D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 4, July/August 2001, p. 14 - 19)

The Mekong in Indochina forms one of the mightiest river systems - a lifeline for the people in the region. Riparian states like Thailand, Laos and China are trying to harness the water for irrigation and electricity production, but the following report shows that the needs of the local people and environmental concerns are not sufficiently taken into consideration.

Laos has no direct access to the sea. But the mighty Mekong River, the artery that provides it with water and life, flows through the Southeast Asian country, one of the poorest in the world. The politicians in the capital, Vientiane, and international investors and lenders bank on the water power of the Mekong and its tributaries. The country's hydroelectric dam expansion programme is disputed - at least by international environmental protection groups and NGOs. Ordinary Laotians do not have a say. Their opinion is not asked in the political day-to-day life of the Communist-ruled state. This is a fatal and far-reaching shortcoming.

To understand the unease over the dam-building and its impacts in Laos, a look over the country's western border at neighbouring Thailand is instructive. The scene: a lone fisherman casts his net in the smooth water. It is a picture of peace and timelessness. But what appears to be an idyll has a dramatic background, and that towers over him. The wall of the Nam Mun dam in Northeast Thailand, near the border with Laos, makes the man in his boat look tiny. And his attempt to net some fish before the water on the other side of the wall is dammed up into a lake appears to be a futile exercise. The man has long been a victim of this run-of-the-river dam's ecological damage and destruction of a once-rich fishing ground. And along with this single fisherman, thousands of families are stranded in the Nam Mun river's catchment area.

The river is one of the Mekong's most important tributaries, joining it in the Thai-Laotian border area north of the town of Paksé. And like no other river in Southeast Asia, the Mekong influences the water and eco-system in China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. It is the lifeline of a huge region with a population of several hundred million. That is why dams - planned or already in operation - have or threaten to have immense and far-reaching impacts on the balance of nature and are a highly explosive political issue. Their consequences do not stop at national borders.

That can be seen close to the Nam Mun dam. Banners at the entrances to dozens of wooden huts sited above the river bank bear the message 'Village of Demonstration'. What looks like a village is in fact the assembly point of Thais who live on the river and who are protesting against the dam's negative impacts. The dam was completed in 1994, after environmental protection groups had long criticised the project. Their gloomy forecasts were to be proved right. During previous spawning seasons, huge shoals of fish swam upriver from the Mekong into the headwaters of the Nam Mun, up to 300 m wide, and later returned to the Mekong with their young. The dam now blocks their path. Fish die from internal injuries due to changes in the water's pressure and currents. With bitter irony the fishermen also talk of a new fish species, "pla mai mee hua", the "fish without heads", which were trapped and mutilated in the dam's power plant turbines. Fish stocks have fallen drastically.

Fishing families were without work, left the river and joined the army of slum-dwellers and day labourers in the towns. The ones who remained in the protest village are those who are still convinced of their right to their traditional fishing grounds and demand compensation from the dam operators. Their expectations are supported by Vanida Tantivitayapitak, 'Advisor, Assembly of the Poor', as her business card describes her. She works for one of the Thai NGOs which publicise the problems stemming from dam-building.

One of the dam operators' attempts to alleviate the ecological disaster was the subsequent installation of a fish 'stairway', a 17 m-high concrete gutter next to the dam wall aimed at enabling migratory fish to get past it. But the result is pitiful. "Fish are not circus animals that you can teach tricks," the fishermen say. "They don't jump the way humans want them to." Vanida explains: "We can't tear down the dam any more. So our demand is now to leave it open at least during the spawning season." But, of course, she knows the operators' defence: "No reservoir water, no electricity, no profit." That is why the fishermen's resistance is being met with harsh suppression.

Violence against protesters

During a protest meeting at the beginning of this year the families' huts were set ablaze, and many fishermen lost their last possessions in the flames. The hut sites are now ash-covered black squares. The dam complex is well-equipped against protests. Its walls, fences and technical installations are defended by barbed wire. Barbed wire barricades stand ready on rollers, prepared to be used at any time to keep demonstrators away from the complex. For all that, the resistance will continue. Women like Vanida and her fellow combatants leave no doubt about it.

