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Mekong River Development

Nancy Hudson-Rodd & Brian J. Shaw
a b a b

Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

Available online: 22 Jan 2009

To cite this article: Nancy Hudson-Rodd & Brian J. Shaw (2003): Mekong River Development, Water International, 28:2, 268-275 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02508060308691692

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International Water Resources Association

Water International, Volume 28, Number 2, Pages 268275, June 2003

Mekong River Development Whose Dreams? Which Visions?

Nancy Hudson-Rodd, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia and Brian J. Shaw, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
Abstract: We propose in this paper that the challenge to create a sustainable channel of commerce and prosperity in the Mekong River basin which contains 70 million people and encompasses the 230 million people of Cambodia, Chinas southern province of Yunnan, Burma, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, represents the last frontier of Southeast Asia. Balanced, sustainable development has been pitted against purely economic objectives, which necessarily involve the taming of the Mighty Mekong by the investors, politicians, and technocrats who seek to build bridges, erect dams, and divert waters, disrupting the local lives which the river has traditionally sustained throughout a millennium of seasons. Now the voices of the people directly affected by the development projects have organized to express their alternative dreams for the river development. We argue that the Mekong needs to be envisioned from broad perspectives recognizing the symbolic and pragmatic dimensions of the river development from being more than a transportation route or source of commodity water, to seeing the river as a landscape and ecosystem worthy of preservation and protection for future generations. Keywords: Mekong River, sustainable development, symbolic/pragmatic dimensions, river landscape.

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River Dreams and Realities

The Mekong River, alternatively known as the Great River or the Mother of Rivers, is the worlds tenth longest river and the current of life winding through mainland Southeast Asia. The Mekong River supports one of the worlds most diverse fishing industries, and more than 70 million people who depend upon the river and its tributaries for food, transport, and other aspects of their daily life. Being swept up by the Mekong water, like all mighty rivers, means entering a flow of myths, memories, and symbolic currents of cultural and biological diversity. Worldwide, rivers have witnessed humanitys greatest cultural and social achievements and have carried within them the vitality of heroes, nations and empires. Such rivers have nurtured the Earth and its civilizations, but have in moments of awesome power and devastation also destroyed them, acting as an ever-present reminder of the transience of human life on this planet. As they meander along their paths to the sea ,the great rivers, living spines of the land, invoke memories of past peoples and places, dramatic events and future opportunities. Emanating from an arcane source on the Tibetan Plateau and gushing through the mountains of Yunnan, the Mekong River carves a border between Burma, Laos, and Thailand, wriggles through Cambodia, and dissipates in Vietnam before entering the sea. On its journey of over 268

4,400 kilometers it sustains hunters and farmers, fishermen and boatmen, rice growers and traders, villages and towns, as it has for countless generations. Annual flood and drought cycles are essential for the sustainable production of food along the rivers flood plains. For the past five decades grand dreams of controlling the rivers force to prevent these cycles of flow, to create economic development and bring the benefits of modernization to the region have been spun through an endless series of damming projects. However, the Mekong offers a rich bounty of fish, water for irrigation and domestic use, tourism and recreational potential and the possibility of becoming a river road, in addition to hydropower generation. Such Mekong Currency, the phrase coined by Sluiter (1992) underlines the vast promise of wealth from sources other than the one that dominates the attention of planners and developers. In his presidential address to the Association of American Geographers, Damage Control: Restoring the Physical Integrity of Americas Rivers, William Graf (2001) suggests that there is an emerging era of multiple uses of rivers, an era that now includes preservation and restoration, requiring approaches based on broad synthesis and on concepts that embody broad perspectives rather than mechanistic, limiting viewpoints. We argue in this paper that the Mekong River has aroused such visions and dreams of conflicting desires for centuries. No longer

