Lush Mekong valley morning river views | Music | 00:00 |
| DANIEL: It's a serene place of staggering beauty and appealing isolation. | 00:09 |
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River/ Monks collecting alms | DANIEL: A spiritual remnant of old South East Asia, where Buddhism is revered - it's underdeveloped and it's poor. In over-crowded Asia, Laos is a rarity, relatively underpopulated with just six million people. | 00:18 |
Boats on Mekong | But it has water and lots of it. | 00:43 |
| PROFESSOR PHILIP HIRSCH: The Mekong is, compared to other large river systems, still quite a healthy river. | 00:50 |
Hirsch | It's a river that runs free for the lower part of its length. It's a river that produces the largest fresh water fishery in the world of any river basin, | 00:58 |
More river shots | but of course it's a river that's changing very quickly. DANIEL: It's changing quickly because of people, money and power. | 01:05 |
Laotian villages/River | An otherwise old-fashioned, communist regime is in charge. That means journalists often have a tough time getting in, but for ten days we moved freely, following the twists and turns of the Mekong from north to south, to see for ourselves how this Amazon of Asia will be profoundly transformed, from a largely untamed force of nature into a huge, humming powerhouse. The question is, at what cost? | 01:14 |
Views from boat on river | It runs for almost 5,000 km from the mountains of Tibet to Vietnam's Mekong Delta. This river is a highway providing transport, food and a way of life for more than 60 million people. Until now it's been one of the world's last largely untouched wild rivers, but now there are plans for a series of dams along its tributaries and mainstream - and 55 of them are in here in Laos. | 01:55 |
| PROFESSOR PHILIP HIRSCH: For a long time Lao decision makers and many of those advising the Lao government have been sold on the idea that Laos is, | 02:29 |
Hirsch. Super: | to use some of the hyperbole, a new Kuwait to south-east Asia - the new Switzerland of south-east Asia. It's going to get rich by selling power to its neighbours. | 02:37 |
Mist shrouded river | DANIEL: So far dams haven't blocked the Mekong in Laos, but they are already scarring mountain valleys and altering watercourses. | 02:46 |
Boat on reservoir | This reservoir just feels endless. In the wet season, and we're getting towards the end of it now, it swells to about 450 square kilometres The fast tinny is taking us to the Nam Theun 2 dam, the biggest infrastructure project in the country | 02:59 |
Daniel in boat on reservoir | DANIEL:. High on the Nakai Plateau, it's generating power for export by diverting water from one Mekong tributary to another. AIDEN GLENDINNING: So we just create the reservoir here | 03:20 |
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Daniel with Glendinning at reservoir | and we take the water off the other end of the plateau, drop it down 350 metres to the power station. That's where all the generation is done. In this project we're on the dam wall here, but the power station is about 70 kilometres that way. DANIEL: Without foreign companies and capital, | 03:34 |
View of spillway | it's unlikely Laos could get anything like this up and running. It's cost one and a half billion US dollars and was funded by the World and Asian Development Banks. | 03:50 |
| AIDEN GLENDINNING: The capacity is one thousand and seventy megawatts. One thousand megawatts is exported to Thailand and seventy megawatts is reserved for domestic use here in Laos. | 04:05 |
Daniel with Glendinning at reservoir | DANIEL: And how much profit comes back into Laos from the dam? AIDEN GLENDINNING: Well, over the concession period, which is 25 years that the private operator runs the dam, it's about | 04:14 |
Dam wall | 80 million dollars per year comes directly to the government in revenues which will be over that period more than two billion dollars. | 04:25 |
Daniel and Glendinning in boat on reservoir | DANIEL: Will the dam do more good than harm? It's too early to tell. The dam's operators have had to spend 100 million dollars to monitor and improve water quality in the reservoir and the downstream river system. | 04:36 |
Tilt down to Daniel and Duthy at dam wall | Australian Stephen Duthy runs the environmental program here. [to Duthy]: As an environmental scientist, does it go against the grain for you to be altering a river system in this way? | 04:50 |
Duthy. Super: | STEPHEN DUTHY: Obviously altering any natural eco-system is something that one would like to avoid. | 05:02 |
| but when you look at the contribution that this project makes to Lao GDP, for the benefits that have come to the local community and the fact that Laos has few natural resources to bring it out of poverty, | 05:10 |
| one has to balance these conflicting issues. | 05:24 |
