Asia’s cities poised to lead in climate change adaptation

Toral Patel at Asia Foundation:
With support from the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities challenge, a number of cities across Asia are beginning to confront the impacts of climate change. Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, recently selected as one of Resilient Cities’ newest member cities and home to 1.5 million people, is one. Due to its low elevation and proximity to the Mekong River, Phnom Penh is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, particularly heavy monsoons rains which can create disruptive urban flooding, while changes in precipitation patterns and increasing saltwater intrusion adversely affect the city’s water supply and coastal ecosystems.

Due to its low elevation and proximity to the Mekong River, Phnom Penh is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, particularly heavy monsoons rains which can create disruptive urban flooding. Photo/Flicker user Chun Yip So

Proximity to rivers and coastlines increases exposure to climate-induced hazards in many mega-cities like Bangkok, Dhaka, Ho Chi Minh City, and Manila. Exposure alone, however, is not what makes these and other Asian cities vulnerable. Rather, it is their low capacity to adapt to new and existing hazards...

Phnom Penh in the evening, shot byMilei.vencel, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

"Third wave" of malaria resistance lurks on Thai-Cambodia border

IRIN: Public health experts and scientists warn history's third major bout of drug-resistant malaria could spread across Asia to Africa unless "radical action" is taken. Artemisinin-resistant strains on the Thailand-Cambodia border threaten the treatment's efficacy and pose containment challenges.

"The bad news is that drug-resistant parasites are actually found in a wider area than we previously thought," said Nicholas White, professor of Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford, and author of a July 2014 study that revealed drug-resistant malaria parasites have spread to critical border regions of Southeast Asia (including the Cambodia-Thailand and Myanmar-Thailand borders), and that resistance to Artemisinin, the world's most effective anti-malarial drug, is now widespread in the region.

Artemisinin is effective against malaria, but it must be used in a combination of several drugs. In 2007, the World Health Assembly (WHA) issued a resolution calling for the end of monotherapies (or using a single drug) to treat malaria as this practice was causing resistance. A full dose of Artemisinin Combination Therapy (ACT) is now prescribed to prevent the development of drug resistance.

According to White, who also chairs the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network, despite the new evidence of resistance along the Thailand-Cambodia border, not all hope for effective interventions is lost. He told IRIN: "The good news is that we can still treat it using longer ACT courses and we can map its spread using a molecular marker."...

Planned dams threaten Cambodia's food security

IRIN: The planned construction of 88 hydroelectric dams in the lower Mekong basin by 2030 will cause food security challenges in Cambodia, experts say. “Cambodia is going to pay the highest price for dam development basin-wide, to the point of affecting the food security of its 80 percent rural population,” Eric Baran, a specialist with the WorldFish Centre, an international research NGO based in Phnom Penh, told IRIN. “Worldwide, there is no bigger consumer of freshwater fish than Cambodia.”

By 2030, multi-national developers plan to construct 11 dams on the Mekong river mainstream, and 77 dams on its tributaries, in an effort to meet the growing demand for electricity in Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Electricity demand is already intense, and growing. According to a 2010 hydropower assessment report commissioned by the Mekong River Commission (MRC) - an inter-governmental agency shared by Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Vietnam - Vietnam and Thailand account for the majority of electricity consumption today and will account for 96 percent of power demand in the Lower Mekong Basin (which consists of Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam) by 2025.

With its fish-heavy diet, Cambodia will feel the crunch of the dams as water courses change and fish migration routes are blocked. Attempts to change agricultural practices and diets face major challenges in the fish-dependent country.

A 2013 study led by Cambodia’s Ministry of Fisheries showed that Cambodians eat on average 173 grams of fish per day; the world’s average is five grams. Consumption could drop to 80g per person per day by 2030, the report argued, due to the construction of the dams...

Dried fish for sale in Cambodia, shot by McKay Savage, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Droughts, flooding, disease: the reality of a Cambodia that has been hit by climate change

Emily Wight in the Phnom Penh Post: Disruption of typical weather patterns. Scorching drought interrupted by erratic rainfall. Water shortages and then, suddenly, a deluge of flooding. Poor crop yields; an increase in food prices; dreadful hunger. This is the future Cambodia is facing as climate change takes its toll – and farmers are already feeling the effects, experts have warned.

