Jane Qiu in Nature: Dams on the tributaries of the Mekong River could have a greater negative effect on fish biodiversity and food security than those on the main river, researchers say. Hydropower developments on Mekong tributaries are not subject to the same level of scrutiny as their counterparts on the main river. “Most of the attention has been on proposed dams on the Mekong mainstream, such as the highly controversial Xayaburi dam in Laos,” says lead author Guy Ziv, an environmental scientist now at Stanford University in California. “The impact of tributary dams is little studied.”The findings, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, “point to a desperate need to reconsider hydropower development in the entire Mekong River basin”, says Ame Trandem, the Southeast Asia programme director for the environmental group International Rivers in Bangkok.
With a watershed of 800,000 square kilometres, the Mekong River basin supports the world’s largest inland fishery and is home to 65 million people in six countries: China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. “Most of the people are poor and get 81% of their protein from subsistence fisheries,” says Ziv.
The steep topography of the region makes the Mekong an attractive place for hydropower development. Driven by increasing demand for electricity and a desire for economic development, 11 dams are being planned on the main river, with 41 on the tributaries expected to be completed within the next 4 years. Another 10–37 tributary dams are likely to be built between 2015 and 2030....
Gia Long waterfall in Srepok River, Dak Lak, Vietnam, shot by Đỗ Tuấn Hưng, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
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