South east asia war with china will start here

[syed putra]

New Mekong dam opens to protests and dried-up riverbed

• THAILAND
• Wednesday, 30 Oct 2019

image: https://apicms.thestar.com.my/uploads/images/2019/10/30/355639.jpg

Erratic flow: A screengrab from an aerial video showing dry patches along the Mekong river downstream from the Xayaburi Dam. — AFP
BAN NAMPRAI (Thailand): The first hydropower dam on the lower Mekong River began commercial operations in Laos amid protests from villagers in Thailand who say the Xayaburi Dam and several others in the works will destroy their livelihoods.
The 1,285-megawatt Xayaburi Dam’s debut yesterday coincides with parts of the Mekong drying to a trickle even at the end of the rainy season, though its builders and operators say it is not responsible for the reduced river flow.


Xayaburi, which will sell 95% of its power to Thailand at an average rate of 2 baht (RM0.27) per unit, is the first of at least nine more hydropower projects either under construction or planned on the lower Mekong in Laos.
The new spate of dam-building is poised to turbo-charge already-fraught water and food security disputes after years of worry about the 11 existing Beijing-built dams on the upper Mekong in China are choking the river on which millions depend for their livelihoods in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

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Xayaburi Dam has been nine years in the making and the 135 billion baht (RM18.6bil) project, built and financed by Thai companies and banks, has been controversial since inception.
Yesterday, Buddhist monks on the Thai side of the Mekong chanted and provided blessings in a ceremony for the river, which activists from the Freedom Mekong Group says is in danger of dying.
“When Xayaburi dam officially generates electricity... we won’t be able to know how the river will change and how bad it will deteriorate, ” said activist Montri Chanthawong.
About 150km to the south of Xayaburi, the fishing village of Ban Namprai is having its driest year in living memory.
Villagers say the Mekong is normally at least 3m high at the end of the rainy season, when Ban Namprai typically holds dragon boat races, which this year had to be cancelled.
Fishermen and fish farmers said that since March, when Xayaburi first started testing their turbines, they’ve seen ever-more erratic river flow that can’t be explained just by a drought earlier in the year. — Reuters

Read more at https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nat...sts-and-dried-up-riverbed#YJT1ZgJ5uSqTEtVd.99

 

[winnipegjets]

How is China involved in this?

 

[syed putra]

They built 11 hydro dams on rivers feeding the mekong .

 

[zhihau]

What ever happened to Kra Canal?

 

[winnipegjets]

They built 11 hydro dams on rivers feeding the mekong .

Those dams are in Upper Mekong and that is China territory. This one is in Laos. So, the fight should an Indochina and Thailand affair.

 

[eatshitndie]

eventually it will be a contest between atb prostitutes and vietbu prostitutes for your money. all other stuff wayang only.

 

[syed putra]

Those dams are in Upper Mekong and that is China territory. This one is in Laos. So, the fight should an Indochina and Thailand affair.

The water level started to decrease with those china dams. And when countries downstream protested, china arrogantly said they can do whatevver they want with waters within their territory. The mekong river is also the life blood of million of farmers in thailand, cambodia and vietnam. Its a food security and rural evonomy issue.

 

[laksaboy]

Another country which got OBOR'ed

 

[syed putra]