...Cambodia, where 90 per cent of the country’s poor live in rural areas, according to the World Bank’s latest figures, will be among the hardest hit. ... Chhinh Nyda is a lecturer in environmental studies at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, where he specialises in drought vulnerability in rural Cambodia. He wrote in an email earlier this week that due to climate change, the rainy periods are going to be shorter, and more rainfall will be concentrated during the rainy period.

He added that there will be more rainfall in late July and September, and that August will see a longer, drier period. There will then be less rainfall in late November, he added, saying: “Farmers who depend on rain-fed farming to grow their crops are going to face more disasters, especially floods and drought.”

Rice production is expected to decline, leading to the migration of farmers to seek work in urban areas. Increased pressure will be put on urban infrastructure; diseases such diarrhoea, dengue fever and malaria will be more common with increased flooding; food prices will escalate; malnutrition will be rife.

Socheath Sou, co-ordinator at the Cambodia Climate Change Network (CCCN), a membership organisation for groups and individuals with an interest in the field, said that his members have reported a 30 per cent decline in rice yields over the past 10 years. This has led to a rise in people migrating to the capital to look for work. “Phnom Penh is really crowded now compared to 10 years ago. And that causes problems for the city: health problems, infrastructure problems, education problems, security, safety,” he said....

Rice farming in Cambodia, shot by International Rice Research Institute, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

International Finance Corporation and Deutsche Bank bankrolling Vietnamese land grabs in Cambodia and Laos

Global Witness: The International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Deutsche Bank are financing Vietnamese rubber companies driving a wave of land and forest "grabs" in Cambodia and Laos, according to a new report and film by Global Witness.

The report, “Rubber Barons”, reveals how a pervasive culture of secrecy around plantation investments in the region has allowed two of Vietnam’s largest companies, Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) and the state-owned Vietnam Rubber Group (VRG), to acquire more than 200,000 hectares of land through a series of deals with the Lao and Cambodian governments that lack transparency.

It details how these rubber giants, with close links to the region’s notoriously corrupt political elites, operate with complete impunity, devastating local livelihoods and the environment in the process. Deutsche Bank has significant holdings in both companies, while the IFC invests in HAGL.

“We’ve known for some time that corrupt politicians in Cambodia and Laos are orchestrating the land grabbing crisis that is doing so much damage in the region. This report completes the picture by exposing the pivotal role of Vietnam’s rubber barons and their financiers, Deutsche Bank and the IFC,” said Megan MacInnes, Head of the Land Team at Global Witness. “Both companies are having severe impacts on the human rights of ordinary Lao and Cambodian citizens.  Often, the first time people learn of a plantation is when the company bulldozers arrive to clear their farms.”...

Greater Mekong countries 'lost one-third of forest cover in 40 years'

John Vidal in the Guardian (UK): Five Asian countries have lost nearly one-third of their forests in the last 35 years and could be left with little more than 10-20% of their original cover by 2030 – with devastating effects on wildlife and humans, a new report suggests.

Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Thailand and Vietnam have lost nearly 40m hectares (ha) of forest cover since 1980 but have retained about 98m ha of natural forest, just over half of the region's land area.

Using satellite data, the WWF researchers calculated that since 1980, Cambodia has lost 22% of its 1973 forest cover, Laos and Burma 24%, and Thailand and Vietnam 43%.

The report on ecosystems in the greater Mekong area warns that these countries risk losing more than one-third of their remaining forest cover within the next two decades if they fail to increase protection.

"The greater Mekong is at a crossroads," said Peter Cutter, landscape conservation manager with WWF-Greater Mekong. "One path leads to further declines in biodiversity and livelihoods, but if natural resources are managed responsibly, this region can pursue a course that will secure a healthy and prosperous future for its people."...

A Thai rain forest, shot by Michael Cory, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Mekong region facing six degree-warming, climate extremes

Alexander Hotz in SciDev.net: Temperatures in South-East Asia's Lower Mekong Basin are set to rise by up to three times the global average temperature increase, according to a USAID-funded study. Previous reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that the basin would see increases in line with the global average of around two degrees Celsius.

But according to a preliminary report by the Mekong Adaptation and Resilience to Climate Change Project (Mekong ARCC) released last week (29 March), parts of the basin could see annual temperatures increase by as much as six degrees Celsius by 2050. It also predicts that areas such as Mondulkiri province in Cambodia could experience doubling of the number of days with heavy rainfall, up from just nine days annually.

