The first in a new series

[lynk2510]

ietnam, Laos Split Over Mekong Dam

IPS 2 march 2011

The first in a new series of 11 dams planned across the Mekong, Seoutheast Asia’s largest rivr, could break a special bond between two communist-ruled countries. Critics in Vietnam see red over a 1,260-megawatt hydropower project planned by their smaller, poorer, land-locked neighbour, Laos. They call it an environmental disaster. Laos, however, wants to be the powerhouse of the region—to sell power to its neighbours and earn enough to help the poor, that is a third of its population of 5.8 million.

The dam in an idyllic hill setting in the north Laos province of Xayaburi (or Sayaboury), will be built by a Thai developer. Thailand is expected to buy 95 percent of its power to fuel its booming economy. Environmentalists say the Xayaburi dam and 10 more such constructions planned on the Mekong’s mainstream, nine in Laos, make a Faustian bargain. The dam will "reduce fresh water and silt downstream in Vietnam and devastate fishing among others," stated ‘Tuoi Tre’, the country’s largest circulating paper, published by the Communist Youth Organisation from Ho Chi Minh City (former Saigon) in the south. The potential threat of the 3.5 billion dollar dam in the Mekong delta, Vietnam’s "biggest rice producing and fish farming area", has been highlighted by The Saigon Times too.

Vietnam’s government officials have raised their voice against the 32-metre- tall, 820-metre-wide dam. "If built, Laos’ Xayaburi dam will greatly affect Vietnam’s agriculture production and aquaculture," deputy minister of natural resources and environment Nguyen Thai Lai reportedly said in a meeting of the country’s Mekong River experts. Such criticism goes against the spirit of a 1977 treaty of friendship and cooperation that binds them in a ‘special relationship’. The treaty followed the communist triumph against the US in the Vietnam War.



Towards the end of the Cold War conflict from 1954 to 1975 the communist North Vietnam defeated and annexed the US supported South Vietnam. The protracted conflict left a long trail of death and destruction in the former French Indochina territory that includes Laos and Cambodia. "The criticism reflects the concerns and the opinion of the public and the government," said Nguy Thi Khanh, deputy director of the Centre for Water Resources Conservation and Development, an NGO based in the northern Vietnam city of Hanoi. Vietnamese scientists have also said "the project should be stopped," Khanh added during a telephone interview from the Vietnamese capital. "Vietnam’s silence about this dam has been broken."

For its part, the Laotian government is still sticking to its plan. "We are confident that the Xayaburi Hydroelectric Power Project will not have any significant impact on the Mekong mainstream," officials from Vientiane (the capital of Laos) have explained in a note to the Mekong River experts. Mekong experts from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam—the four countries that share the waters of the lower Mekong—are meeting in late March to approve the Xayaburi dam plans.

Laos has appealed to its neighbours not to place any roadblocks. The government does not want to raise the political stakes to the point of being compelled to get its dam blueprint approved by ministers or even prime ministers. "There will be no need for any extension of time and no need to forward this matter to the (ministerial) level," revealed the note by the Laotian government to Mekong River experts.
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