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must these divergent dreams be ignored in favor of a limited vision for economic development and control ordered by international funding agencies such as the World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). These agencies have effectively silenced the dreams of the 70 million local residents of the Mekong River Region (Pahlam, 2000). Now the voices of the people directly affected by the development projects have organized to express their alternative dreams for the river development. Is anybody listening? And if so, will they make a difference? Is this a new era in which the Mekong River will be envisioned from broad perspectives recognizing the river as being more than a transportation route or source of commodity water, to seeing the river as a landscape and ecosystem worthy of preservation and protection for future generations? Can the symbolic and pragmatic senses of the grand Mekong be encompassed? Despite its grandeur, in this part of Asia, the Mekong is just one of many rivers, notably the Chiang Jiang, Salween, and Red Rivers, which have provided natural routes for the movement of people, ideas, goods, and animals. The presence of so many different ethnic groups in the hill areas of Burma, northern Thailand, Laos, and China is testimony to the continuity and frequency of past migrations in a world devoid of political restraints. Cross-national border groups such as Dai, Jinpao, Akha, Hmong, Lisu, Wa, Yao, Palaung all share elements of similar customs, habits, and language (Wijeyewardne, 1990). But the Mekong also bore witness to the desires of outsiders, potential colonizers, who sought through this dream passage access to the fabled wealth and fortune, which lay beyond the purple mountains and within the heartland of China. Thus the Mekong was to be explored, probed, measured and appropriated by Europeans, and prosaically defined in colonial terms, as a border between contesting interests. Today the Mekong River has come full circle, again representing the aspirations and potential of the peoples living along its path. The declared mission of the Mekong River Commission (MRC), established in April 1995 as a successor to the Mekong Committee set up in 1957, is to promote and coordinate sustainable management and development of water and related resources for the countries mutual benefit and the peoples well-being (MRC, 2000). This challenge to create a sustainable channel of commerce and prosperity in a basin containing 70 million people, but encompassing the 230 million people of Cambodia, Chinas southern province of Yunnan, Burma, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam represents the last frontier of Southeast Asia. Balanced, sustainable development is pitted against purely economic objectives which necessarily involve the taming of the Mighty Mekong by the investors, politicians, and technocrats who seek to build bridges, erect dams and divert waters, disrupting the local lives which the river has traditionally sustained throughout a millennium of seasons. Will the destiny of the Mekong ultimately be the same as other great rivers, dam(ned) like the Chiang

Jiang and the Nile, fragmented and too dissipated to flow into the sea, a fate which has befallen the Hwang-Ho and the Murray?

Places and Peoples of the Mekong: The Poetics and Pragmatics of Space
The Mekong River has remained the linking force for diverse groups in a place where difficult terrain often makes waterways preferable to overland routes. In the rugged, mountainous terrain of northern Thailand, eastern Burma, Laos, the rich riverine delta of Vietnam, and Lake Tonle Sap of Cambodia, people have lived for centuries developing their own unique approaches to managing natural resources provided by water, forests, and soil. There are similarities between the different ethnic groups: languages from the same linguistic family, similar life styles, and, today, similar challenges to maintaining traditional ways of life in face of grand national development schemes and contemporary borders which put up obstacles to the traditional movement of indigenous people. This is therefore a story about rivers, places and control of spaces. It is a story of writing the landscape. To quote Gaston Bachelard (1924) a country is Less an expanse of territory than a substance: its a rock or a soil or an aridity or a water or a light. Its the place where our dreams materialise; its through that place that our dreams take on their proper form, dreaming beside the river. The stream doesnt have to be ours; the water doesnt have to be ours. The anonymous water knows all my secrets. And the same memory issues from every stream. The poetics of space as proposed by Bachelard suggest that the objective space of the water of rivers is less important than the poetic meanings that they are endowed with, an imagined and figurative value. Water is one of the four elements of ancient cosmography, said to be vital to physical and organic life. But even more than fire and wind, it is water that shapes our landscape through the action of rivers. Human beings culturally appropriate water, investing it with meanings and it is through these meanings of water in rivers, streams and lakes that we come to understand it and exert forms of human control over its inherent nature (Cosgrove, 1990). The key geographic characteristic of water is that it flows. The river is life, it is cleansing, it is life affirming. Water flowing in the river is an element of movement, unpredictable and difficult to contain. Simon Schama (1995), exploring the cultural habits of humanity and the memory of landscape in relation to wood, water, and rock, acknowledges both spiritual and pragmatic approaches to human understanding of, and creation of, places. Accordingly, the pragmatic approach to water management and control has been such an impor-