Visiting the Nam Mun reservoir in Thailand makes clear the connections which also, and especially, apply to Laos. Dam projects have international impacts. This goes in a particular way for the Mekong and its tributaries. If only for that reason, international publicity is called for. The people immediately affected by the Nam Mun dam are defending themselves, and local and international NGOs are giving them organisational and political support. But the scene on the dam in Thailand is in direct contrast to that in Laos. The picture on Laotian soil only a few kilometres to the East is very different. The problems are similar, but the silence of the grave prevails from the top in terms of public debate on the dam issue.

A border river, the Mekong separates not only the two countries. It also divides two social systems. Thailand adopted the market economy, was one of the admired 'young tigers' of the boom years until the end of the 1990s when it was caught up in the turbulence of the Asian crisis, but has recovered astoundingly well due to its profit-oriented drive. By contrast, Laos has been ruled by a socialist system since 1975 and led by the nose by the Laotian Revolutionary People's Party (LRVP), the single central political party which controls all public sectors. Laos is one of the last countries remaining from the former East Bloc. China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba are the others of the world's five Communist states, which now have little or nothing in common. The regime in Vientiane strives to do a balancing act. On the one hand, it retains the hammer and sickle as a symbol of power, and on the other it is opening its market to the private sector. The Democratic Republic of Laos is searching for a national identity between Marx and money.

Laos is an 'in-between' country in every respect. With an area of 236,800 km2, it is roughly the size of the UK including Northern Ireland but has a population of only about five million. For most of its people, life is simply a matter of day-to-day survival. Vientiane and its centrally steered policies are for the majority of the population, 80 per cent of whom live in rural areas as self-sufficient farmers, far distant. These people were always poor and have remained so under the socialist banner. Annual per capita income is put at US$ 300, or less than one dollar per day. If one considers that the urban elite in politics, the military and trade earn very much more, the majority of Laotians do not even earn that daily single dollar.

In World Bank rankings based on income and other social indicators, Laos comes right at the bottom. What does not appear in any statistics and lines the pockets of only a small group are the proceeds of smuggling and illegal or covert trade in timber - the sale of the country's natural riches. Which brings us back to water power.

Hydropower as main export

Hydroelectric power dams are regarded in Laos as one of the most lucrative sources of energy and foreign exchange, which are aimed at helping the country out of its economic plight. The government's three main sources of revenue are exports of timber, electricity (mainly to Thailand) and textiles. The rankings of the three products changed during recent years, with electricity now accounting for two-thirds of the country's foreign exchange receipts. That shows its economic dependence on this single budgetary item. It also explains why the government in Vientiane forbids any public criticism of the planning and building of dams.

Laos possesses only about 26 per cent of the Mekong River Basin, but its territory covers 81 per cent of the hydroelectric power potential presented solely by the Mekong's big tributaries. This is estimated at 18,000 MW. Laos itself has an energy requirement of only about 60 MW because it has hardly any industrial large-scale power consumers and most of the people live from subsistence farming and use firewood for heating and cooking. So dam-building is mainly for export purposes and thus an international topic in every respect.

The dam business began with the Nan Ngum river hydro-electric power plant, built in the 1960s and put into operation in 1971. The plant, with an output of 150 MW, is now regarded as the country's most important industrial operation. The Nam Ngum river, to the North of Vientiane, is also a tributary of the Mekong. The dam's ecological impacts have probably become an irreparable problem. A large fish stock in its reservoir in its first years - an early triumph for the champions and operators of the dam project - was based on temporarily improved feeding conditions in the flooded forests and deception of the fish's instincts due to the rising water level. Now, fishing has collapsed along the entire course of the river, both upstream and downstream of the dam. But the impacts go even deeper than that.

