China Limited the Mekong’s Flow. Other Countries Suffered a Drought.
New research show that Beijing’s engineers appear to have directly caused the record low levels of water in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
BANGKOK — As China was stricken by the coronavirus in late February, its foreign minister addressed a concerned crowd in Laos, where farmers and fishers across the Mekong River region were contending with the worst drought in living memory.
His
message: We feel your pain. The foreign minister, Wang Yi, said China
was also suffering from arid conditions that were sucking water from one
of the world’s most productive rivers.
But new research
from American climatologists shows for the first time that China, where
the headwaters of the Mekong spring forth from the Tibetan Plateau, was
not experiencing the same hardship at all. Instead, Beijing’s engineers
appear to have directly caused the record low water levels by limiting
the river’s flow.
“The satellite data doesn’t lie, and there was plenty of water in the
Tibetan Plateau, even as countries like Cambodia and Thailand were under
extreme duress,” said Alan Basist, who co-wrote the report, which was
released on Monday, for Eyes on Earth, a water resources monitor.
Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
“There was just a huge volume of water that was being held back in China,” Mr. Basist added.
The
Mekong is one of the most fertile rivers on earth, nurturing tens of
millions of people with its nutrient rich waters and fisheries. But a
series of dams, mostly in China, have robbed the river’s riches.
Those who depend on its inland fisheries
say their catches have declined precipitously. Persistent droughts and
sudden floods have buffeted farmers.
Beijing’s control of the upstream Mekong,
which provides as much as 70 percent of the downstream water in the dry
season, has raised hackles, even though the Southeast Asian nations
depend on trade with China. While the Chinese government has introduced a
global development program that it says will benefit poorer trading
partners, a backlash is growing among countries that feel they are
losing out.
“The problem is that the
Chinese elite see water as something for their use, not as a shared
commodity,” said Brian Eyler, director of the Stimson Center’s Southeast
Asia program and author of “Last Days of the Mighty Mekong.”
Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
As China’s geopolitical weight has grown,
its leaders have cast the nation as a different kind of superpower, one
that is concerned, as the Chinese phrasing goes, with “win-win”
relationships with other nations.
But
some countries, like Sri Lanka and Djibouti, have fallen into what
critics fear are debt traps, as strategic projects end up in Chinese
hands. Other African and Asian nations are worried that China is simply
another imperial power eager to vacuum up natural resources without
concern for the local populace.
“This
is part of China’s business development,” said Chainarong Setthachua, a
lecturer and Mekong expert at Mahasarakham University in northeastern
Thailand. “The lay people who depend on the resources of the Mekong
River for their livelihoods and income are automatically excluded.”
The data modeling created by Mr. Basist
and his colleague Claude Williams measures the various components of a
river’s flow, from snow and glacial melt to rainfall and soil moisture.
The scientists found that for most years, the natural, unimpeded flow of
the upstream Mekong roughly tracked water levels measured downstream at
a gauge in Thailand, with occasional exceptions when dam reservoirs in
China were being filled or released.
When
there was a seasonal drought in China, the five downstream nations —
Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam — would eventually feel
it. When there was overabundant water in China, floods ensued in the
Mekong basin.
Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
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