Village at river edge | DANIEL: It's a question thousands of Lao people are asking themselves as villages are uprooted and relocated, leaving traditionally subsistence communities to grapple with unfamiliar ways of life. | 05:30 |
| AIDEN GLENDINNING: Most of these people have been moved for only two or three years and there's no way that we can say it is a success, it's finished, for at least a few more years | 05:46 |
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Glendinning. Super: | so in terms of the livelihood, making sure that the people can earn money from the land, that's where the real challenge lies and it's going to take a long term investment. | 05:54 |
Resettlement village | DANIEL: On the other side of the mountain, another dam company has given these people a brand new village, but it's far from their farms and animals - and from the river where it was easy to catch fish. | 06:05 |
Village meeting | Now village meetings are about the higher cost of living and somehow developing new sources of income closer to home. | 06:19 |
Cham Pha addresses meeting | CHAM PHA: If we don't spend all day looking for food we're not going to get any. | 06:31 |
Resettlement village | DANIEL: Cham Pha and his neighbours had no say in the location of the new village. It was chosen by the government and the dam company. | 06:39 |
Daniel walking through house with Cham Pha | So can you tell me about your house? CHAM PHA: This is the house from the project and it's constructed by using compensation money. The money we got is 40 million kip. | 06:49 |
| Our house has electricity. DANIEL: You have power? CHAM PHA: Yes. DANIEL: You have the TV? CHAM PHA: We have TV and CD player. [Looking at TV] Football. We also have the fridge and the sound system. | 07:03 |
Daniel and Cham Pha by sound system | DANIEL: Cham Pha likes his connections to the modern world but worries about an income. The food he used to grow or catch, now has to be bought at the market. | 07:20 |
View out window of house | CHAM PHA: I'm concerned because we used to live around this area and rely on nature for our living. | 07:33 |
Cham Pha | And we never spent money on living. Now if we don't buy, we can't eat. | 07:43 |
Somphone Simmalavong drives | DANIEL: Somphone Simmalavong represents the dam company that's changing things along Cham Pha's part of the Mekong basin. Theun-Hinboun Dam has been operating on one of the tributaries for twelve years. | 07:50 |
| SOMPHONE SIMMALAVONG: Some families they are very big - 19 persons, 18 persons. | 08:08 |
New houses by roadside | DANIEL: He believes life has changed for the better around here. SOMPHONE SIMMALAVONG: They have new homes, they have electricity - free of charge for connections - | 18:15 |
Somphone Simmalavong drives | and we build the line. | 08:24 |
Dam | DANIEL: The overwhelming benefit though is money for a government not used to seeing much of it. | 08:28 |
| SOMPHONE SIMMALAVONG: It's very high rate of internal return, a very high profit project and very successful. The government can earn quite a lot of money. | 08:35 |
Somphone. Super: | Every year we produce around 61... 62 million for revenue and 60% of the dividend it's going to the government. | 08:45 |
Power plant construction | DANIEL: His company is now building another power plant next door - doubling revenue by doubling the amount of water through the turbines - and that means another eleven villages will be moved. | 09:03 |
| XAYPASEUTH PHOMSOUPHA: We do not deny that most of the Lao people, in particular those will living in the country are still living under poverty line, | 09:18 |
Phomsoupha. Super: | having income of less than USD$2 per day. | 09:28 |
Power plant | DANIEL: The government claims that hydro power is the quickest way to raise living standards. Laos has seen neighbouring economies explode and wants to do the same. It's aiming for 7% growth selling electricity to its neighbours. | 09:36 |
Dam | China has provided some of the inspiration. It's already built four dams on the upper Mekong and there'll be at least four more. That's changed the flow of the river, but it's the plans to build many dams on the lower stretches of the Mekong that's raising international concern. | 09:56 |
Map. Mekong | The Lao government has just told its neighbours - Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam - that it intends building the first Mekong dam on its mainstream at Xayaboury. It's a test case and it may well dictate the future of the river. | 10:16 |
Rice padis | JEREMY BIRD: Vietnam is very keen to protect the delta which is highly productive, not only for agriculture and rice production, but also increasingly for fish production, and wants to avoid any reduction in water flows in the river which could affect and increase salinity. | 10:32 |
Bird. Super: | Laos has significant plans for developing its hydropower potential, not just for the domestic market but also to sell to its neighbours who have strong demand and use that foreign exchange to fund some of its socio-economic development plans. So I think you can see that there are you know, potential tensions there. | 10:49 |