Clearing the Laotian forests is a fiasco across the country. Whether half, or more, of the national forest area has already been lost is a state secret. The findings of studies by foreign organisations are kept under lock and key because deforestation is an ecological time-bomb. Forests and water resources are linked inextricably. Large areas of forest are cleared for dam complexes, meaning a massive intervention in the balance of nature as early as in the preparation of a dam project. That has had dual impacts on the Nam Ngum reservoir. On the one hand, the tributaries which supply it with water no longer deliver the required quantities, and on the other the silting-up of the reservoir is increasing markedly. A rehabilitation programme aimed at remedying this damage is in progress.

These experiences do not give rise to optimism about other dam projects in Laos. There are currently planning guidelines for about 60 dams, of which about 20 are at the Memorandum of Understanding stage. All relevant institutions such as the Mekong River Commission (MRC), based in Phnom Penh, donors such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, and private investors in Japan, Thailand, France, the USA and other countries are involved to a greater or lesser degree. Only the Laotian people immediately affected are excluded from decisions. There can be no talk of participatory decision-making. So a central criterion in the pro and contra debate on dams, 'gaining public acceptance', is not fulfilled. It ranks at the top of the seven strategic priorities which the World Commission on Dams (WCD) adopted at its much-noted conference in London last November.

That is typical of the political climate in Laos. Its few newspapers are government organs, as are its television and radio stations. Founding local NGOs is not permited. There is no public discussion of existential subjects. Critical groups, even if they take an embryonic form at all, are persecuted. Linda Schneider, head of the World Bank office in Vientiane, is quoted as quipping: "Laos is a Communist country with the mentality of an absolute monarchy." The latest of the LRVP's five-yearly party congresses, held last March, reconfirmed this assessment. Democracy, civil society and press freedom are unknown. The educational level is low. The illiteracy rate is put at 38 per cent for men and 70 per cent for women. Almost half the population is younger than 15. In terms of income, health care and basic services, the gap between the country's small upper class and the majority of its people is huge.

No regard for damage
to environment

Measured by the benchmarks for dam-building presented by the WCD in London, all these facts are poor preconditions for dealing with plans for dams. A current example: the Nam Theun Hinboun dam was put into operation in 1998 without a public debate on it having taken place. The dam is located on the Nakai Plateau, in the country's eastern region, which experts describe as "part of the largest biodiversity conservation area in Laos". By means of its torrent-tunnel technology, cold mountain water is fed into the warmer Hinboun reservoir down below. This is killing fish, and other far-reaching environmental changes are feared. A Nam Theun Two dam, a project of superlatives, is now being prepared some 50 km upstream. No fewer than 4,500 local people must be resettled, and the future reservoir will flood 40 per cent of the plateau, or about 450 km². It is the biggest such project in Laos.

World Commision on Dams

Because of its expected ecological impacts, this project has triggered international protests. For environmental protection organisations and institutes specialising in dam problems, Laos has become the classic example of the questionable aspects of dam-building. The Internet offers an incredible amount of content on the subject. Entering 'Laos dams' sets off a flood of data, reports and conference findings on it. But anyone who tries to follow that up with questions on the ground in Laos is lucky to find someone to talk to. There is hardly a critical voice to be heard in Laos, and when there is it is accompanied by the plea not to name names or quote the sources directly.

The dams issue in Laos is about fundamental decisions. The question of whether dams should be built at all, and if so where and how many and to what size, will essentially determine the country's future. Particularly in this context, maintaining a sensible balance of the economy and ecology will be the greatest challenge of the Laotian politicians and their advisors. Plus their willingness to permit participation in decision-making, in line with the WCD criteria, by the people affected by dams. There is also another difference between Laos and neighbouring Thailand. A popular and combative awareness of the environment has developed in Thailand, which does not exist in Laos. At least, not so far.

Rüdiger Siebert is head of the Indonesian Service of Radio Deutsche Welle International and an expert and author on Southeast Asia who frequently travels in the region.