Vienam Water Partnership

Professor Dapvid Dapice, a leading expert about Southeast Asian economics, said that the Mekong River Delta is facing a serious reduction of underground water. This situation may directly hit agricultural production and the breeding of marine life as well as seafood processing.

“When the level of groundwater falls, the quality of the water will go down and pumping the water up to the surface will be more costly. This can create a big shock to the current production systems in the Mekong Delta,” Prof. Dapvid warned.

He also expressed worries about hydro-power dam projects in countries located upstreams of the Mekong River, such as China and some neighboring countries of Vietnam as Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. He is worried because these dams can change the flow of the river. If this happens, Vietnam’s Mekong River Delta will be infected with salty water in the dry season and have less fertile sludge in the flood season. Farmers, thus, will be affected.

The famous Vietnamese agricultural expert, Prof. Dr. Vo Tong Xuan, said that under the impacts caused by the construction of dams upstreams of the Mekong River, Mekong River Delta provinces like Tra Vinh, Ben Tre and Tien Giang will face a lot of difficulties in agricultural production.

He suggested that provinces in the Mekong River Delta should unite to utilize the Mekong River Delta in a sustainable and reasonable manner as well as building suitable economic models for sharing water resources to coastal provinces. This should be done, according to him, to curb the losses surfacing from the expected hydro-power plants.

Experts and officials of Mekong River Delta provinces said that they will need the central government’s guidance and assistance to make plans to cope with future water shortages of the Mekong River.

Dams on the Mekong River

In the 1980s, China began drawing up plans to build a cascade of dams on the Mekong River in its territory. China has put four of these dams into use. The construction of dams in China seriously harms the ecological environments of countries in the lower section like Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.

The Yunnan hydro-power information network named eight major hydro-power works which will be built on the Lancang River (Mekong River), the section running through Yunnan province. Among them, a dam named Guongguoqiao with the annual capacity of 4.04 million MW is 105m high. Geological exploration was conducted last November. China plans to store water as of June 2011.

Next to the Guongguoqiao dam is Xiaowan (19 million MW/year), which is 292m in height and will be put into operation in October 2009.

Another dam is Manwan (6.2 million MW/year), which started operating in 1993. This dam is 132m in height, and its reservoir can hold 920 million cu.m of river water.

Next to it is Daichaoshan dam (5.9 million MW/year), around 600km from Kunming city, 111m in height. It can hold 940 million cu.m of water. The dam was put into use in late 2001.

After Daichaoshan is the 108m-high Jinhong dam (7.85 million MW/year). Construction started in mid 2003 and put into full operation in 2009.

Three other dams will be built from now to 2011: Nuozhado (located between Daichaoshan and Jinhong), Ganlanba and Manton.

Laos, Cambodia and Thailand also building dams

Laos, in which the Mekong River runs from the north to the south, has 23 hydro-power projects. Nine of them are located in northern Laos, including Pak Beng, Luang Prabang, Xayaboury, Pak Lay, Sanakham and Pak Chom, and Lat Sua, Donsahong and Ban Koum in the southern region. Ban Koum is the largest, with a capacity of 2,000 MW/year.

In Thailand, besides Sekamen 1 and 3 dams, the government announced it was resuming the construction of some dams on the Mekong River, worth around $11 billion, which can yield around 4,000 MW of power. According to the Bangkok Post, these dams will help provide water for agriculture in Thailand.

In the lower section of the Mekong River, Cambodia also has two hydro-power projects named Sambor and Stung Treng totalling around 3,600 MW.