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tant feature of Southeast Asian civilizations, evident since the first millennium BC when Pyu villagers perfected the gravitational flow of water. The Pyu, recognized as the architects of one of Burmas earliest civilizations, constructed an elaborate system of ancient fields and hydraulic works along the tributaries of the Irrawaddy River. The entire system was designed to move in both convergent and circular directions, around a central palace, as a representation of the Hindu cosmos. However, as Stargardt (1990) emphasizes, the symbolic values of the hydraulic works should not imply that such a role was paramount. Rather that the barriers between ritual and practice were dissolved. For the Pyu, the efficiency of the works depended on the integration of the symbolic and the practical. Somewhat later, impressive irrigation works were a feature of the Khmer Empire and its capital of Angkor during the peak of their power between the ninth and twelfth centuries. The city of Angkor was founded on a sweep of fertile alluvial soil watered by numerous rivers and waterways. The layout of this hydraulic city was again symbolic, a political and ritual center, which replicated and interpreted the cosmos as a whole in terms of stone, soil, and water. The Khmer rivers and waterways, in the Angkorian philosophy, representing the triple course of the Ganges, with the Mekong, meaning Mother Ganges, and the temple surrounded by these waterways representing the sacred mountain of Meru (Groslier, 1974; Bray, 1986). But at the same time such constructions had their practical component. The extensive network of irrigation canals and reservoirs enabled the people of Angkor to have three or four harvests per year according to Chou Takuan, a Chinese traveller who, in 1296, sailed southwards along the coast of Vietnam and journeyed up the Mekong into the Great Lake (Pelliot, 1951). Over time, a wide range of levels of water control and extent of management styles came into being, depending on the people and their relationship with the natural landscape. Those living in the mountains seldom used the full hydraulic power of the rivers and streams as they practiced mostly dry cultivation and if streams were diverted it was by simple means of bamboo tubes (Robequain, 1935). Contemporary Hmong homelands extending through the mountains of northern Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, and eastern Burma reflect ancient traditional ways of life through their utilization of the surrounding natural resources. The Hmong live in village groups but instead of naming the village they refer to a local geographical attribute like a mountain or a river by which they recognize their area. The site of the village is chosen to harmonize with the surrounding topography with closeness to water the most important aspect. Hmong prefer to site their village just below a water source so that gravity will deliver a fresh, constant supply, and the village may be served by a system of aqueducts made from split bamboo laid end to end in the shape of a gutter. The system is kept intact and repaired by anyone who happens to pass, not formally being the

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responsibility of any one person. Hence some water is collected as it flows by in its natural cycle (Cooper, 1998). Historically, however it has been smaller rivers, tributaries of the Mekong, that have been harnessed with earthen dams built into side valleys. Instead the Kingdoms of Angkor and the Mun or Chi cultures of northeast Thailand controlled the water of the smaller tributaries and rivers and streams, not attempting to harness the powerful Mekong. The Khmers of Angkor expanded their irrigation network north of the Tonle Sap and east of Angkor to the edge of the plains, but never tried to control the lower flow of the Mekong (Groslier, 1974). The kings of Angkor may have seen the Mekong River and its tributaries as watery roads leading invading armies into their kingdom. Perhaps for this reason the site of the kingdom was constructed, not on the banks of the Mekong, nor on the shores of the Great Lake, but further inland away from the threat of invasions (Osborne, 1996). Thus the Mekong River was never the site of major water control systems before the colonial period when imported technology began to make feasible the harnessing of the large rivers and the draining of the deltas (Bray, 1986).

