers" and share expertise in areas ranging from hydropower development to climate change and floods.

In this file photo, Dachaoshan dam is shown in Dachaoshan, Yunnan province, China. A dam building spree in China and parts of Southeast Asia poses the greatest threat to the future of the already beleaguered Mekong which is considered one of the world's great rivers and a key source of water for the region, the United Nations said in a report released in May. (Photo: AP)

In the weeks following this cooperation’s endorsement by US officials and foreign ministers of the four lower Mekong countries—Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Vietnam—experts said the agreement may provide more objective room for discussion of how to juggle different interests at a time of often-controversial dam development in the Mekong region.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has expressed support for the cooperation between the two commissions. The foreign ministers of the four lower Mekong did the same at the end of their Southeast Asia in Thailand in July. News reports said it was the first discussion of this sort between the United States government and the lower Mekong basin countries.

In early August, the two river commissions announced that they were working on a formal agreement on water resource management. "This agreement could help raise the MRC’s political and technical role while encouraging countries in the lower (Mekong) basin enhance their cooperation on environment and natural resources management," Nguyen Duc Hiep, a Vietnamese-Australian environmentalist told Radio France International earlier this month. MRC, an intergovernmental body comprising Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, is charged with governing the use of the Mekong River’s recources.

"The MRC and the MiRC are very similar in terms of their principles and mandates," Jeremy Bird, chief executive officer of the MRC said in a statement.

"Both organisations strive to sustainably manage water resources and are therefore well-placed to benefit each other through a technical exchange and learn how to best manage their respective complex trans-boundary rivers," he added.

Environmentalist Nguyen Chinh Tam says the upcoming cooperation with an external organisation outside the Mekong region may bring additional vigor to the MRC.

But critics say the Mekong commission has not been able to manage the development of dams sprouting up in different parts of the Mekong and its tributaries even though they can cause trans-boundary impacts that hurt neighboring countries.

Several downstream countries have expressed concern about the lack of consultation about such projects, including the ones done by China in the upstream Mekong it calls the Lancang. But it has not been easy for lower Mekong countries to find a venue to officially engage China on its plans for the upstream Mekong, even if these affect them across the borders.

Burma and China’s being observers instead of full members of MRC has affected the commission’s ability to engage these countries and get them on board over discussions on hydropower management, according to researchers working on Mekong issues.

China does provide the MRC with hydrological information that is useful for, but is not part of, the commission’s water management guidelines that cover its members.

Against this backdrop, Vietnamese environmentalists hope the agreement with the Mississippi commission as an external body can help create a venue for more openly generating a consensus among all countries that Mekong River crosses and put pressure on China to follow this, given its plans to harness the upper mainstream for more hydropower generation.

"The US cooperation will help greatly in finding a solution to the problem of sustainable development for the region," Tam recently wrote in the state-owned magazine ‘Doanh Nhan Cuoi Tuan’ (Businessmen Sunday).