# Mekong River Delta Infrastructure Improvements



## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Mekong PMs pledge to boost transport, power, telecom links *

VIENTIANE, March 31, 2008 (AFP) - Mekong region premiers meeting in Laos on Monday pledged to strengthen transport, power and telecom links between their six countries, saying closer integration will boost trade and development. 

The prime ministers of China, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos vowed to "deepen our economic cooperation and integration efforts," at their Vientiane summit with the Asian Development Bank (ADB). 

They also pledged, in a joint declaration after their closed-door meetings, to jointly tackle "the emergence of health risks, human and drug trafficking, and growing environmental threats, including those posed by climate change." 

The summit brought together China's premier Wen Jiabao, Thailand's Samak Sundaravej, Vietnam's Nguyen Tan Dung, Cambodia's Hun Sen, Myanmar's Thein Sein, Laos' Bouasone Bouphavanh, as well as ADB president Haruhiko Kuroda. 

The group committed to extending transport links, including a rail line from Kunming in China's Yunnan province to Singapore. Wen pledged 20 million yuan (2.9 million dollars) for a feasibility study on the missing rail links. 

Laotian Prime Minister Bouasone also asked his neighbours and the ADB for support for a railway link from Thailand through Laos to Vietnam. 

The leaders of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) -- an area long isolated and impoverished by revolution and war -- praised their "significant reduction in the incidence of poverty" since the group was founded in 1992. 

In recent years, average annual economic growth has topped six percent. 

The Mekong region was for decades a battleground for post-colonial struggles and the Vietnam war that in the 1960s and 1970s spilled into Laos as well as Cambodia, which then fell under the bloody reign of the Khmer Rouge. 

"Fifteen years ago, when many Mekong nations were mired in conflict and poverty, few would have dared to predict that these countries would make such unprecedented progress in alleviating poverty," said ADB vice president Lawrence Greenwood. 

Bouasone said turning Laos "from a landlocked country to a hub for the GMS countries" had raised trade with its neighbours by 20 percent a year. 

Several highways are finished or nearly complete across the area united by Southeast Asia's largest river -- including roads linking China and Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam, and Thailand and Vietnam -- the premiers said. 

The Chinese, Laotian and Thai premiers also officially opened the modern Route 3 in Laos on Monday -- previously a road closed during the rainy season. 

Wen said China would help build a Thai-Laotian bridge across the Mekong River that will complete the Kunming-Bangkok road link by 2011. 

The premiers also marked the first phase of a project to develop a network of fibreoptic cables between their countries. 

And the GMS said its six members were "in the process of building new power generation and transmission facilities... and have laid down the foundations for a future subregional trade and power market." 

Other areas of cooperation included promoting the Mekong region as a single tourism destination, and pilot projects to protect "biodiversity corridors." 

Greenwood said the group was also shifting its focus toward streamlining rules, building up institutions and training officials. 

"The main emphasis of this meeting has been to take the next step from the building of infrastructure to support the integration of the Greater Mekong Subregion and move to more emphasis on the 'software'," he said. 

This aimed "to make sure the infrastructure -- the roads, the power plants, the transmission lines that get built -- truly lead to generation of economic activity... to reduce poverty," he told AFP.


----------



## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*New highway grid to transform Mekong region *

VIENTIANE, March 31, 2008 (AFP) - Across the Mekong region, a vast highway grid is taking shape, dragging former backwaters into the modern age but also speeding the spread of social ills and environmental harm, experts say. 

To their proponents, the "economic corridors" set to criss-cross the six nations along the river will boost commerce and development in a mostly rural region, much of it impoverished by decades of conflict and isolation. 

To its critics, the plan to cover the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) with a network of highways will accelerate rainforest logging and wildlife poaching and the spread of human trafficking, illegal drugs and HIV/AIDS. 

Laos, the mostly rural country at the heart of the region, aims to turn itself from a landlocked into a "land-linked" country under the plan, promoted by the Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB). 

"Our vision is turning basic pieces of economic infrastructure, the roads and the power links, into economic corridors that become the sinews of an economic grouping," said ADB regional infrastructure chief John Cooney. 

The ADB scheme multiplies existing major roads into a dense regional grid, while new rail, water and air links, and streamlined border, customs and traffic rules, are set to further ease the flow of people and goods. 

On Monday, the Lao communist government hosted the premiers of China, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar for the third summit of the GMS, a region that includes China's southern Yunnan and Guanxi provinces. 

As they met, construction crews were pushing forward highways that will soon reduce travel times between centres like Kunming in Yunnan and Bangkok, and connect Myanmar's Bay of Bengal ports with the South China Sea in Vietnam. 

The ADB has hailed the impact of the multi-billion-dollar highway system. 

The Cambodia-Vietnam border, a recent battlefield, used to be "essentially a wire fence, a minefield and a shed," said Cooney. 

Today "supermarkets, housing developments and very high traffic volumes" are found on the Vietnamese side, while in Cambodia a modern road has replaced what used to "an impassable, pot-holed track," he told AFP. 

Some experts, however, have questioned whether all new roads are good news, including a study on a World Bank financed road that has connected China with the Lao Mekong river port of Xiengkok since 2000. 

The "impact on the local lifestyles and livelihoods has been dramatic," said the study co-written by Chris Lyttleton of Australia's Macquarie University. 

An influx of Chinese and Thai traders had brought new consumer goods and jobs, the report said, but there were also "dramatic increases" in synthetic drug abuse and a rise in the illegal wildlife trade. 

The authors called the road, now lined with bars and restaurants, a potential "tinderbox that could allow rapid spread of HIV/AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases." 

Lao expert Martin Stuart-Fox, of Australia's University of Queensland, said many Lao people now feared the "truck stop development" of their country. 