Doing Geography: Discovering the Mekong

For Europeans, the Mekong was a mystery river, a challenge to those who sought to discover its source, and stories of its grandeur appeared in early European writings. Known to the Portuguese from the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Mekong was described like the Nile as seasonally inundating its surrounding plain. For six months each year the winds were said to pile up the sands at the rivers mouth, causing a reversal of flow and creating great lakes in the interior. Fish were said to be plentiful in the Mekong and the lakes especially filled with thon blanc which supposedly swam upriver with the tide. In early Dutch sources, the Mekong was known as the river of Laos or Lousse from the sixteenth century reports of Geeraerd van Wusthof, a junior merchant of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), who led a commercial mission from Cambodia into Laos in 1641 to 1642. Parts of his diary were published in 1669 detailing an eventful trip up the Mekong past waterfalls and rapids, until being met by royal barges near Vientiane. Another well-read source was that of the Jesuit missionary, Father Marini, whose systematic description of Laos was published as Book V of his report of the activities of Jesuits in Cambodia and Laos (Marini, 1663). Marini describes the journey of the great river they call the mother of waters and the great difficulties of navigating the precipices and falls at Khone (1663). From the sources dealing with European political and missionary contacts, and works of explorers describing the countries and their commercial activities, a picture of the Mekong River emerged for popular reading. These accounts were also used as basic information for later

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entrepreneurs and explorers to the region who would clarify or contest their geographical details. For example, the later explorer Louis de Carne acknowledged the writings of van Wusthof and Marini both before and during exploration of the Mekong region from 1866 to 1868 (de Carnes, 1872). Accordingly, maps of Indo-China were changed and modified as the separate details of exploration were reported, but this was a tedious process as place names for similar sites changed, different topographical features were mentioned for similar sites, and due to the lapse of time between explorations, once thriving communities disappeared. Before the second half of the nineteenth century, although coastal areas were known, the interior of Indo-China was essentially terra incognita to Europeans (Winichakul, 1996). During the late nineteenth century, European geographical curiosity and discovery were marshalled in the pursuit of imperial ambition. Land was appropriated and technological power, newly developed in the West, was utilized to contain, control, and change the ecological balance of new lands. Geographic tools of surveying, measuring, mapping, and writing landscape and people, were fundamental to this process of engagement and control. The French Government, having just opened up the extreme East where it had just raised its flag (de Carne, 1872), was determined to have exact knowledge of the upper valley of the great Cambodian river and a practicable route to China. Under the charge of Capt. de Lagree and Lt. Garnier, the group of six included men of various talents, an artist, a surgeon/botanist, a physical/geologist, and Louis de Carne, who published his own account before the release of the official Mekong Exploration Commission Report (June 1866 to June 1868). Not long out of Saigon, de Carne is overcome with the passion and intense mythic biblical dimensions of his exploration of the noblest river of Asia (1872). I felt myself floating on the stream. I was about to ascend it, and do my part in tracing it to its sources; and I involuntarily did so in advance of my thoughts, picturing myself now burning under a tropical sun, and next frozen by the cold in the mountains of Tibet. I never realized so vividly the idea of ancient mythology which gave great rivers a god or a genius for father. At the sight of the Mekong, the image of Camoens, who composed his paraphrase of the Psalm, On the rivers of Babel on its banks, rose in my mind; and I shared the sadness of the great exile, tempered by the manly hope, and felt myself strengthened by the recollection thus suddenly evoked. Later in the journey he expresses pride that after leaving Vientiane, they are entering a region which has never been explored; for the Dutch ambassador sent in the seventeenth century to the king of Laos had not gone beyond the capital (de Carne, 1872). Not seen through the eyes

