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Chapter 2: Accounting for the Difference

3. Sources of Dispute: Differing Claims and Findings

Establishing a baseline of information regarding the Lancang Mekong’s hydrology will become important later to function as basis of comparison between rivaling sets of information of the possible effects of large scale dam development on the Lancang.

stream. Impacts to water levels and fisheries have already been recorded along the Thai-Lao border.

China’s dam construction has proceeded without consulta-tion with its downstream neighbors or the Mekong River Commission – an intergovernmental agency composed of Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam – and without a transparent assessment of the dams’ downstream impacts on the river and its people. Although China has been a

“dialogue partner” of the Mekong River Commission since 1996, it was only in 2002 that it began sharing any data regarding dam operations and flow volume, and then only for the lower section of the river at the Jinghong and Manwan dams during the rainy season. Severe droughts in the lower Mekong basin in 1992 and 2010, which were par-tially attributed to below-average rainfall, also coincided with the filling of new power stations’ reservoirs on the Lancang.

The new dams were widely suspected and blamed for exac-erbating dry conditions downstream.

Climate change is also expected to increase tensions among the various users of the Lancang River. Water stored in glaciers and snowpack in the Tibetan Plateau is expected to decrease in the long term, while the rate of evaporation in reservoirs will increase. Extreme rainfall events, an increase in intensity and frequency of floods and droughts, and a continued deterioration of water quality are all expected to occur. Uncertainty over the length and severity of floods and droughts will likely have severe impacts on regional eco-nomic activities and may lead to China storing more water upstream for its own use. All of these factors could spell disaster for downstream countries that depend on the river’s water and sediment flow for agriculture, navigation, fish migrations and other critical ecosystem services.

Status of Dams on the Lancang

The main developer of the Lancang River dams is Hydrolancang – officially known as Yunnan Huaneng Lancang River Hydropower Company – which is owned by the largest electricity generation company in China, Huaneng Corporation. Other main shareholders of the Lancang dams are state-owned investment companies and banks, and Yunnan provincial investment companies. As part of the West-East Electricity Transmission Project, electricity generated from the Lancang dams will be exported to eastern economic hotspots such as the delta areas of the Pearl and Yangtze rivers.

The river’s upper section in Tibet has a cascade of six planned dams. Under China’s 12th Five Year Plan, construc-tion and site preparaconstruc-tion for several of the planned dams is set to begin before 2015.

Downstream of the Yunnan-Tibet border, a cascade of seven dams – from Gushui to Miaowei – will all start construction or be completed by the end of 2015. Further downstream, the lower stem consists of seven dams, six of which have

already been completed. The first was Manwan Dam and the most recent was Nuozhadu Dam, which began reservoir impoundment in October 2012. Construction on the last dam on the Lancang - Ganlanba Dam – which Hydrolancang claims is mostly for regulating flows for downstream – has not yet started.

A Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) of dams on the Lancang River has reportedly been conducted by Hydro China, but has not been made available to the pub-lic or downstream governments. It is unknown whether transboundary impacts were considered in the SEA. The Nuozhadu and Jinghong dams are undergoing unof-ficial assessments under the International Hydropower Association’s Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol. Hydrolancang may also undertake sediment man-agement measures, but at the time of publication, no further information is publicly available.

Social Impacts Upstream

In China, more than 100,000 people have been displaced by dams on the entire Lancang River, most of them are ethnic minorities. Once communities are relocated away from their traditional lands and livelihoods, they often have difficulty adjusting to a new life in an urban environment. Local gov-ernments and hydropower companies have frequently failed to provide sufficient compensation and the support required to sustain resettled people’s livelihoods. Rather than alleviat-ing poverty, resettlement has reduced the quality of life for many. For example, Xiaowan Dam, completed in 2010, displaced more than 40,000 people, many of whom continue

BURMA

An additional 6 dams are planned upstream.

LANCANG / UPPER MEKONG RIVER

Source: International Rivers, May 2013. www.internationalrivers.org

  45   3.1: The Pros and Cons of Development

The reasoning behind the use and development of the Upper Mekong provides a good opportunity to explore the differences in scientific research. Reasons for development range from the domestic development of Yunnan province and poverty alleviation, to low-carbon development, to, as Plinston and He (1999) claim, to facilitate regional sustainability. Advocates of hydropower development on the Upper Mekong Basin (UM) specifically cite the economic benefits, including an increase in regional energy security, trade, foreign investments, navigation, and irrigation possibilities (ICEM 2010; Rasanen et al 2012;). Typically, advocates emphasize the following positives of hydropower development:

1.) Flood control during the wet season (He et al 2009)

2.) Supporting social and economic development with increased water supply and power sources for cities, towns, and communities (He et al 2009)

3.) More assured dry-season flow

4.) Increased navigation for longer, especially in northern Thailand and Lao PDR (Chapman and He 2000; Campbell 2009; He et al 2009)

5.) Reduced saline intrusion in Cambodia and Vietnam (Chapman and He 2000;

Campbell 2009)

6.) Extra irrigation opportunities, especially for Thailand (He et al 2009)

7.) Electricity provided for Eastern China and the development of the Mekong 13 regional electricity grid (He et al 2009)

8.) Increased water availability for dams projects in Laos (Chapman and He 2000)

These reasons are echoed again and again among proponents of hydropower development and its beneficial contributions to the region. Given the seemingly consistent benefit claims by proponents, the above will function as the baseline of general proponent claims to be contrasted by those opposing hydropower development. Claims against hydropower development are as nuanced and different as those proponents. However, overall

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opposition groups disagree with the above claims to varying degrees and scope. Several of the discursive frameworks surrounding dam impacts utilize different scientific findings or results in differing ways.

