Dams On The Mekong Are Having Devastating Effects

I think sigh incoming whirlwind i I called out to the become Eva that I saw many many people who use my knievel for life it's very bad situation in Mecca me where now people to pay more concerned pay more attention about how to protect the Mekong River makan riba is lower and lower in March 2010 the water reached its lowest level for 50 years could the major cause be found in man's attempt to conquer nature to tame the rapids and roar of the Mekong with a cascade of dams the Mekong one of the great rivers of the world coursing through six countries from its source high in the Himalayas of Tibet 4900 kilometers long its journey ends in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam rich in fisheries wildlife dolphins and extraordinary biodiversity this is the Amazon of Southeast Asia in Maconie will keep everything food give a kosher dip for life for I can when you know have food you can you can get a food for Mekong River vegetable hell everything everything and it's really important for the people Mekong River same matter I think Mikami what is matter but dark clouds are gathering a storm of controversy hangs over the future of this great river black clouds beckon the Mekong is moving towards a huge dam building programme will the river become devastated by dams a cascade of dams and reservoirs are being planned in the boardrooms of Chinese hydropower corporations Thai companies and other developers which could change the Mekong forever to Chinese Thai and Malaysian companies development banks technique rats and business lobbies the Mekong is the dream of hydropower potential for an energy hungry region but to the fishermen small farmers millions of villages along the Mekong this taming of the raging torrents with a cascade of dams is not a dream this developer's dream is a fisherman's nightmare 65 million people in this region are dependent for food and livelihood on a healthy mekong that long sustained their ancestors if the fast flowing currents are transformed into still reservoirs the Mekong will be transformed into a devastated ecosystem because the life is depend on the mecha rêveur and it's not only effort to love people and not only in game time is essential blouse and up to knows Laos is depend on face from the Kong Kuti Roy cow is a teacher an environmental activist in Chiang Khong from the Thai side of the Mekong he has educated 55 communities in a lively campaign to save the Mekong before have a upper upper income it will have dama in China have problem many problem to gigantic sulwon dam at 292 meters high is the world's tallest high arch dam nearly as high as the Eiffel Tower in Paris it's vast reservoir covers an area of a hundred and ninety square kilometers the operation of these dams of the station's doesn't affect the word flow of the mention Weaver so it does not affect the water below offer Michael Australian Mekong specialist Philip Hirsch has a very different assessment of these dams the seoeon dam and the new hydro dam are quite different order these are dams that are going to fundamentally and permanently affect the flow the hydrological regime of the Mekong all the way through the system Thai teacher coochi points out China has not changed its policy at all one night I am coming on China still plans to build four more dams without any consultation with the communities that live downstream the headlong rush of hydropower plans to build ever more dams continues China has scheduled a total of eight dams on the upper Maycomb on the Lower Mekong eleven more dams are being promoted in Laos and Cambodia I would really propose to slow down the piece and take a tunnel timeout and look at the feasibility of the all the whole process also consider alternative developments how is it possible that a company could even consider erecting a dam only a few kilometers away from the rapturous beauty of the cone waterfall in Laos sipping Don District of Laos is known as 4,000 Islands a pristine wonder of nature it is central to the development of Laos as an eco-tourism leader in the region Malaysian company mega first plans to build a dam right here Cambodia Vietnam Thailand they cannot who's alone because she is my friend from downstream to extreme and an absolute to downstream so if they block this channel I'm not sure if video gets fish to eat the food security here are the people's life and keep us future depend on who's alone the Lao government isn't conducting any studies regarding this project the Lao government has to rely purely on the information that's provided by the company which essentially means that they've got the fox guarding the hen house the danza Hong dam project and two more dams across the border in Cambodia instant ring and sambal would be the final blow to the survival of May Kong's dolphin population as this is the last remaining habitat of the Irrawaddy dolphin in the Mekong so a dam anywhere on the Mekong would have probably a devastating effect on the dolphins the Irrawaddy dolphin has long been a almost a sacred animal in Cambodia certainly a revered animal in Cambodia Cambodian people are totally depend on fishery as I mentioned in koma consumption rate in term of protein intake so it's worth about 250 250 million u.s. dollar at the landing site and this way you continue to like 8 to 12 percent of the total GDP of Cambodia it's very high and accounting for more than 30% of the the primary production is aquaculture so this is so fisheries sector is very important in term of nutrition in term of economic in term of employment in plan of a biodiversity and also in term of a tourism people in Cambodia the economic systems here in particular the agriculture is adapted to a river that floods nearly every year the floods bring the water that's necessary to irrigate the rice fields the floods also bring the sediments and nutrients that are essential to maintaining the fertility of the soil so if somehow this cycle of flooding is somehow controlled or interrupted or even modified to a relatively small degree that could potentially have enormous impacts on agricultural systems food security in Cambodia fishery of the Mekong which we've discussed as being the most productive and and important in the world largely depends on that flood pulse that comes every year as you know there's this remarkable phenomenon where the river that connects tone lace up the great Cambodian lake with the Mekong reverses its flow every year when the Mekong is high water flows into Tonle Sap the area of the lake it only saw expands four or five times the fish are able to go out into the flooded forest to breed and to feed