of an European, therefore not explored, for the explorers were on a mission of aiding science and adding by our researches to the facts with which she works, and this ambition acted on us, without doubt, like that which urged the knight from his castle to redress wrongs, or to follow the track of amorous dreams; but we had in our hearts, beyond all things else, an image bright as a star of the Kings the image of France, to which each step was now, henceforth, to bring us nearer. Here de Carne, in a prophetic comment on Frances subsequent mission civilisatrice, likens the exploration of new territory, and the extension of knowledge, to a moral crusade driven by the righteousness of French imperialism. The 18661868 expedition eventually reached Yunnan but failed to locate the source of the Mekong. The experiences of these adventurers, when recounted in Paris, made clear the treacherous, dangerous ascent of the river and the folly of thinking that this would provide an easy route into China. With this knowledge, French aspirations turned to other potential routes into the interior, notably the Red River. However, a decade later, Auguste Pavie the French vice-consulate at Luang Prabang was instructed to explore routes connecting the upper Mekong valley with Tongking. By 1895, Pavie and his crew had taken three missions (1887 to 1889; 1889 to 1891; 1892 to 1895) exploring the Mekong River upstream to the Burmese and Chinese borders and crossed over the Mekong river valley from east to west. They documented their travels in a dozen volumes and created a detailed atlas of the region, showing the number of local alliances in each area of the upper Mekong region, now envisioned as a geopolitical entity as two European powers confronted each other across its banks. The Mekong, having failed to provide a convenient routeway was now to be used as a demarcator, and the subsequent Treaty of London, signed between France and Britain in 1896, formally delimited the boundary of French influence along the rivers western bank.

The Mighty Mekong Project

A century later, the Mekong is conceived neither as a route nor a boundary, but as a commercial project. The rushing of uncontrolled rivers in clear disrespect for humanity has attracted the attention of development authorities who now seek to control, tame and develop this primeval energy. This developmental view of a rivers potential has been eloquently expressed by Newnham and Kennedy, (1968): Rivers are untamed, rushing, eroding and flooding in the wet season causing loss of life and damage to property, their energy wasted in devastation. They are difficult to navigate in flood time and too shallow and

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shoaly in their mid-reaches for navigation in the dry season. One of the greatest of these rivers is the Mekong which flows from the Tibetan Plateau, past Burma and then through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Three quarters of the drainage area lies in these last four countries which contains some 20 million people. The river has a huge untapped potential for hydroelectric power, irrigation (at present less than 3 per cent of the cultivated area in the basin is irrigated), navigation and flood control. As early as 1951, the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE), cooperated with the governments of Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam in studies of the Mekong. Five years later, in 1956, a team of international experts conducted field studies to map the potential of the river basin, which was claimed to be on a scale to dwarf other mammoth projects such as the Tennessee Valley Development. Hydrological stations were established, the river was leveled in areas and aerial mapping was completed of the main river and the tributaries. Accordingly it was discovered that this great water and power resource is vastly under-utilized (Wilson, 1973). The Mekong Project obtained the participation of international organizations (including 12 UN agencies), and 21 countries in addition to the four riparian countries. Acting on the explosion of scientific knowledge concerning the river and its tributaries and lower basin, by 1969 a total of more than 70 individual projects were identified within the Mekong Scheme (dams, power stations, experimental farms, soil surveys, bridges, irrigation canals, flood control systems, and transport schemes). Three dams were completed, two in north-east Thailand (Nam Pung and Nam Pong) and one in southern Laos (Lower Se Done) by 1972 with activities of others in various stages of progress. There are more than 50 other projects which have not yet been named, lines or dots or blobs on the map which in the years and decades to come will become towns, dams, bridges, canals, roads, new factories, new farmland (Wilson, 1973). There was unlimited optimism expressed in the benefits to flow from these many grand developments schemes. However, this most ambitious international development project encountered many drawbacks, and the Mekong Committee complained that finding financial backers for these schemes was proving increasingly difficult. Work on the project was hindered as the war in IndoChina escalated, with the US air force, both officially and covertly, conducting saturation bombing missions over the area. Migrants and political refugees traversed the region both during the war and afterwards, as political events led to the ascendancy of the Pathet Lao in Laos and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Throughout these massive dislocations the position of tribal people remained difficult and obscure (Wilson, 1973; UN Office of Public Information Unit, 1965). The dreams of continuous developmental

progress for the peoples of the Mekong Basin began to fade also due to concern over the human and ecological consequences of some projects. By the 1980s, a development evaluation showed that none of the 16 mainstream priority schemes, and only 16 of the proposed 180 projects of the Basin Plan, had been completed. The majority of these were in northeastern Thailand (Nam Pong, Nam Oon, Nam Pung, Lam Pao, Lam Pra Plerng, Lam Ta Kong, Nam Phrom, and Lam Don Noi), with two in Laos (Selabam and Nam Dong Dams) (UN, 1984).