Mekong River Commission building | DANIEL: The Mekong River Commission based in the capital will spend six months analysing the Xayaboury dam project. It has the politically sensitive job of trying to stop dams triggering environmental and social disasters and sparking conflicts, but its powers are limited. | 11:08 |
Jeremy Bird | JEREMY BIRD: The big uncertainty with all of these projects is the question of fish passage and to what extent a barrier across the river would impact on wild fisheries... on capture fisheries. | 11:29 |
Children/Mekong | Music | 11:42 |
| DANIEL: Its role may be changing, but for all of human history the Mekong has been the provider. | 11:47 |
Kham La and son fishing | Six year old Kham Ai and his father fish every day. Their existence flows with the rhythm of the river. | 11:54 |
| KHAM LA: The river is very important, | 12:10 |
Kham La | because for myself I grew up and rely on the Mekong River. I never do other things. | 12:17 |
Kham La and son fishing | DANIEL: Kham La and his son catch just enough fish to feed the family. Any left they sell, but population growth and industry mean the demands on the river are multiplying. Kham La says Mother Mekong's bounty is already dwindling. | 12:28 |
Kham La | KHAM LA: Ten years ago I got baskets of fish, but right now it's not like that. Some days we only get three or four fish. A lot of things have changed. Before, fewer people were fishing - now, many more people fish. | 12:47 |
Fish in market | DANIEL: You can't overstate the importance of fish to people living in the Mekong basin. The fish they catch or buy make up as much as 80% of their daily protein. This is the largest freshwater fishery in the world and dams would interfere with the annual floods that make it so. | 13:14 |
| PROFESSOR PHILIP HIRSCH: Most of the 1200 odd Mekong fish species are migratory | 13:40 |
Hirsch | and fish can't swim past dams. | 13:44 |
Hirsch on riverbank | DANIEL: Professor Phil Hirsch has spent decades working in south-east Asia and runs the Australian Mekong Resource Centre at the University of Sydney. He's one outside expert here fundamentally opposed to dams on the lower Mekong mainstream. | 13:48 |
| PROFESSOR PHILIP HIRSCH: The benefits that come from dams are highly concentrated. They come through the revenues from selling power, they come from tax revenues and so it's | 14:04 |
Hirsch. Super: | an easy way to concentrate the economic benefits of the river. Whether or not those benefits are larger than those that are destroyed by the dams is another question. | 14:13 |
Spillway/Map showing dams | DANIEL: Environmental activism is building. The World Wildlife Fund is lobbying all governments, campaigning against Mekong mainstream dams. Nine are planned for Laos alone with more in Cambodia. The WWF says that fish species will be lost forever, even if only one dam goes ahead. | 14:26 |
World Wildlife Fund archive of giant catfish |
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| STUART CHAPMAN: One of the flagship species for the Mekong River is the Mekong giant catfish. This is one of the largest freshwater fish in the world. It can reach up to 350 kg in weight and | 14:52 |
Chapman. Super: | in our view any dam that's created in that stretch of the river, including Xayaboury, will block the migration path of the species and therefore will herald its extinction in the wild because it won't be able to migrate upstream to spawn. | 15:04 |
World Wildlife Fund archive of giant catfish | DANIEL: Is it possible that the giant Mekong catfish will die out if that dam goes ahead? JEREMY BIRD: I think this is a strong risk for the upper part of the Mekong. | 15:17 |
Jeremy Bird | DANIEL: Is that an acceptable risk? JEREMY BIRD: Well that's a question for the countries to consider. I mean it's a cultural issue. It has very high significance for populations here, | 15:29 |
Stills. Giant catfish | but as I say it is already under tremendous pressure. It has to be balanced against the benefits of hundreds of millions of dollars of potential revenues. | 15:38 |
Mekong scenery/ Kids jumping into water | Music | 15:46 |
| DANIEL: The Mekong is more than sustenance and money. It's a connection between people that even we can feel after ten days following the river. | 16:01 |
Daniel in boat on river | Re-joining its course, we head south along the morning commuters. Reminders of the enduring human history of the Mekong are rarely far away. | 16:16 |
Wat Phu | On this stretch in Champasak, there are astonishing historic ruins that reflect the spiritual power of the river. The temple is called Wat Phu and dates from the 5th century. It's been a place of worship for the locals for 1500 years because of its position on the mountain above the Mekong, the river they call mother. | 16:33 |
