taking stock
Earlier last year, I attended the Mekong River Commission (MRC) Summit in Vientiane, Laos, as a member of the press. Most dams on the Mekong are situated upstream, with eleven in China and three in Laos, and have radically impacted the river and communities downstream. The main source of tension over the course of the three-day summit was from accounts of the years of 2019 and 2020, when people downstream experienced some of the driest river conditions in living memory. The river had flooded during the dry season, and was dry during the wet one. Suspicions between riverine countries have been growing due to the lack of available and shared data including on dam release schedules, as the river cuts through so many different sovereign territories with distinct ideological regimes.
Whether large dams have exacerbated the impact of the drought or could have been operated differently to better mitigate its impacts is a source of contention. At the summit, the Vietnamese prime minister voiced urgent concern over dam impacts, while the high level official representing China responded instead by emphasizing the need to remain united against the most significant and shared enemy - climate change. The head of the MRC closed the summit in Vientiane by saying: “We need to take stock of water.” Soon after, two deals securing the construction of two major hydroelectric dams on the Mekong’s mainstream were passed, continuing to treat the river as a beautifully complex design project.