Scheming the Mekong River

Today, five decades after the initial ECAFE initiative, the mechanistic vision of developing the river is still with us. In fact, most of the schemes for developing the Mekong region have appeared within the past decade. The Economist (1996) identified six bureaucratic structures, all dedicated to managing the development of the Mekong River, its tributaries and surrounding nations: The MRC, successor to the Mekong Committee, and now headquartered in Phnom Penh, has undergone many changes, a fact which is hardly surprising given the diverse and conflicting interests of the member nations. MRC member countries are Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Vietnam, with Burma and China as dialogue partners. The greatest success of the MRC to date may be that it still exists (Joern Kristensen, CEO of MRC quoted by Ngan Nguyen, 2000). The Greater Mekong Sub-Region Initiative (GMS) founded in 1992 is the creation of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Representatives from all of the Mekong sub-region nations have attended meetings including the Chinese who are interested in the broader, ADB inspired, non-Mekong River development projects like road and railway construction. The Forum for the Comprehensive Development of Indochina (FDCI) is a Japanese initiative concerned mainly with jobs and infrastructure. AEM-MITI links the Japanese Ministry of Trade and Development with the ASEAN nations. It concentrates on the transition to a market economy with a working group on Cambodia, Laos, and Burma. Mekong Basin Development Cooperation was established in the ASEAN summit of December, 1995. It is dominated by Malaysia and Singapore with a main interest in railways. Quadripartite Economic Cooperation linking four governments, Thailand, Burma, Laos, and Vietnam, met in Chiang Rai, northern Thailand, 1995, to sign the Agreement on the Co-operation for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong River Basin. This group is an extension of the Golden Triangle group and despite best intentions; illegal drugs remain the most lucrative industry in the region.

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Currently, dams regulate less than five percent of the Mekong basin; however for the past decade more than 100 dams have been proposed for the region. Some of these dams are under construction and some are in the advanced stages of planning. These dams will have dramatic impacts on the livelihood of the people who live along the Mekong and on the ecology of the river system. While the present-day construction of dams is designed to be more ecologically friendly and less socially harmful than those proposed in the 1970s and 1980s, the outcome remains to be seen (Usher, 1996). Elsewhere, fundamental questions have been raised regarding the long-term sustainability of massive hydro-development schemes, notably the Three Gorges project on the Chiang Jiang and the on-off-on again Bakun Dam in Malaysia. While politicians declare dreams of national development, projects are funded on the advice of the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, with expertise and money coming from sources such as the Hydro-Electric Commissions of Australia, Thailand, and Canada. Over time however, the economic, social, and environmental impacts of the projects reveal different realities (ACFOA, 1996; Barber and Ryder, 1993). Now there are about a dozen large-scale hydropower projects in stages of planning or under construction in Laos, all with the stated purpose to sell power to Thailand. The 486 megawatt Xekaman 1 Dam, however, is being developed with the Malaysian logging company, Idris Hydraulic, as a major partner. Idris Hydraulic appears to be interested in the prospect of logging the dams reservoir once flooding begins. This area includes some of the last intact areas of lowland and tropical forests remaining in mainland Southeast Asia and, when flooded, will cover also an unknown area of the adjoining Dong Ampham National Biodiversity Conservation Area, removing the land and livelihood of over 2,000 mostly indigenous people (Nette, 1998). In a study of six hydropower projects, at various stages of construction in Laos, indigenous people were found to have been forcibly resettled, with inadequate compensation for loss of livelihood and land. In addition, inadequate environmental assessments were being conducted and uncontrolled logging practices were evident. It has been suggested that logging potential is a greater incentive for damming than the resultant hydropower production (International Rivers Network, 1999). Voices resisting the grand development schemes are gathering strength. Two recent events in Thailand illustrate the broadening perspective of development forced upon planners by the supposed beneficiaries of national development schemes. The Pak Mun Dam, constructed on the Mun River the largest tributary of the Mekong River, was completed in 1994 and funded by the World Bank. However, the project was controversial with predicted negative impacts on the rich and productive fisheries of the Mun and over 20,000 people losing their homes, fisheries and source of income. Some 500 villagers estab-

