Asian Currents - Asian Studies Association of Australia

Mekong mainstream dams: a revival
PHILIP HIRSCH discusses the resource geopolitics around a dam proposed for the
Mekong mainstream.
O
n 19 April 2011, the Joint
Committee of the Mekong River
Commission (MRC) met to decide
the outcome of a six-month consultation
on the proposal by one of the MRC
member states, Lao PDR, to build a dam
on the main stem of the Mekong
(henceforth referred to as ‗the
mainstream‘) at Xayaburi. The only
agreement the permanent secretary-level
representatives from Cambodia, Lao PDR,
Thailand and Vietnam could reach was to
elevate the decision to the Mekong
Council, or ministerial level, for
consideration at its annual meeting in
October.
early 1970s. In 1975, Cambodia withdrew
from the committee, which then ticked
along under interim arrangements with just
three members (Lao PDR, Thailand and
the newly unified Vietnam). While the
Interim Mekong Committee managed to
provide a slightly revised plan in 1987,
which lowered the size of some of the
planned structures, little happened on the
ground.
This seemingly inconsequential agreement
to disagree was, in fact, one of the more
significant recent events in regional
geopolitics in the realm of transboundary
natural resource development and
management in Southeast Asia. To
appreciate its significance, we need to
look at the chequered and convoluted
history of proposals for dams on the
mainstream over the past half century.
The Mekong Committee was established
in 1957 under the auspices of the
Economic Commission for Asia and the
Far East (ECAFE) and under United
States funding and tutelage, with the overriding
agenda of planning a cascade of
dams on the Mekong. The mainstream
was the focus of the committee‘s
investigations, and by 1970 an indicative
plan had proposed seven major structures
that would have flooded areas currently
occupied by more than one million people.
If realised, these dams would have turned
the lower 2000 kilometres of the Mekong
River into a series of stepped lakes and
flooded a significant part of the lower
Mekong valley.
The Cold War was the overriding context
for the committee‘s existence and its work.
The hotter war in Indochina prevented any
of the mainstream plans from being
implemented, although tributary dams
were built in northeastern Thailand and at
Nam Ngum in Laos during the 1960s and
By the time the cooperative transboundary
river basin institution was revitalised as the
MRC under the 1995 Agreement on the
Cooperation for the Sustainable
Development of the Mekong River Basin,
concerns over the environmental and
social impacts of large dams had captured
worldwide attention. Thailand‘s
environmental movement had grown to the
point of successfully challenging, and in
1988 cancelling a major dam proposed for
western Thailand. It followed this us by
instituting a logging ban in 1989. Revival
of plans for mainstream dams, even in a
significantly toned down scheme of socalled
‗run-of-river‘ projects, 1 proved highly
controversial. At the same time, Laos and
Vietnam had identified many sites for
tributary dams, some of which were
subject to criticism by environmental
groups and other NGOs, and it seemed
that the mainstream dam agenda had
receded or even Continued page 6>>
Asian Currents July 2011 5