I’m not much into environmental conservation, it's a battle that is already lost via a few degrees of temperature. The best we've got is a stay of execution by delaying the destruction of those places that due to history, geography, or in this case war and strife, have retained something of thier original selves. Maybe I am a little too much of a cynic, in any case one of those last places is getting wrecked. I better start at the beginning.
A freighter about to enter the rapids just below Xiengkok. I'd still call this the upper Mekong, on the right is Shan state Burma, a place with all kinds of things going on and very little government. No flat flood plain here.
Just around daylight one foggy morning a few years ago my wife dropped me off by the boat landing at Gaoleeo. It’s out past Sii Kai market where the road to Luang Prabang finally cuts north. As my wife bounced away across the potholed parking lot on that old Kaolao motorcycle, she disappeared into the fog rather than around the bend. Funny the way things sometimes just fade instead of disappearing so as you don’t notice them till their gone.
The Mekong runs wide and deep there close up to the bank. Ticket lady and customs officer work out of the same shack. Dual pricing still official, makes me want to take back some of those millions for UXO removal.
I was catching one of the thrice weekly ferries from Vientiane to Paklai, one of the last people boats making regularly scheduled passenger runs on the Mekong. Unlike it's more famous cousin out of Huay Xai, the ferry to Paklai is a local affair.
For most of it’s lower length the Mekong forms the border of Thailand, and Laos, above Vientiane it swings north where the border cuts west. The border for the next couple hundred kilometres is formed by those mountains on the east side of Nan province Thailand. The river swings decidedly into Laos and stays there all the way up through the next couple provinces.
The cross river ferry at Thadeua
Once the Thai side goes away the Mekong might as well be in another time and place. Signs are in Lao and French instead of Lao and English. I never did hear one word in English or see another foreigner the entire couple days it took me to wend my way up through that province.
The river slipped by under the shallow draft of that river boat for eleven monotonous hours. Seemingly the same, it wasn’t, sometimes shallow, sometimes deep, sometimes almost a rapid other times it seemed a lake. A close look tells you it’s always moving. Muddy swirling, in a hurry to push on through Cambodia and dump itself into the South China Sea in Vietnam where it finally gives up it’s silt. Branches and trees, leaves and trash, dead pigs and people, everything floats down that river.
The Mekong must be one of the last great untamed rivers of the world. It wasn’t until the 1990s that there was finally a bridge, first at Vientiane, then Pakse, now maybe another down at Savanakett. I guess there’s one going in up by Pakbeng soon. China has built a few dams in Tibet that are filling now and last dry season caused a lot of complaints as the river was drier than it’s ever been. Eventually they are planning on a "cascade" with twice as many as now. A cascade is where the head waters of one resevoir back up to another dam so that all of the potential energy is extracted. Turn the whole thing into a lake.
Above not the most accurate map but you get the idea. The river actually forms the international border between Burma and Laos up top before the tri border with China.
Which kind of brings me to the reason for this blog post. You see they are going to dam the lower Mekong in Xaybouli province. The river down in Xayabouli is a different animal than the one up in Tibet. Many sizeable rivers empty into the Mekong in it’s run through Laos. Down in Cambodia there’s Lake Tonle Saap which fills in high water and empties in low water creating a rich source of fish for all those Khmer people.
So glad I found a copy of this photo of the Mekong catfish with credits.
Four of the ten worlds largest freshwater fish live in the Mekong. The freshwater stingray tips the scales at 600 kilos and is the largest in size and weight in the freshwater world. The endangered and legendary Mekong catfish is number three weighing up to 350 kilos. The fish migrates from the Tonle Sap to the upper Mekong in Northern Laos. No fish that large would be able to swim around a dam. This dam will probably signal the extinction of this great fish. It's unknown what affect dams are having on the criticaly endangered populations of the irriwady dolphin below Kone Falls. The fifth largest fish the dog eating catfish also is native to the Mekong.
Giant Mekong Sting ray largest fresh water fish photo off the web
Maybe a bigger deal than any individual species is the idea of what was once an untamed river, no longer running muddy. The silt fertilized a vast area and the fish harvested from the river supply protien to a large number of people.
According to the WWF in one year, 2008, scientists
discovered 100 new plant species, 28 fish, 18 reptiles, 14 amphibians, two mammals and one bird in the Mekong River region of Southeast Asia.
http://www.time.com/...
From memory, , the cost of over a billion USD is being supplied by Thai banks, the entire dam and surrounding countryside will be in the territory of the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic where there isn't much democracy and even less of an environmental movement. Other proposed dams on the lower Mekong have recieved the lions share of the press, the dam in Xayabouli might well be the first to be constructed due to it's remote location and it's lack of World Bank funding. The Lao PDR this week set a goal of 2 dams per year nationwide. There are much more pristine places than the Mekong River in Laos.
BKK Post
Mekong River Commission
another dam further downstream from the Guardian
China builds bad just across it's borders in Burma