“If built, Laos’ Xayabury dam will greatly affect Vietnam’s agricultural production and aquaculture,” Standing Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Nguyen Thai Lai has said.
Speaking at a meeting of the Vietnam National Mekong River Committee held yesterday to discuss possible impacts of the dam Laos plans to build on the lower mainstream of the Mekong, he said the biggest problem for the Mekong Delta will not be flooding or pollution but a shortage of fresh water.
Other officials and experts also voiced concern about the survival of the Mekong Delta, Vietnam’s rice granary, if Xayabury and other similar dams are built upstream.
Tran Van Tuan, an official from the Mekong River Commission Secretariat, said: “The building of a dam on the mainstream will cause a degeneration of river water, leading to a reduction of fish output in the Mekong Delta.”
Lai said: “The international community and most scientists share the opinion that it is unadvisable to build dams on the mainstream of the river.”
Nguy Thi Khanh, a coordinator for the Vietnam River Network, cited international researches that conclude that migrant fresh water fish cannot overcome the height of 32 meters of the proposed Xayabury dam.
Nguyen Chi Cong, deputy director of the Center for Water Resources Planning and Investigation, said the dam project should be postponed to give more time for the countries involved to discuss a mechanism on sharing possible benefits from the future dam.
Huynh Tien Dung, a representative of the World Wide Fund for Nature Vietnam, said it is necessary to calculate if the benefits from the project can offset the losses to the affected communities. For Vietnam, he said, the dam will have a negative impact on the income from seafood.
Laos to benefit most
The Xayabury is one of the 12 hydropower dams planned to build by Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos on the mainstream.
According to a recent environmental assessment by independent international experts, these will create a total income of US$3-4 billion per year but the distribution of profits will not be equal among the investing countries.
Laos will enjoy 70 percent of the profits while Thailand and Cambodia will only get 11 percent each, and Vietnam, if it invests in these projects, 5 percent.
Truong Hong Tien, an expert from the standing office of the Vietnam National Mekong River Committee, said the 12 hydropower projects will together meet just 6 percent of the total demand for power in the countries while retaining as much as 75 percent of the alluvium.
Vietnam and Cambodia will be the worst sufferers from the reduction in the soil’s nutritive content. In the Mekong Delta, the volume of alluvial soil will drop from the current 26 million tons per year to just seven million tons.
Meeting participants agreed that Laos should delay the Xayabury project and hold further consultations with neighboring countries about related issues.
Construction is scheduled to start in April and finish in 2019.
|
Last year, the Mekong River Commission, an inter-government body comprising Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam, conducted a preliminary study on the possible influence of the 12 hydropower dams planned to be built on the mainstream of the river by Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand.
It concluded these projects could be harmful to the ecosystems and communities along the river. They could also be detrimental to food security in a region where millions of people lived on agriculture and fishing. If all the dams were built, the loss to the fisheries industry could amount to US$476 million per year.
The World Wide Fund For Nature has also warned that the building of dams on the mainstream of the river is likely to cause extinction of catfish and pose a threat to 41 other species of fish.
|
(Vietnam Net, 23/2/2011)