"We've found that this region is going to experience climate extremes in temperature and rainfall beyond anything that we had expected," says Jeremy Carew-Reid, the study's lead author, and director of the International Centre for Environmental Management, one of the organisations tasked with implementing the five-year project.

The Lower Mekong Basin, which encompasses most of Cambodia and Laos, and parts of Thailand and Vietnam, is primarily rural, with 70 per cent of its 60 million inhabitants working as farmers or fishermen.

But as temperatures increase, the region's suitability for certain crops and aquaculture will change. Farmers could find that yields from crops that once thrived, including staples such as cassava, will plummet...

A banana vendor at the Cai Be floating market on the Mekong River, shot by McKay Savage, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Research reveals catastrophic loss of Cambodia’s tropical flooded grasslands

A press release from the University of East Anglia: Around half of Cambodia’s tropical flooded grasslands have been lost in just 10 years according to new research from the University of East Anglia. The seasonally flooded grasslands around the Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, are of great importance for biodiversity and a refuge for 11 globally-threatened bird species. They are also a vital fishing, grazing, and traditional rice farming resource for around 1.1 million people.

Research published today in the journal Conservation Biology quantifies for the first time the area’s catastrophic loss of tropical flooded grassland.  The grassland area spanned 3349 km² in 1995, but by 2005 it had been reduced to just 1817 km² – a loss of 46 per cent.

Despite conservation efforts in some areas, it has continued to shrink rapidly since, with a further 19 per cent lost in four years (2005-2009) from the key remaining grassland area in the southeast of the Tonle Sap floodplain.

Factors include intensive commercial rice farming with construction of irrigation channels, which is often illegal. Some areas have also been lost to scrubland where traditional, low-intensity agricultural activity has been abandoned….

Tonle Sap lake in Cambodia, shot by 松岡明芳, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

EU helps Mekong River Commission tackle climate change

The Vientiane Times: The European Union (EU) yesterday committed 4.95 million euros (over US$6 million) to the Mekong River Commission (MRC) to boost its efforts to respond to the region's climate change challenges. Representatives of the EU and the MRC signed the funding agreement in Luang Prabang yesterday on the sidelines of the 19th Mekong River Commission Council meeting.

...According to a media release from the MRC, the funding supports the Climate Change Adaption Initiative until 2015. It supports the MRC programme to assess the effects of change climate and integrate adaption planning at the regional, national and community levels.

The funding is a part of the Global Climate Change Alliance – an EU initiative to strengthen dialogue and cooperation with the nations most affected by climate change. “The support of the EU underscores the importance of climate change in the development of the lower Mekong Basin. Adaption planning can better prepare the region for the challenges ahead, ensuring food security and alleviating poverty reduction,” MRC Chief Executive Officer Mr Hans Guttman said at the signing ceremony.

Rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall and extreme weather events such as typhoons are increasing in frequency, leading to droughts and floods that destroy homes, infrastructure, livestock and crops. A predicted rise in sea level will increase salinity and floods in the Mekong Delta, causing damage to crops in the most productive area of the basin....

The Mekong River at Luang Prabang, Laos, shot by Allie Caulfield, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Cambodian DRR managers to study best practices at Filipino Climate Change Academy

Philippine Information Agency: Fifteen members of the Cambodian Joint Climate Change Initiative (JCCI) are visiting Albay this week to study in brief the province’s valuable strategies on climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR).  Albay Gov. Joey Salceda said the visitors will be in the province for five days starting November 5, for a learning exchange with the Climate Change Academy and to share approaches on coping mechanisms through community based organizations.

The group will have a meeting with Salceda at the Climate Change Academy of Albay where they will be provided an opportunity to personally hear the governor discuss Albay’s holistic approach to CCA and DRR, which had elevated the province to a world class category in the campaign on climate adaptation.

Albay is UN’s global model in in CCA and DRR and Salceda had been proclaimed its Senior Global Champion and spokesman, and now sits as director of the Green Climate Fund of the United Nations Framework Convention on climate Change representing Asia.

The province had since then become a venue of many seminars and trainings, and visits from CCA and DRR practitioners from other countries, and specially most recently after the establishment of the the Climate Change Academy at the Bicol University, in this city.

