Water Hoarding on the Mekong in a Time of Drought

In a world overwhelmed by a pandemic, long-standing and crucial issues are being ignored, chief among them climate change and the impact of infrastructure development.

Both are threatening the Mekong Delta, where a record drought has made life hard. The situation is expected to worsen, with rainfall in the first three months of the current wet season falling about 70 percent short of the same period a year ago.

In Vietnam, the government has declared a state of emergency while relief efforts in Thailand are being backed by the military.

Exacerbating the problem are the legacies of monied and political elites who have profited handsomely by ignoring warnings about climate change and the severe damage caused by dam construction on a scale once thought unfathomable.

Initially there were plans to build about 140 dams, a mind-boggling number that outraged environmentalists, scientists, and people who live downstream.

But according to the U.S.-based Stimson Center the real figure is more than 400 dams, with communist leaders in Laos bent on turning their country into “the battery of Southeast Asia” through a cascading network of hydropower dams.

At the other end, salinization is creeping further inland; soil erosion along the banks is threatening homes, roads, and other structures; and daily fish catches are down to a miserable 2 or 3 kilograms with breeding patterns upset as the Mekong hits record lows.

The first dam across the mainstream Mekong at Xayaburi and a smaller, partial blockage at Don Sahong have gone into production. A third dam is being built at Pak Ley. Another 50 have been built and 50 more are under construction along the Mekong’s tributaries.

An April report by the Stimson Center said that further upstream, where water is still plentiful, China was hoarding it. This also explains why water levels in the Lower Mekong Basin are at about 2.5 meters, around a third of what they should be.

“It’s June and there is no rain,” said Asha Vy, a Muslim Cham who lives on a boat at Chhaing Chomras in Cambodia. “Water levels are too low. I can catch only 1 kilogram of fish, it’s nothing, and many people are now trying to get jobs in Malaysia. I cannot afford to send my children to school.”

These are common complaints heard up and down the Mekong, with little water and few fish forcing people to uproot and wander in search of richer fishing grounds or alternative jobs.

“There’s no fish and less and less rain. It’s all so very different to 20 years [ago],” Siv Eng, a 70-something who runs a tiny shop for fishermen and their families, added.

Perhaps a bigger concern, however, is climate change and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), a weather phenomenon aggravated by rising sea temperatures.

Unusually cool temperatures across the eastern half of the ocean, matched by warmer waters in its west, have upset the Indian monsoon – a key driver of regional weather patterns – causing floods in Africa and drought in Southeast Asia and Australia.

The IOD was a significant contributor to the bushfires that ravaged Australia earlier this year, and it can also swing into reverse, with extremes occurring on average every 17.3 years. But the IOD’s frequency is increasing and scientists are forecasting it will increase to once every 6.3 years over the next century.

The IOD is the face of climate change, fed by carbon emissions, and the reality is longer and drier droughts with the potential for great floods to follow.

Already two tributaries where the delta meets the sea in Vietnam have evaporated and closed, sinkholes have opened on the river floor – thanks largely to dredging – and parts of the river are turning blue, indicating a lack of sediment needed to replenish the banks.

It’s a dreadful recipe for the world’s 12th longest river and delta, which can cover the size of Belgium when in full flood. The dwindling Mekong calls to mind to the concept of “water wars” – where states are prepared to risk all to secure water supplies.

The more immediate risk, however, lies in water-related terrorism – a subject experts like historian Milton Osborne of the Lowy Institute and counterterrorism specialist Greg Barton at Deakin University in Australia have warned about for more than a decade.

“China’s dam-building plans are worrying enough, but the proposed new mainstream dams would pose even more serious concerns,” Osborne wrote in 2010. That has now come to pass.

Seventy million people – nearly all poor – with few employment prospects and denied their traditional way of life amid food shortages can make for social instability on a vast scale.

Potentially, that is a worst case scenario and a day of reckoning is on the horizon unless governments in Beijing and Vientiane take note. It’s not too late.