SPEAKING
FREELY Sharing the fruits of
the Mekong By Tony Henderson
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
China's
interest in dynamiting and blasting the grand Mekong
River as it passes from lower China into Myanmar, Laos
and Thailand is being touted to the lower riparian
countries as a benevolent move that will economically
benefit those countries in the long run. But in reality,
the project does not pave the way for big money flows to
sail down the Mekong at all. In fact, the public
relations gloss is pointing in the wrong direction and
to the wrong commodity; it is not money that is to flow
down into Myanmar, Laos and Thailand, but China-made
merchandise, and it is up the Mekong to China, not down,
that the money is going to flow.
And in the
process of damming the deeps and dynamiting the
productive shallows of the Mekong, China is ignoring the
rights of nations and peoples down river and causing
major upsets in the region's ecology, water and
wildlife. This is a long-haul problem.
China
currently is seeking markets for its massive
manufacturing capability, a capability only beginning to
burgeon but destined to dent every cheap-labor-dependent
developing country's economy. Even Bangladesh's garment
industry cannot compete with the effects of mercantile
industrialists throwing their transient investments into
raw land where work-hungry people are ready to place
their lives on the line for a job, and thus, a
livelihood.
Not to blame the workers, but the
phenomenon of a China bent on industrializing itself in
the economic future is an urge portending social
disruption. The basic, if ill-paid farmers' economy will
gradually lose its established infrastructure, and, when
the manufacturing moves elsewhere - in 30 years? - the
land-tenure skills and resources will be gone. At that
point, a traditional and proven way of life set down
over so many generations will prove impossible to
reinvent.
A similar example lies further west,
where the Indian government is paying no heed to lower
riparian Bangladesh. The result: starvation and creeping
salinization as the western leg of the Ganges' lower
reaches dries up. The people in those regions - the
Biharis on the India side also - suffer from flow
depletions and excesses due to the poorly intentioned
controls of the New Delhi-centered Indian government.
China likewise is overriding the interests of lower
riparian Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
Together these countries are known as the Jewels of the
Mekong, but lately that cluster is lacking in luster.
It is not just the disappearing Irrawaddy
dolphin - dear to the Lao people - and other riverbank
dwellers that are being affected, the damming and
blasting also negates any possibility of fish breeding.
A staple for fish living in the Mekong is a river weed
that grows in the rapids, and they breed in those
shallow, tumbling waters. The giant catfish, paa
beuk, will no longer breed, as it needs the clean,
clear waters of the dry season. So many people in this
region depend on fish for their daily fare, that it is
no mean matter to survive when the economy is
perennially brinked.
So in short, money moves to
the newly emerging economic sectors and leaves the
foodstuff suppliers marginalized. And not only that,
whereas rural folk could once "live off the land", that
possibility recedes with each upset in the region's
ecology. Deforestation has already made economic
refugees out of millions in the region. Where did the
money go then?
On the Mekong, changes in the
course of the water, altered flow rates and water
levels, and increased water turbulence in the wet season
have meant a decline in fish catches, transportation
difficulties, flooding of vegetable gardens, and the
erosion of fertile river banks. All of these factors
severely impact people's livelihoods, for this there is
no compensation.
Now that the Asian Highway is
under construction, the Mekong as a system of transport
will have only a limited timeframe of economic
viability. The Southern Corridor (Southeast Asia to
Europe) includes links from Bangladesh to India and
beyond. The Indochina and ASEAN (Association of
Southeast Asian Nations) subregions of the scheme
include Cambodia, China (Yunnan province), Indonesia,
Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and
Vietnam. This section includes railway links.
The most recent meeting related to this
huge-scale project, the "Intergovernmental Meeting to
Develop an Intergovernmental Agreement on the Asian
Highway Network", was held in Bangkok from November
17-18. Everything it seems is steadily moving ahead. In
its earliest stage in 1959, the Asian Highway
development project was initiated by the Economic
Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE). Now it is
under the United Nations Economic and Social Commission
for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
However, if
the Beijing government could take a longer-term view and
promote a more open perspective, then the Mekong could
be rescued from the planned onslaught. The international
community has devised principles for international
watercourse management, which were codified in the 1997
United Nations Convention on the Law of the
Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses.
The establishment of the Indus Water Commission
in 1960 between India and Pakistan, for example,
fostered remarkably resilient bilateral cooperation over
water, despite two wars and continued political turmoil
between the two countries. The Mekong River Committee,
established in 1957 among the four lower riparian states
of Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, has also
functioned very decently in the past despite ravaging
regional problems. Now, however, its functionality has
been forsaken.
And just as India refuses to
negotiate honestly with Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan
over the Upper Ganges management despite an
international agreement of riparian cooperation, China
is refusing to seek the cooperation of the Mekong's
lower riparian nations.
What is needed is the
equitable distribution of benefits from the Mekong. This
concept, subtle yet powerfully different from the
equitable use or allocation of the waters, is
successfully applied elsewhere in the world. The idea
concerns the distribution of the benefits from water use
- whether from hydro power, agriculture, economic
development, aesthetics, or the preservation of healthy
aquatic ecosystems - not the distribution of the water
itself. Distributing water according to its benefits
allows for positive-sum agreements, whereas dividing the
water only allows for winners and losers.
Detailed conflict-resolution mechanisms are
needed as well, because disputes continue even after a
treaty is negotiated and signed. Thus, incorporating
clear mechanisms for resolving conflicts is a
prerequisite for effective, long-term river and
water-basin management.
The Ugly American
is an apt, if hurtful, title of a book published in
1958, and which became a runaway best-seller for its
slashing expose of US arrogance, incompetence, and
corruption in Southeast Asia. Is a similar writing
relating to China in the offing?
Tony
Henderson (tonyhen@Humanist.ORG.HK)
is spokesman for the Humanist Association of Hong
Kong.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