The academy is first of its kind in Asia and was also a brainchild of Salceda, who pioneered CCA and DRR in local governance and made popular the ‘zero casualty’ and ‘preemptive evacuation’ strategies which has since then adopted by the national government and other LGUs ....

Managing the Mekong

Shada Islam in Dawn (Pakistan): ...As it prepares to host the ninth Asia-Europe Meeting (Asem) in early November, Laos is also gearing up for more international scrutiny of its policies. And with Vientiane situated on the bend of one of the world’s largest and most legendary rivers — the Mekong — world attention is focused on how Southeast Asia’s smallest and poorest nation is going to deal with increasingly shrill world demands that it stop plans to build a hydroelectric dam on the mythical river.

Laos is not alone in having to deal with controversy and potential confrontation over the sharing of the world’s water resources. Almost all majestic rivers — the kind that songs are written about and which have become part of our global heritage — are the source of tension among neighbouring nations. Think about the Indus, the Ganges, the Amazon and the Nile.

...Countries can either opt for competition and protectionism over water or decide to work together to ensure the equitable, efficient and sustainable management of water resources. Interestingly — and at least for the moment — Laos appears to have opted for the second track. After a spate of criticism from its neighbours over plans to build a huge, multi-billion-dollar dam on the Mekong, officials in Vientiane say work on the dam has been suspended in order to undertake further studies on the impact of the project.

Laos has made no secret of its plans to use the Mekong to expand its generating capacity and sell electricity to its neighbours. But according to reports, Foreign Minister Thongloun Sisoulith admitted recently at a regional meeting in Cambodia that the Lao government had decided to postpone the construction of the dam because “We have to do further studies”....

A gondola on the Mekong in Laos, shot by Ricardo Hurtubia, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Meeting reviews Mekong projects

Vietnam News: Foreign ministers from Lower Mekong nations and the US convened for their fifth meeting yesterday in Phnom Penh to review the implementation of programmes on the environment, education, health and infrastructure.

This year's meeting saw the first presence of Myanmar as an official Lower Mekong Initiative (LMI) partner nation, together with Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Viet Nam. At the meeting, the ministers agreed to add a new pillar of agriculture and food security chaired by Myanmar, to establish the pillar "connectivity" on the basis of broadening the co-operation content in infrastructure, and strengthen co-operation with the Mekong River Commission (MRC) while broadening programmes on water.

The environment and water pillar, formerly known as the environment pillar, will be chaired by Viet Nam. The meeting agreed to strengthen co-ordination among LMI countries through a co-ordination network. They also decided to establish an LMI working group of experts and outstanding figures.

The ministers also ratified a LMI concept paper and a plan of action to implement the LMI during 2011-15, while releasing a statement on gender equality and female empowerment. A LMI working group for gender was also formed.

At the meeting, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced an LMI programme to 2020, pledging a US$50 million assistance package for LMI activities over the next three years, as well as committing $2 million for the fisheries programme and $1 million for a MRC research programme on the impacts of hydroelectric dams on the main flow of the Mekong River.

On the same day, the Friends of Lower Mekong (FLM) Ministerial Meeting also took place in Phnom Penh, bringing together foreign ministers and high-ranking officials from the LMI countries as well as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the European Union, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, among others....

The Mekong River in Laos, shot by Allie Caulfield, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

UNISDR appoints parliamentary champions for risk reduction

Dizery Salim at the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction:  The United Nations office for disaster risk reduction, UNISDR, today officially welcomed five members of parliament from Bangladesh, Uganda, Cambodia, Senegal and the East African Legislative Assembly as parliamentary champions committed to promoting legislation for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

This month they officially began two-year terms as members of the first Advisory Group of Parliamentarians for Disaster Risk Reduction, solidifying a multi-year initiative by UNISDR to make progress in the realm of national legislation and risk reduction.

The champions are Saber Chowdhury, Chair of Bangladesh’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change and Environment; Alex Bakunda Byarugaba, Chairman of Uganda’s Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament; Saumura Tioulong, member of Parliament representing Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and former Deputy Governor of Cambodia's Central Bank from 1993-1995; Abdou Sane, member of the National Assembly of Senegal and President of the parliament’s Network for Disaster Risk Reduction; and Abdirahin Abdi, former speaker of the East African Legislative Assembly from June 2007 to June 2012.