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lished the Long-Lasting Mun River Village, living in makeshift tents at the dam site (1999 to 2001), protesting the dam development. The Assembly of the Poor in a marathon protest demonstration camped outside Government House in Bangkok from July 2000 until May 2001 demanding that social and ecological impacts of the dam be considered by the Thai Government. The World Commission on Dams reported that since construction of the dam, 56 species of fish have disappeared altogether and that reservoir fisheries at Pak Mun have been a failure with fish catch in the reservoir and upstream being 60 to 80 per cent less than in pre-dam era. This represents severe economic loss to the villagers. In a landmark result, the Thai Government has been compelled to open the dam gates for four months (May to August 2001) and conduct studies on future social and ecological impacts (Imhof, 2001). Thirty-eight local organizations including Womens Rights Network, Assembly of the Poor, Isaan Farmers Cooperative Federation, Isaan River Network, Assembly of Indigenous People, and the Assembly of the Moon River Basin speak with authority as people directly affected by development projects. These organizations have demanded the termination of the ADB loans to Thailand arguing that water which has long been a crucial basic element of the Thai peoples way of life, will be reduced to a mere commodity in the capitalist market (Letter to ADB, 2000). The ADB practice of independent studies that undermine local voices and seek to justify certain predetermined outcomes, thereby denying a range of data and alternative approaches, is now being challenged. The group of 38 organizations, representing local voices demands to be listened to as direct victims of programs funded by the ADB.

Dream or Vision?
Whose dreams and visions are being fulfilled by the river development schemes? Who benefits from the projects and who determines what projects are carried out in the name of progress and development? Rivers are places of dream creation for indigenous peoples. The Mekong has also intrigued European explorers, traders and would-be exploiters for centuries. It has been the unwilling river of war (Purdon, 1998). The Mekong River has provided, and continues to provide, means of communication for the people along its banks, fish from its waters, and foodstuffs from its regularly deposited rich fluvial sediments. But today, indigenous people moved from their traditional lands are not benefiting from hydroelectric projects whose power supply is directed south to the citizens of Bangkok. Ecosystems are being destroyed and species made extinct, rivers and streams have been fragmented and peoples lives shattered as biological and cultural heritage is destroyed in the dam building process. The World Bank and the World Conservation Union (IUCN) initiated the World Commission on Dams which released its final