this essentially becomes an incredibly productive nursery for the fisheries the fish then come back down the river into the Mekong and migrate up the river as far as Thailand you know according to that family there's thousand fish species along the Mekong and majority of the fish species they need to migrate in order to give birth of a new fish you know from the apple stream any modification of the hydrology of the Mekong puts this incredible system at risk and at risk is the greatest Inland Fisheries in the world which is catching around 3.9 million tons of fish a year valued at nearly 3 billion dollars this is a basin which has the largest inland fishery in the world and the second most diverse after the Amazon so the fisheries issue is the number one issue that has to be solved and the owners for demonstrating of that can be solved rests with the promoter of these projects the cyberbully dam is a highly significant is first damned if it goes ahead that will be built on the Macomb mainstream outside of China insignificant in town right the World Wildlife Fund for Nature recently issued a report saying that a giant catfish the iconic species of the Mekong will go extinct if SIA body and nearby dams go ahead in that section of the river 41 other species are likely to go extinct because if the cyber e dam goes ahead it just opens sue the planet opens the floodgates for the rest of the Mekong mainstream dams to go ahead in effect once you've got cyborg you've got a lot I didn't say how celebre dam is a dangerous building for for the people in my home Eva everybody went to money from a callable make them then from Eirik easy for me money you see this 3.8 billion dollar project for the sire but dam is funded by the four biggest Thai banks 95% of the electricity will be sold to Thailand the dam builder Bangkok's choke on Chang corporation plans to make a handsome profit if the opposition is growing among the citizens of the Mekong they demand the dam builders respect the International nature of this River and the rights of the citizens of the Mekong shared by Six Nations a similar development have different like mentions if you're talking about infrastructure development you could see you know the building of bridge day meeting like that but also there are many conceptual development you know to be ready to be the livelihood of the people in particular the poor and vulnerable groups you have to thinking about the development for whom it is important for the developer or the government to sing development for whom who will be benefit from the development the question needs to be answered carefully I think that the more important point is not how much money we're going to gain or lose by these projects but who's going to gain and who is going to lose the people that are going to lose are generally poor people rural people people that the Lao government or governments in the region international organizations are spending a lot of time trying to alleviate poverty trying to reduce poverty of the of the country and it's those people that are at the edge of poverty are the ones that are going to be impacted if all of them three of them say that no more than I think everything really happy our government really happy beat up and we try to find out another way to get the power to get the energy for our people and develop economy there is a need of energy however they are different kind of energy that would generate it a sign from the name and you know for example like biogas biomass they're decentralized we call the central energy system former senator dr. krycek - Navin served as chairman of a parliamentary committee on good parliamentary governance which investigated the environmental impact of dams on the Mekong where they're going to build the dam in Siam array the Mekong River will be devastating to the rest of the countries from Lao Lao Thailand Cambodia and 18 million people live in the very fertile Mekong Delta I think Vietnam in this case has a very very big stack we have to consider how important the Mekong Delta is for the economy of the whole country also in terms of biodiversity the Mekong Delta is where there is the most number of fish species compared to the whole Mekong River so Paris adversity is important fisheries is very important in the Mekong Delta agriculture is extremely important especially rice production Vietnam is the second largest rice exporter in the world so now if there is a dam I'll push in the river it's blocking sediments and is not just the quantity of the sediment it's also the quality of the sediment that's important and that may change the ecosystem of the Mekong River entirely the cumulative impacts at all I mean the Cascade of the dams could be by massive the disaster to the Mekong Delta people so they they share that that could be disaster to their lives Vietnam is point of view seems to be very clear you think it is reasonable to call for this 10-year delay for the construction that's every game Vietnam fully endorsed the strategic environmental review a special study on the impact of dams on the future of the Mekong the review recommended that no more dams should be built for at least 10 years the two prime ministers from Cambodia I am held a summit meeting in April 2011 in Panama pen they called on the Lao government to suspend desire buried am they also said in their statements that they felt that the dams on the Mekong including SIA brewery should be put on hold for at least 10 years the loud government committed to do a review of the process there are too many dams already in Thailand so they can never build a dam in Thailand anymore so the big companies like chalk and Chung goes to Laos to build big dams even while the decision of this ayah brewery dam was supposed to be under review by the lao government conch Aang wasted no time in building a road to the dam site their message was clear the international consultations and agreements of the Mekong River Commission were irrelevant we have called them that they did not come to the Parliament chalkin channel does not respect the law in Thailand are all his obligations to the Parliament sovereign tongue is a construction company it's a company that's there to make a profit for its shareholders my knowledge it's not a company that signed up to any principles of corporate social responsibility chalk and charm operates without environmental studies or when they do what they do it very poorly they don't need to didn't feel compelled to do AAA a comprehensive one and therefore if they're told they can go ahead and build the dam they'll go ahead and build them they take in our view that we are responsible