“Parliamentarians play a particular role. They can put pressure on the executive to think about prevention. They can hold governments accountable,” said Feng Min Kan, Special Adviser to the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, who has nurtured the UNISDR parliamentary initiative since 2008.

“Our role is in developing our capacities,” said Mr. Chowdhury, Chair of the Advisory Group. “What can we do in our own constituencies? How we can get communities involved? We may have grand national plans, but it is at the local level that action is taken.”...

Climate onus on Cambodian government

Mom Kunthear in the Phnom Penh Post: Most Cambodians believe it is the government’s responsibility to respond to climate change, but are unclear about who in government should take the lead, according to a survey discussed by officials at a workshop on climate change yesterday.

The survey, Understanding Public Perceptions of Climate Change in Cambodia, also found that most people were unaware of any organised response to climate change, or of the national and local programs already set up to respond to shifting weather patterns.

This left communities stranded from the knowledge, programs and support already existing, officials said at the two-day workshop on how to integrate climate adaptation strategies from the national to the village level.

UNDP Cambodian country director Elena Tischenko said this could be done in a way that “could empower communities and enable the country to become more resilient in the face of climate change”.

Kristina Kuhnel, head of development co-operation at the Swedish embassy, said eff-icient, early adaptation could reduce the costs of the negative impact of climate change substantially. She also called for training for commune councillors on how to add climate adaptation strategies into their commune development plans, including how to use vulnerability and risk- assessment tools...

More than 1,000 die in Southeast Asia floods

Terra Daily via AFP: At least one thousand people have died in massive floods across Southeast Asia in recent months, according to an AFP tally on Thursday, and millions of homes and livelihoods have been destroyed.

The death toll in Thailand -- grappling with its worst floods in half a century -- has reached 533, the government said, and the slowly advancing waters are now threatening the heart of Bangkok, a city of 12 million people.

In neighbouring Cambodia, the most severe floods in over a decade have killed 248 people, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its latest flood report.

Vietnam's government has reported at least 100 deaths, including many children, in southern and central parts of the country.

At least 106 people died in flash floods caused by heavy storms in central Myanmar in late October, a government official in the military-dominated country told AFP at the time, on condition of anonymity...

Flooding claims 250 lives, as Cambodia's response continues

Chun Sakada in Voice of America: The government raised the national death toll from ongoing flooding to nearly 250 on Friday, as Cambodia continues to grapple with its worst flooding in a decade. More than 30,000 families have been pushed out of their homes in flooding that began in August. About 390,000 hectares of rice crop have been damaged, along with 2,700 kilometers of roadways in 17 provinces, according to government estimates.

The government has set aside more than $100 million to help repair damages, Hun Sen said Friday. Relief efforts so far have included food and clothing deliveries to some 76,000 families, Hun Sen said. The Council of Ministers will provide more money to extend the relief efforts to another 40,000 families, he said.

International assistance has meanwhile started coming in, he said, with China providing $8 million for assistance, Japan $330,000 and the US $50,000.

However, some opposition officials have been critical of relief efforts so far. “Some measures to rescue people seem slow up to now,” said Nhem Ponharith, secretary-general of the Human Rights Party. “We really have concerns about the lack of food and medicine in the future."...

Rural poor in Cambodia at risk from climate change

IRIN: Building local resilience will prove key to better addressing the effects of climate change in Cambodia, this year's Cambodia Human Development Report (CHDR) states. "Local action and local solutions are what is needed most," Tin Ponlok, deputy director-general of climate change for the Cambodian Ministry of Environment, told IRIN. "This is where we can make the most difference."

Released on 30 August, the report, Building Resilience: The Future for Rural Livelihoods in the Face of Climate Change, identifies climate change as a threat to human development gains and a source of increasing vulnerability for Cambodia's poor. About 80 percent of Cambodia's 14 million people live in rural areas, where the vast majority depend on agriculture as their primary source of livelihood.

According to the UN Development Programme (UNDP), shorter and more intense rainy seasons, combined with longer and drier seasons, are expected to significantly alter the country's agricultural landscape. Predicted rises in temperature could have devastating effects on the rice crops on which many rural livelihoods rely. Studies in the region suggest rice production, a staple part of the Cambodian diet, could decline significantly with a one degree Celsius rise in temperature, making rice farming unviable for many, the CHDR report says.