Damming the Mekong Basin to Environmental Hell
Aug 2, 2019 BRAHMA CHELLANEY
Dam construction on the Mekong River poses a serious threat to the region's economies and ecosystems. The only way to mitigate that threat is to end defiant unilateralism and embrace institutionalized collaboration focused on protecting each country’s rights and enforcing its obligations – to its people, its neighbors, and the planet.
BANGKOK – Major dam construction projects have become a favorite pastime of some autocratic governments, with China leading the way. But, far from protecting against water shortages, as supporters promise, large dams are contributing to river depletion and severely exacerbating parched conditions. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the basin of the Mekong River, which is running at a historically low level.
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Known as the “mother of waters” in Laos and Thailand, the Mekong flows from the Chinese-controlled Tibetan Plateau to the South China Sea, through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Farmers in the river basin, Asia’s Rice Bowl, produce enough rice to feed 300 million people per year. The basin also boasts the world’s largest inland fishery, accounting for an estimated 25% of the global freshwater catch.
This vital waterway is now under threat, largely owing to a series of Chinese-built mega-dams near the border of the Tibetan Plateau, just before the river crosses into Southeast Asia. The 11 dams currently in operation have a total electricity-generating capacity of 21,300 megawatts – more than the installed hydropower capacity of all the downriver countries combined. And they are wreaking environmental, economic, and geopolitical havoc.
For starters, by reducing the flow of freshwater and nutrient-rich sediment from the Himalayas into the sea, these mega-dams are causing a retreat of the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam. The resulting seawater intrusion is forcing rice farmers to switch to shrimp farming or growing reeds.
Moreover, according to a Mekong River Commission study, hydropower development through 2040 – which includes several more Chinese mega-dams under construction or planned – will result in a 40-80% decline in fish stocks (by biomass). Migratory fish will disappear across much of the basin, which presently is second only to the Amazon in terms of fish species diversity.
Dams are also disrupting the Mekong’s annual flooding cycle, which helps to refertilize farmland naturally by spreading nutrient-rich silt, besides opening giant fish nurseries. Earlier this summer, China’s maintenance work on its Jinghong Dam resulted in the release of torrents of water. The resulting floods in Thailand and Laos destroyed crops and disrupted fish, damaging local people’s livelihoods.
China then refilled the Jinghong Dam using Mekong water. The drop in downstream water levels compounded water-scarce conditions, the result of a 40% shortfall in monsoon rains in June and July. Instead of overflowing during the summer, the Mekong River Commission reports, the river reached record-low levels, depleting fish stocks and setting back rice production. In Thailand, overall reservoir water availability has sunk by 24% year-on-year, in a drought so severe that the Thai government, led by General Prayuth Chan-ocha, has ordered the armed forces to help respond.
Despite all of this, China has shown no sign that its dam-building frenzy is abating. For the Chinese government, mega-dams are proud symbols of engineering prowess. So it not only has more large dams in operation than the rest of the world combined; it also has the single largest, the Three Gorges Dam, and plans to build an even bigger one near the disputed Himalayan border with India.
But China’s dam construction is not just about national pride. As droughts become more frequent and severe, China’s dam network gives it increasing leverage over downriver countries. In response to a major drought in downriver countries in 2016, China released “emergency water flows” from one of its dams. Today, it is again promising to release more water – a jarring reminder of the extent to which downstream countries now depend on China’s goodwill.
Next time, China could well demand something in return, and a desperately thirsty country may not be able to refuse. China could, in short, use its dams to weaponize water.
Moreover, although China is the world’s top dam-builder – with by far the most ambitious inter-basin river-water transfer program – it is not the only one. Landlocked Laos is seeking to make hydropower exports, especially to China and Thailand, the mainstay of its economy. To that end, it has just completed – over the objections of Vietnam and Cambodia – the Thailand-financed Xayaburi Dam, which is now undergoing a test run and will begin generating electricity in October.
Although smaller than China’s upstream mega-dams, the Xayaburi Dam is already having an impact. Its filling and test run alone has affected the flows of the Mekong tributaries in downstream Thailand, exacerbating the country’s drought. The effect is pronounced enough that the Thai government – which has agreed to purchase 95% of the electricity the dam generates – has asked Laos to suspend its test run until the drought eases.
But here, too, China plays a role. As the largest investor in Laos, China is financing and building more than half of the country’s large dam projects. Similarly, in Cambodia, China recently completed its seventh – and not its last – dam project.
Dams tend to create winners upstream, where people gain greater access to water and hydropower, and losers downstream. In the Mekong region, the losers far outnumber the winners in the short run. In the long run, the environmental destruction ensures that there are no winners at all. The only way to avoid such a bleak future is to end defiant unilateral dam building and embrace Mekong Basin-wide institutionalized collaboration, focused on protecting each country’s rights and enforcing its obligations – to its people, its neighbors, and the planet.

 

[winnipegjets]

The water level started to decrease with those china dams. And when countries downstream protested, china arrogantly said they can do whatevver they want with waters within their territory. The mekong river is also the life blood of million of farmers in thailand, cambodia and vietnam. Its a food security and rural evonomy issue.

China is boss in Asia mah, just like USA is boss of the West (for the time being). Who will support the Indochinese states against Ah Tiong?

 

[congo9]

That's is why it is good to break china up and all have a spoil and all benefit from a more fragmented world as a result. A strong China is bad

 

[hofmann]

What ever happened to Kra Canal?

Thailand will not allow for the physical separation of the restive south from the rest of Thailand. Seems like bad fengshui to me to cut a country up in half.

 

[Froggy]

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Chi...date=20191031050000&seq_num=19&si=%%user_id%%

China is weaponizing water and worsening droughts in Asia
Its dams are provoking regional tensions, so Beijing needs to reconsider its policy
Brahma Chellaney
October 28, 2019 14:00 JST

A night view of China's Three Gorges Dam: Asia can build a harmonious, rules-based water management regime only if China gets on board, which does not seem likely. © Visual China Group/Getty Images

Asia, the world's driest continent in per capita terms, remains the center of dam construction, with more than half of the 50,000 large dams across the globe. The hyperactivity on dams has only sharpened local and international disputes over the resources of shared rivers and aquifers.