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N. Hudson-Rodd and B.J. Shaw Cooper, R., ed. 1998. The Hmong: A Guide to Traditional Lifestyles. Kuala Lumpur: Times Subang. Cosgrove, D. 1990. An Elemental Division: Water Control and Engineered Landscape. In D. Cosgrove and G. Petts, eds. Water Engineering and Landscape. New York, New York, USA: Belhaven Press. De Carne, L. 1995. 1872. Travels on the Mekong. Bangkok, Thailand: White Lotus. Graf, W. 2001. Damage Control: Restoring the Physical Integrity of Americas Rivers. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91, No. 1: 128. Groslier, B. 1974. Agriculture et religion dans lEmpire Angkorien. Etudes Rurales: 5356. International Rivers Network. 1999. Power Struggle: The Impacts of Hydro-Development in Laos. Berkeley, California, USA. Koch-Weser, M. 2000. News Release of the World Commission on Dams Final Report. Gland, Switzerland, 16 November. Letter submitted to the President of the ADB, during the grand opening ceremony on the 33th Annual Meeting of the Board of Governor, May 6, 2000. Demand the Termination of the ADBs Loans, 38 Thai People Organizations. Chiang Mai, Thailand. www.prachachon.net Marini. 1663. Delle Missioni de Padri Della Compagnie di Giesu Nella provincia del Giaoppone 1663. Mekong River Commission (MRC). 2000. Annual Report 2000, Phnom Penh: MRC. Nette, A. 1998. Double Jeopardy for Laos: Logging Interests and Hydrodevelopers Join Forces to Dam Mekong Tributary. World Rivers Review 13, No. 1. Newnham, T. and T. Kennedy. 1968. Asia, The Monsoon Lands. Christchurch, United Kingdom: Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. Ngan Nguyen. 2000. World Commission on Dams, Hanoi Hearing. WCD Regional Consultation for East/Southeast Asia. Personal Observations, February 26-27, Hanoi. Omhof, A. 2001. Pak Mun Dam Gates to Open. World Rivers Review, May 1. Osborne, M. 1996. 1975. River Road to China: The Search for the Source of the Mekong, 186673. New York, New York, USA: Atlantic Monthly Press. Pahlam, C. 2000. The Politics of Studies (and Economic Fairy Tales.....) The Role of the ADB in Hydro-power Development in the Mekong Region. Unpublished paper for Mekong/ ADB Symposium. Tokyo, Japan: September. Pelliot, P. 1951. Memoires sur les Coutumes du Cambodge de Tcheou Ta Kouan: Version Nouvelle Survive dun Commentaire Inachaeve. Paris, France: Libraire d Amerique et dOrient. Purdon, N. 1998. Spinning the Globe: Rivers and People. Sydney, Australia: Duffy and Snellgrove. Robequain, C. 1935. LIndochine Francaise. Paris, France: Armand Colin. Schama, S. 1995. Landscape and Memory. London, England, United Kingdom: Fontana Press. Sluiter, L. 1992. The Mekong Currency. Bangkok, Thailand: Project for Ecological Recovery/TERRA.

report in November 2000. After this report Maritta KochWeser, director general of the IUCN stated that We can no longer say (that) we did not know the true costs of such dams (2000). Whose dreams, or which visions, will guide the future of the Mekong?

About the Authors

Dr. Nancy Hudson-Rodd is Head of the Post-graduate Program of Development Studies, School of International, Cultural, and Community Studies, Mt. Lawley Campus, Edith Cowan University, 2 Bradford St., Perth, Western Australia 6050. Email: hudrodd@iinet.net.au.Dr. Hudson-Rodd conducts research into the social/cultural landscapes of Southeast Asia with special focus on Burma. For the past seven years she has studied changing place identities of towns along the Burma, Thailand, and Laos PDR borders, and has been researching contemporary life in Burma. As a member of the Technical Advisory Network (TAN) of the Burma Fund,Washington, she conducts research into land policy for a democratic transition in Burma. Dr. Brian J. Shaw is with the University of Western Australia in Perth, Australia. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Human Geography School of Earth and Geographical Sciences at The University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Western Australia 6907. Email: jshaw@segs. uwa.edu.au. Dr. Shaw has been teaching and researching aspects of Southeast Asian development for a number of years. He has traveled extensively throughout the region and has written on a wide range of issues, including informal sector operations, public policy, transportation, tourism and heritage studies, which have been published in both books and scholarly journals. Discussions open until December 1, 2003.

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References
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Mekong River Development: Whose Dreams? Which Visions? Stargardt, J. 1990. The Ancient Pyu of Burma, Volume One: Early Pyu Cities in a Man-Made Landscape. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. The Economist. 1996. Watching the Mekong Flow. September: 713. United Nations. 1984. Interim Committee for Coordination of Investigations of the Lower Mekong Basin. Annual Report 1984. Bangkok, Thailand: United Nations. Usher, A. 1996. The Race for Power in Laos: The Nordic Connections. In M. Parnwell and R. Bryant, eds. Environmental Change in Southeast Asia. London, England, United Kingdom: Routledge.

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