"Seasonal practices are now changing and the growing cycle for rice is changing more and more," said Richard Friend, co-author of the report, noting the potential impact this could have on Cambodia's overall rice output....

Drought and flooding hits Cambodia

Daniel Sherrell in the Phnom Penh Post (Cambodia): The wet season had come and gone with almost no rain. Despite the best efforts of the farmers from Tralach commune, in Takeo province’s Traing district, widespread crop failures two years ago brought the community to the economic, and dietary, brink.

Rice paddies were parched beyond salvaging, said Oxfam spokesperson Brian Lund in a recent interview, adding that the dried mud was nearly too hot to stand on. “Usually [the farmers] harvest the rice barefoot, but that year, for the first time, they had to wear shoes,” he said.

This week, farmers in Kratie province are facing the opposite problem. Severe flooding in 30 communes across the province has inundated more than 1,000 hectares of transplanted rice seedlings, threatening damage to this year’s crop, said provincial governor Kham Phoeun last week. As the government evacuated families and cattle to higher ground, many residents were concerned that this year’s harvest would be wasted.

The Cambodian Red Cross has donated food aid and sleeping supplies to evacuated families, but the flooding has cut off roads and, as of yesterday, at least one person had drowned in the rising water. According to a statement from the Ministry of Water Resources, heavier-than-normal rainfall over the upper Mekong in Laos and Thailand has caused flooding downstream in Cambodia....

A flooded river hut in Cambodia, USAID photo

Pressure mounts to delay "dangerous" $3.5 billion Mekong dam

Reuters: Plans for the first dam across the lower Mekong River are putting Laos on a collision course with its neighbors and environmentalists who fear livelihoods, fish species and farmland could be destroyed, potentially sparking a food crisis. The impoverished, Communist nation seems determined to defy international pressure and forge ahead with construction of the $3.5 billion Xayaburi Dam, a mostly Thai-led project that experts say could cause untold environmental damage.

The four countries that share the lower stretches of the 4,900 km (3,044 mile) Mekong -- Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia -- failed at a meeting on Tuesday to reach an agreement on construction of the 1.285-megawatt (MW) dam, the first of 11 planned in the lower Mekong that are expected to generate 8 percent of Southeast Asia's power by 2025.

In a joint statement, they said there was "still a difference in views" and the issue should be handled at ministerial level. Mekong basin countries are bound by a treaty to hold inter-governmental consultations before building dams, but none has veto powers and Laos will have the final say, although not without considerable diplomatic pressure.

Ecologists and rivers experts say an environmental impact assessment conducted last year by the Lao government was patchy at best. They warn that the livelihoods of 60 million people in the lower Mekong region are at risk if the Xayaburi dam goes ahead without proper risk assessment.

Activists say scores of fish species face extinction, fish stocks will dwindle as migratory routes will be blocked, and swathes of rice-rich land could be deprived of fertile silt carried downstream by Southeast Asia's longest waterway. Entire villages would be forced to relocate.

According to a study by the Mekong River Commission, an inter-government agency, the proposed 11 dams would turn 55 percent of the river into reservoirs, resulting in estimated agriculture losses of more than $500 million a year and cutting the average protein intake of Thai and Lao people by 30 percent…

A narrow stretch of the Mekong in Laos, shot by Feral Arts, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Mekong countries should delay dam projects for decade

Terra Daily via AFP: Countries in the lower Mekong River region should delay any decisions about building hydropower dams for 10 years, an influential new study said Friday, warning of the many risks involved. The recommendation was made in a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) report commissioned by the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an inter-governmental advisory body that deals with all Mekong River-related activities.

The MRC -- which represents Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam -- is studying the possible construction of 11 hydropower projects on southeast Asia's longest river. "The recommendation to defer dam construction for a 10-year period is very significant," said Tiffany Hacker, an interim communication advisor for the MRC.

Environmental groups have long objected to damming the river, arguing that it would damage fragile ecosystems. The assessment, led by consultants with the help of the MRC, government agencies and civil society representatives, said more time was needed to study the risks that come with building dams in such a complex environment….

Sunset on the Mekong, shot by ZAC, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license