The focus on dams reflects a continuing preference for supply-side approaches, which entail increased exploitation of water resources, as opposed to pursuing demand-side solutions, such as smart water management and greater water-use efficiency. As a result, nowhere is the geopolitics over dams murkier than in Asia, the world's most dam-dotted continent.

Improving the hydropolitics demands institutionalized cooperation, transparency on projects, water-sharing arrangements and dispute-resolution mechanisms. Asia can build a harmonious, rules-based water management regime only if China gets on board. At least for now, that does not seem likely.

Last summer, water levels in continental Southeast Asia's lifeline, the 4,880-kilometer Mekong River, fell to their lowest in more than 100 years, even though the annual monsoon season stretches from late May to late September. Yet, after completing 11 mega-dams, China is building more upstream dams on the Mekong, which originates on the Tibetan Plateau. Indeed, Beijing is also damming other transnational rivers.

China is central to Asia's water map. Thanks to its annexation of the water-rich Tibetan Plateau and the sprawling Xinjiang province, China is the starting point of rivers that flow to 18 downstream countries. No other country in the world serves as the riverhead for so many countries.

By erecting dams, barrages and other water diversion structures in its borderlands, China is creating an extensive upstream infrastructure that arms it with the capacity to weaponize water.

To be sure, dam-building is also roiling relations elsewhere in Asia. The festering territorial disputes over Kashmir and Central Asia's Ferghana Valley are as much about water as they are about land. Across Asia, states are jockeying to control shared water resources by building dams, even as they demand transparency and information on their neighbors' projects.

A serious drought presently parching parts of the vast region extending from Australia to the Indian peninsula has underscored the mounting risks from the pursuit of dam-centered engineering solutions to growing freshwater shortages.

Asia's densely populated regions already face a high risk that their water stress could worsen to water scarcity. The dam-driven water competition is threatening to also provoke greater tensions and conflict.

In the West, the building of large dams has largely petered out. The construction of large dams is also slowing in Asia's major democracies, such as Japan, South Korea and India, because of increasing grassroots opposition.

Shrunken Varuna River in Phoolpur, India, picuterd on June 8: a serious drought has underscored the mounting risks from the pursuit of dam-centered engineering solutions to growing freshwater shortages. © NurPhoto/Getty Images

It is the construction in non-democracies that has made Asia the global nucleus of dam-building. China remains the world's top dam-builder at home and abroad. In keeping with its obsession to build the tallest, largest, deepest, longest and highest projects, China completed ahead of schedule the world's biggest dam, Three Gorges, touting it as the greatest architectural feat in history since the building of the Great Wall.

It is currently implementing the most ambitious interbasin and inter-river water transfer program ever conceived in human history.

Among its planned new dams is a massive project at Metog, or Motuo in Chinese, on the world's highest-altitude major river, the Brahmaputra. The proposed dam, close to the disputed, heavily militarized border with India, will have a power-generating capacity nearly twice that of the Three Gorges Dam, whose reservoir is longer than the largest of North America's Great Lakes.

Several of the Southeast Asian dam projects financed and undertaken by Chinese companies, like in Laos and Myanmar, are intended to generate electricity for export to China's own market.

Indeed, China has demonstrated that it has no qualms about building dams in disputed territories, such as Pakistan-administered Kashmir, or in areas torn by ethnic separatism, like northern Myanmar.

Ever since China erected a cascade of giant dams on the Mekong, droughts have become more frequent and intense in the downriver countries. This has created a serious public-relations headache for Beijing, which denies that its upriver dams are to blame.

Indeed, seeking to play savior, it has promised to release more dam water for the drought-stricken countries. But this offer only highlights the newfound reliance of downriver countries on Chinese goodwill -- a dependence that is set to deepen as China builds more giant dams on the Mekong.

With water woes worsening across Asia, the continent faces a stark choice -- stay on the present path, which can lead only to more environmental degradation and even water wars, or fundamentally change course by embarking on the path of rules-based cooperation.

The latter path demands not only water-sharing accords and the free flow of hydrological data but also greater efficiency in water consumption, increased use of recycled and desalinated water, and innovative conservation and adaptation efforts.

None of this will be possible without the cooperation of China, which thus far has refused to enter into water-sharing arrangements with any downstream neighbor. If China does not abandon its current approach, the prospects for a rules-based order in Asia could perish forever. Getting China on board has thus become critical to shape water for peace in Asia.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and author of "Water: Asia's New Battleground," the winner of the Bernard Schwartz Award.

 

[congo9]

I am afraid more wars will ensues.