View of Si Phan Don from Wat Phu | Wat Phu perches at the junction of the mountains and the plain. Here the Mekong widens and then splays out into a series of channels, creating the Si Phan Don or literally Four Thousand Islands, a spectacular haven for wildlife. | 17:07 |
Waterfall | It's here that the longest waterfall in south-east Asia, which in full flood is 14 km wide, spills over the border into Cambodia. | 17:26 |
Tourists take photos | It's a major tourist attraction, but it represents more than a good picture opportunity. At this time of year it sends water hurtling south as far as Vietnam, part of a unique process that floods the lower reaches of the river, dumps rich silt on farmlands and provides nutrients for fish. | 17:36 |
| STUART CHAPMAN: It's estimated that in terms of the dependency of both Lao and Cambodia on these fisheries | 18:02 |
Chapman | that any dam in that area would be the single most devastating impact and would bring about an immediate change in the ecology of the river. | 18:07 |
Boat heads toward Don Sahong channel | DANIEL: Of all the planned dams on the Mekong, it's a proposed dam here on the Don Sahong channel that's causing the most concern. Some predict that more than 40% of Cambodia's fish would be wiped out if this and other dams are built on the Mekong mainstream. | 18:15 |
| In the dry season, this is the only channel through the islands that holds enough water to allow fish to swim up stream. XAYPASEUTH PHOMSOUPHA: In that area there are a thousand islands, thereby a thousand creeks. | 18:36 |
Phomsoupha. Super: | So Don Sahong is only one creek that will be blocked by the dam. DANIEL: But that's the only one the fish can get through isn't it? XAYPASEUTH PHOMSOUPHA: So the project has to decide if that creek is closed... I mean, the fish may be able to swim up and down through the other creeks. This is just the view of a non-fish expert. | 18:51 |
Boats looking for dolphins | DANIEL: There's another likely impact of a dam here. One of the world's most endangered marine mammals is at risk. We're looking for the elusive Irrawaddy dolphin. There are only around 100 left in the wild and about 14 here. They can be seen, but it's not easy. | 19:21 |
Stills. Irrawaddy dolphins | Music | 19:41 |
| DANIEL: The Irrawaddy dolphin is rare in the Mekong basin. | 19:50 |
Boats looking for dolphins | With so few left in the wild, travellers come from all over the world to this very place on the Laos/Cambodian border in the hope of spotting one. A dam nearby would certainly change their habitat and probably wipe them out. | 19:57 |
Fisherman casts net | The potential dangers of the Don Sahong dam and other dams are so extreme that the World Wildlife Fund wants a 10 year moratorium on all dam developments on the Mekong River. | 20:21 |
Dolphins in river | STUART CHAPMAN: We believe that would give ample opportunity for developers, governments, communities and NGOs to sit down and really discuss what innovative and alternative ways there are to generate the energy that's needed for this region, | 20:36 |
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Chapman. Super: | to ensure that Laos and Cambodia develop as many other south-east Asian countries have, but do it in a way that's sustainable, that doesn't jeopardise the livelihoods of so many people and jeopardise what is arguably the most bio-diverse river in Asia. | 20:50 |
Don Sahong channel | CHIEF KHAMONE PARNBOON: The dolphin in this area is very important | 21:09 |
Kahmone Parnboon | because tourists like to see dolphins on the Mekong River. | 21:15 |
Fisherman casts net | DANIEL: Local village chief Kahmone Parnboon, knows that his people and place will be changed forever if the Don Sahong channel is dammed. | 21:22 |
Don Sahong channel | CHIEF KHAMONE PARNBOON: I'm worried about the environment but building dams is good for developing the country. I don't blame them and I can't stop them. | 21:34 |
Kahmone Parnboon | I want our village to have electricity and lights. I'm happy about this if they can really do it. | 21:42 |
Boat on river/ Scenic Mekong | Music | 21:49 |
| DANIEL: Laos wants to become the Battery of Asia and looking at the raw power of this river, the potential for development is obvious. But so is the chance of conflict between the countries who are the caretakers of the Mekong. An environmental catastrophe on any part of the river will have a flow on effect to all the other Mekong communities. Only careful, sustainable development will preserve the ‘mother of all rivers' for the children of the future. | 21:56 |
| MEKONG DIARY Filming on the river for Foreign Correspondent. | 22:45 |
| Further Information |
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| Mekong River Commission |
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Credits: | Reporter: Zoe Daniel Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen Producer: Greg Wilesmith Paul Gates Camera: David Leland |
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