Opposition groups arguing against hydropower development generally make the following claims about the negative impacts of the Upper Mekong (Lancang) dam cascade:

1.) Obstruction of the path of migratory fish, threatening biodiversity and reducing fish catches (He et al 2009; Kang et al 2009a, 2009b, 2013)

2.) Increased issues with food security as fisheries and basin food production decline (Roberts 2001)

3.) Sediment trapping behind the dams and flood pulse changes will increase downstream bank erosion, reduced the fertility of the floodplain, and reduce the quality of fish habitats as far downstream as Vietnam. A big concern being Cambodia’s Tonle Sap lake. (Roberts 2001, Quang and Nguyen 2003, Dore and Xu 2004, Kummu and Sarkkula 2008,)

4.) Changes to the seasonal flood pulse will negatively impact the viability of the ecosystem

5.) Habitat loss from channel clearing for improved navigation (IRN 2002b).

6.) Heavy social costs in the form of displaced populations, the creation of wealth disparities, loss of livelihoods reliant on the river, etc2.

“To paraphrase the “ultimate” question posed by Chapman and He (2000: 6), ‘What matters most?... developing the expensive, risky, and unsustainable Lancang cascade of hydropower dams and Mekong navigation, or sustaining the fish populations,

biodiversity, and integrity of the Mekong River so that it continues to support the human population of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam’s Mekong Delta?’ The Lancang hydropower dams will kill the Mekong and sedimentation will kill the Lancang hydropower dams.

China as well as the downstream countries will pay the full price for this extravagant and unwise development scheme” (Roberts 2001, 13).

                                                                                                               

2  Interview  04:  Katy  Yan,  International  Rivers  Network.  

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While a bit hyperbolic, this statement captures the sentiment of vehement opponents of the cascade, stating that the impacts of the cascade will likely not outweigh the heavy environmental costs to the basin.

Currently, a broad number of international academic and engineering groups have determined that typically large-scale hydropower development created negative impacts on regional ecosystems, social systems, and livelihoods (Rasanen et al 2012; ICEM 2010). In 2000, the World Commission on Dams produced a report highlighting both the major benefits (e.g. flood control, increased irrigation, etc.) and significant environmental and social costs of large dams, stating:

“Dams have made an important and significant contribution to human development, and benefits derived from them have been considerable...In too many cases an unacceptable and often unnecessary price has been paid to secure those benefits, especially in social and environmental terms, by people displaced, by communities downstream, by taxpayers, and by the natural environment” (World Commission on Dams 2000).

The conclusions reached by the WCD, however, were rejected by China shortly after the reports release (Hennig et al 2013). As stated in an interview with Fu Kaidao, a senior researcher at the Asian International Rivers Center (AIRC), some of the above negative claims may be politically motivated, and indeed some studies claim that the downstream impacts of the Upper Mekong dam cascade have been exaggerated and over stated (He et al 2006; Cogels 2007). The impacts, both positive, and negative, are not necessarily mutually exclusive (e.g. flow changes can be positive for navigation, but negative for the ecosystem). More importantly, however, the above claims derive from scientific studies genuinely trying to understand and measure the changes taking place in the Mekong basin from hydropower development. Uncertainties from the data and differences in the results, conclusions, and implications of these scientific studies create openings for interested parties to choose and/or use different scientific studies to support or detract from hydropower development. A first important step, then, is understanding where and

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why some of these studies differ scientifically before understanding where they land politically.

3.2: Potential Explanations for Differing Claims

Outside of political motivations for potential differences in scientific findings, genuine scientific issues of data quality and general uncertainty sway the findings for various scientific research across related impact fields. He et al. (2009) accounts for the differences in the conclusions of scientific research in the Lancang-Mekong basin as follows:

1.) A lack of sufficient and quantitative basin-wide data and analysis, especially regarding environmental changes.

2.) A lack of standardization of data sources between riparian countries due to differing monitoring standards for hydrology, meteorology, water quality among the basin’s countries and regions.

3.) An asymmetric information transfer between the upper and lower Mekong riparian nations. Most information is produced in “gray literature” not generally accessible, as opposed to more freely available academic articles. In addition, most information within riparian countries is circulated in the local language, and therefore not easily shared.

4.) An absence of multilevel upstream-downstream dialog mechanisms due to sovereignty and international relationship issues, and the general difficulty to establish joint studies among riparian counties on issues of transboundary ecosecurity, thus limiting cooperation and dialog.

These difficulties in proper data acquisition and distribution are exacerbated by the general complexity of river system itself. In addition, downstream effects of the construction and operation of dams are extremely complex and dependent on the

“…condition of the socioeconomic and environmental systems in that downstream area”

(He et al 2009), a point reinforced by literature trying factor in those very variables (see:

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Brown 2008, 2009; Tullos 2009; Tullos et al 2010). In addition, and as will be explained further below, these impacts also rely upon the precipitation and climate of a given year, along with other human-related impacts (agriculture, infrastructure development, etc.)

A major sticking point throughout the available literature on hydropower impacts derives from the varying available datasets and the methods used therein. Indeed,

although datasets of the hydrology and sediment loads of the Mekong are available in both China and Southeast Asia since the 1960s, their methods, sampling frequencies, consistency, and reliability vary greatly from measuring station to measuring station. As the science on the Lancang-Mekong river varies widely across different areas of study, these problems will be addressed by relevant sections below.

Biophysical impacts

“Biophysical impacts” relate to any and all impacts directly involved with

ecosystem health; river hydrology, morphology; silt transportation and load, and so on. In terms of transnational impacts, these are by far the most important impacts regionally, and indeed are the most controversial. As such, “biophysical impacts” will be covered in the following sections: hydrology, sediment, and ecosystem impacts. Domestic issues tend to focus more on the socioeconomic and geopolitical realm of impacts, and will be more fully covered in chapters three and four.