Fishermen in northeast Thailand say they have seen catches in the Mekong River plunge, while some farmers in Vietnam and Cambodia are leaving for jobs in cities as harvests of rice and other crops shrink.
The common thread driving these events is erratic water levels in Asia’s third longest waterway.
Water flows along the 4,300km (2,700 mile) Mekong shift naturally between monsoon and dry seasons, but non-governmental groups say the 11 hydroelectric dams on China’s portion of the river five of them starting operation since 2017 ??have disrupted seasonal rhythms. This threatens food security for the more than 60 million people in the Lower Mekong that rely on the river for a livelihood, they say.
Naturally, Mekong water rises and decreases slowly about three to four months from highest to lowest levels, said Teerapong Pomun, director of the Mekong Community Institute, an NGO focused on water resource management and based in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
[But now] the water levels fluctuate almost every two to three days all year, and every year, because of the dams.
Beijing has taken issue with assessments that accused Chinese dams of causing shifts in Mekong water levels, especially a United States think tank report on April 13 that said China was withholding water upstream, citing satellite data. China said the report failed to recognise that low rainfall caused a drought in 2019, the worst to hit the region in 50 years.
Whatever the argument, the food supply and livelihoods for tens of millions of people are at stake. The coronavirus pandemic is adding another twist to the troubling dynamic.
The situation in the Mekong is worrying as the prolonged drought poses dire threats to regional countries from various aspects, particularly in terms of food security, said Zhang Hongzhou, a research fellow with Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. It will certainly adversely affect Beijing’s relations with the Mekong region countries.
The Mekong River nourishes wetlands known as Asia’s rice bowl thanks to the high nutrient loads the river disperses. Because so many people live off and from the river, disruptions to its water levels can be devastating.
Farm crop yields decrease, animals die, which has a huge impact on the livelihood of people as their life depends on natural resources, said Bunleap Leang, the executive director of 3S Rivers Protection Network, an NGO that works to support dam-affected communities in northeastern Cambodia.
Mekong water levels fell to a record low in July last year, causing Vietnam, the world’s third-largest rice exporter, to declare a state of emergency for the five provinces in the Mekong Delta that produce more than half the country’s crop. Local authorities have warned the drought could run into May or longer.
In April, the US Department of Agriculture forecast that 2020 rice yields in Vietnam would fall by 3.3 per cent from the previous estimates because of the drought and subsequent saltwater intrusion, leaving the harvest 0.9 per cent lower for the year.
Farmers are especially hard hit because when the water level falls, they have to buy more fuel for water pumps so their costs increase at the worst time, Pomun said. This is driving farmers from their rice fields to find other work, while Thai fishermen on the Mekong are pulling in empty nets, he said.
Besides the impact on agriculture, the Mekong and its tributaries make up the largest freshwater fishery in the world and catches are a mainstay of the diet for local people. Fish account for as much as 82 per cent of animal protein consumed locally, according to a report by the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an intergovernmental organisation representing Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand.
The inland fisheries of the Mekong basin are a lifeline for the people of the region, said the MRC on its website, which warns of severe consequences from disruption to the catch, especially as the population of the Lower Mekong is estimated to rise to 100 million people by 2025 from the current 60 million.
South China Morning Post