Indiscriminate dam building in the basin of the Mekong profits investors and power companies, but ignores the cost to local communities and ecosystems

Synopsis: Every first and third Sunday of the month, The Straits Times analyses the beat of the changing environment, from biodiversity conservation to climate change.

In the quest for hydropower and control over water in the Mekong river, unilateral and indiscriminate dam building has been taking place. 

But local communities most negatively impacted by the developments are struggling to be heard amid unaccountability, an engineering mindset and elite-driven, urban-based decision-making to establish power infrastructure that changes the river system.

Only one in ten of over 600 dams were notified to the Mekong Commission, which was supposed to focus on sustainable development and management and tries to balance needs and rights following the 1995 Mekong Agreement among Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. 

Two other countries where the Mekong river flows in - China and Myanmar - are not bound to notify the commission as they are only dialogue partners of the commission.  There are currently over 700 dams already developed or in planning stages. 

On this episode of Green Pulse, host Nirmal Ghosh speaks to Senior Fellow and co-lead of the Mekong Dam Monitor at the Stimson Center Brian Eyler and Thailand-based Campaigns Director for Thailand and Myanmar of International Rivers Pianporn (Pai) Deetes. 

Highlights of conversation (click/tap above):

02:31 Sounding the alarm with more dams coming up 

03:55  Dams in China’s part of the Mekong river are doing the most damage 

06:43 How Laos attracted huge amounts of foreign investment with its “Battery of Southeast Asia” programme 

12:04 In Thailand, why build more dams when there has been an oversupply of electricity

15:54 Significant environmental impacts on Vietnam and Cambodia from the Funan Techo canal, whose development would also violate the Mekong agreement 

19:20 No accountability for damaging consequences 

Produced by: Nirmal Ghosh (nirmal@sph.com.sg) and Fa'izah Sani

Edited by: Fa’izah Sani

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