to our shareholders and we're out there to make a profit whatever it might make us the river whatever it may cost other countries along the river what or whatever it may cost people who live along the river their focus is on their own bottom line if they can get away with it they will mounting protests against the cyber e down prompted the Lao government to hire an international consultant Pirrie energy based in zurich puri the lao government and the thai damn builder chopped can chang have been closely working together on the namland to dam in laos the POI we report on whether the dam complied with the Mekong River Commission guidelines on dams gave a green light to the dam builders it provided a stamp of approval for the Lao government to launch the SIA brewery damn German trained civil engineer dr. Chen hua Ming is WWF advisor on hydropower this consultant this Finnish Swiss company has advised the developer their client to go ahead in spite of unsolved problems the compliance report has no credibility with the MRC countries or with the MRC development partners because it was done unilaterally and commissioned to a consultant of the Ministry of Energy and Mines of Laos this was completely outside the MRC process it is merely a commercial consultant report done by a company who is looking for contracts the dam was launched pori energy found their contract they were handsomely rewarded with an eight-year contract to supervise the dam design and the engineering that high religious in aid Macomb provinces in the north end of noddy's submits a letter to the Thai environmental minister to urge him to take a position not to buy electricity from the cyber edom and to house the power purchase agreement between the Thai utility the e-cat and the chalk and Chung company Thailand will buy 95% of the electricity from the dam mekong villages and ngos have filed a case in the Thai calls to stop the contract poori the parent company in Helsinki is under investigation by a government-backed tribunal Peru cave barely miss misleading advice it helped the present government of Laos to push through its devastating plans to dam Mekong at SIA bori against the 1995 meagan agreement this is not how corporate responsible industry players should perform the government insists that companies should adhere to Europe's oacd rules of corporate social responsibility both at home and abroad by placing the ambitions of failure above the spirit of cooperation of the Meccan Agreement Peru has chosen to place also the livelihoods of tens of millions of people in danger this is unacceptable poori has denied all these accusations we would like to stress that we has no conflict of interest in the SIA berry project it was natural that we were willing to continue in the project since this way we can best supervise our recommendations will be implemented MRC experts found many flaws in the 2011 pie report some of them are very very fundamental but then oddly enough the report recommends to go ahead with building the dam and fixing the problems on the way you don't get on a plane for example why you're still uncertain about how to design it or whether you're uncertain how to land it Puri assured diplomats the latest technology would provide over 80% mitigation for the fish but many scientists like dr. Meng dismiss these claims in Switzerland fish ladders only deal with a small number of species whereas the Mekong is teeming with hundreds of different fish building a fish passage build on based on experiences of northern Europe of Switzerland and transferring them to the Mekong to a large tropical river is just not serious business this is a dam which is so benign they claim that it is virtually not there this is basically nonsense it's ridiculous it is a communications sales trick and it's sad into the eyes of the people who are unexperienced in dams and hydropower issues and it's basically a honey trail for the political decision-makers the dam construction has started in a world of increasing natural disasters building dams on sites prone to earthquakes is a major concern the March 24th 2011 earthquake in Myanmar also inflicted damage on northern Thailand and Laos as dr. sappin a Thai expert on earthquakes explains yeah that perfect was quite a big one for Thailand and people in that region is recorded as 68 on the Richter scale which is pretty big this terrible destruction occurred only a few hundred kilometers from where the Thai company chalk and chang is determined to build a dam even in that area now his say say every area that there were a lot of big earthquakes occur already just recently there there's many 26.3 about four or five years ago and near the area so that indicated the area was also earthquake prone so there was a bit of a worry if them was hit by the earthquake bigger than what they have for then if the dam collapse there going to be a kind of inland tsunami occur in the area dams on the mekong threaten a man-made disaster that could destroy food security the threat of earthquakes only adds to the dangers posed by hydropower now the developer wants all the stakeholders the people and the government's downstream to follow him blindly while taking a leap faith into an uncertain future and to watch them take a very risky game of Woollett based on biased advice now the stakes for 60 million people are just too high for such a gamble this is just a very very high risk to go ahead if the cyber e dam goes ahead the giant catfish already endangered will soon pass into the realm of the extinct many species of migratory fish will die out and a unique ecosystem is doomed can the world allow the gradual killing of the mighty mekong dam by down the Mekong River should be a river without them river that would give life and biodiversity from China down all the way to the sea there should be no dams at all this immense a more damn release fist local people they said well development project them bring brightness in the eyes but darkness in the heart you know people here they was born in the Mekong is like a blood like I said the Mekong and the river is the principle of life so if the Mekong destroyed or damaged I will be sad will the children of the future be asking where have all the fish gone you

Channel: Journeyman Pictures

Views: 439,464

Keywords: journeyman pictures, news, current affairs, world news, documentary, killing the mekong, biodiversity, mekong river, south east asia, dam, hydroelectric power, environmental damage, earthquakes, hydropower, food shortages, extinction, fisheries, energy, green energy

Id: _enqlMBintc

Length: 29min 23sec (1763 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 26 2016