"Lao friends of mine fear that 'social ills', such as HIV/AIDS and prostitution will flourish, and that it will make it easier to lure young Lao to be exploited -- sexually and otherwise -- in Thailand and Vietnam," he said. 

Environmentalists have also issued stark warnings. 

"The rapid growth and expansion of GMS has taken its toll, in particular with unforeseen environmental costs in the form of illegal wildlife and timber trade," said World Wide Fund for Nature vice president Tom Dillon. 

"Minerals, metals, timber and species are being extracted from the forests at a dizzying pace while the Mekong River, the region's most vital lifeline, is being dammed," he told a January meeting of GMS environment ministers. 

British-based group the Environmental Investigation Agency charged this month that Vietnam and Thailand are now buying huge quantities of illegally logged timber from Laos for furniture exports to Europe and the United States. 

The UN Environment Programme has warned that the region's "natural resource base has come under pressure from rapid economic and demographic change. 

"Together with the impact of infrastructure development, and the weakness of national protective and regulatory institutions, these forces have contributed to widespread pollution and natural resource depletion." 

The UNEP warned that "despite increasing economic integration, a key weakness of the GMS is that it still lacks a genuinely regional body with the mandate to develop and implement a shared vision of sustainable development."


----------



## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*New rush to dam Mekong alarms environmentalists *

HANOI, March 27, 2008 (AFP) - The Mekong River, the world's 12th largest waterway crossing six countries, may soon be tamed by a cascade of mega dams, but critics say the plan will harm the fish stocks millions of people rely on. 

Plans for a series of Mekong mainstream dams have been made and scrapped several times since the 1960s, but now, with oil above 100 dollars a barrel, the projects look more appealing than ever to their proponents. 

The river's future will be a key issue when prime ministers of the Mekong countries meet Sunday and Monday in the Lao capital Vientiane for a summit of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), with the Asian Development Bank. 

The 4,800-kilometre (3,000-mile) river originates in the Tibetan plateau of China, where it is called the Lancang, before running through Yunnan province, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam to the South China Sea. 

To the pro-development lobby, the Mekong is a dream of hydropower potential for an energy-hungry region. To environmentalists, it's a nightmare. 

Laos, Cambodia and Thailand have all allowed Chinese, Malaysian, Thai and Vietnamese companies to study at least seven mainstream hydropower projects. 

The new projects on the drawing board are "a serious threat to the river's ecology" and the millions who depend on it for water, food, income and transport, said Carl Middleton of environmental watchdog International Rivers. 

"By changing the river's hydrology, blocking fish migration and affecting the river's ecology, the construction of dams on the Lower Mekong mainstream will have repercussions throughout the entire basin." 

Many of its tributaries have already been dammed, including several in Laos, Southeast Asia's poorest country, which plans to ramp up hydropower exports to its more industrialised neighbours Thailand and Vietnam. 

But so far most of the Mekong itself remains relatively untouched and clean, in part due to its isolation during decades of revolution and war. 

Only China has so far dammed the mainstream, at Manwan and Dachaoshan in Yunnan, and is building three more dams while planning another three. 

The largest Chinese Mekong dam under construction is the Xiaowan, which will be second in size only to the Yangtze's Three Gorges Dam, with a reservoir over 160 kilometres long that will displace about 35,000 people. 

China's existing dams, along with the blasting of rapids to allow all-year navigation, have angered Thai and Lao villagers who claim they have suffered declining fisheries and unnatural fluctuation in water levels. 

Downstream, the seven main new projects under consideration are in Laos at Don Sahong, Pak Beng, Xayabouri, Pak Lay and Luang Prabang, at Ban Koum on the Thai-Lao border, and at Sambor in Cambodia. 

The Don Sahong dam site, at the most advanced stage of planning, is at the Khone Falls of Laos, a scenic area home to endangered freshwater dolphins and just upstream from Cambodia. 

Mekong expert Milton Osborne says the new dams would be "almost certain to have serious effects on fish catches taken out of the river." 

"These catches are vital for the populations of Laos and Cambodia but also for Vietnam," said Osborne, the Australian author of the book "The Mekong -- Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future." 

In the Mekong delta, Vietnam's main rice basket, officials say upstream water extraction for farm irrigation has already caused oceanic salt water intrusion that has destroyed fields. 

Osborne said there is evidence Chinese dams have already reduced fish stocks in Yunnan and warned that the Xiaowan's blocking of nutrient-rich sediments will likely reduce silt deposits over a large section of the river. 

China's Assistant Foreign Minister He Yafei said Wednesday that, on Southeast Asia's largest waterway, "China, as an upstream country, will never do anything that will harm the interests of downstream countries." 

The Mekong system boasts over 1,000 fish species, a biodiversity second only to the Amazon, and it feeds Cambodia's giant Tonle Sap lake, whose fish stocks are the nation's main protein source. 

Some 40 million people are active in Lower Mekong fisheries, says the UN. 

The economic worth of Lower Mekong fisheries has been estimated at over two billion dollars per year by the Mekong River Commission, a four-nation forum that China and Myanmar have refused to join. 

"This natural resource, which is threatened by dam development, is renewable and comes for free," said Middleton, "yet its value is largely unrecognized in regional infrastructure development plans."


----------



## hoosier (Apr 11, 2007)

A balance has to be achieved between economic development and environmental protection. Man has already cut don 40% of the world's forest in just over 200 years and caused a mass extinction of species last seen 65 million years ago in the Cretaceous Era. The rest of the world must learn that it is not possible to consume resources at Western levels- the Earth cannot support it. If you destroy the environment, economic gains are wiped out and rendered useless.


----------



## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

My Tho, Vietnam


----------

