In no part of the world does the increasingly critical nexus of water, food, and energy have more immediate relevance than the Mekong River, a transboundary resource shared by China and five Southeast Asian countries. The Mekong rivals the Amazon as the world s most biologically diverse river, and is the world s largest fresh water fishery. The river is central to the livelihoods and food security of an estimated 65 million people in the lower half of the river in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Vietnam, where wild-caught fish and other aquatic animals provide 40-80 percent of the animal protein in local diets. The highly complex human adaption to its extreme annual cycles of flood and drought have made the Mekong Delta the rice bowl of Southeast Asia and a major factor in global food security.
The mainstream and major tributaries of the river also have significant hydroelectric power potential which, in most cases, cannot be exploited without significant transboundary impact on migratory fisheries, sediment-borne nutrients, water quality, and water availability. Because the ecology and biodiversity of the river is highly connected to the monsoon flood pulse and other seasonal rhythms, the direct tradeoffs between energy and food security are particularly strong.
Plans for the construction of up to 12 mainstream dams on the Lower Mekong are testing the strength and effectiveness of the 1995 treaty commitment by Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam to cooperative and sustainable water resources development under the framework of the intergovernmental Mekong River Commission (MRC), to which China and Myanmar (Burma) have only observer status. Several developments provide reasons for cautious optimism that transboundary ecosystems and resources can be more effectively and sustainably managed in the region.
The decision of the government of Laos to give the go-ahead to a highly controversial hydropower dam project in the country s northern Xayaburi Province became the primary trigger for these developments. The regional reaction to the Xayaburi dam project thus far suggests that the seriously skewed distribution of the transboundary costs and benefits of mainstream dams has the potential to be a game-changer, at least as far as the Lower Mekong is concerned.