China's Mekong Dams Impoverish Thai Fishing Villages

From February to April each year, Kam Thon spends most of her days knee-deep in the waters of the Mekong River by her village in northern Thailand, gathering river weed to sell and cook at home.

Photo Insert: China has built nearly a dozen dams — including five mega-dams each more than 100 meters tall — since 1995 on the Mekong, which it calls the Lancang, which are sparking fears over unseasonal flooding and droughts they may cause.

Kam Thon and other women who live by the Mekong have been collecting river weed, or khai, for decades, but their harvest has fallen since China built nearly a dozen dams upstream, Rina Chandran reported for Reuters.

Stretching from the Tibetan Plateau to the South China Sea for about 4,350 kilometers, the Mekong is a farming and fishing lifeline for tens of millions of people across China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

But with China building more dams to generate hydropower, fears are growing over the unseasonal flooding and droughts they cause — and for the future of Southeast Asia’s longest river, which is now being shaped by powerful state-backed corporations.

China has built nearly a dozen dams — including five mega-dams each more than 100 meters tall — since 1995 on the Mekong, which it calls the Lancang. It also built at least 95 hydroelectric dams on tributaries flowing into the Mekong.

Dozens more are planned in China, which is also financing others in the Lower Mekong Basin.

Energy from the hydropower dams in the Upper Mekong River Basin — comprising the Tibetan Plateau and the Lancang Basin in China and Myanmar — is valued at about $4 billion annually by the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an intergovernmental body of the Lower Basin nations of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, Japan Times also reported.

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