Is there really only one country to blame for the Mekong River??

[theking]

The Mekong River is a regional life source. There's only one country to blame for its crisis, critics say .



CHIANG KHONG, Thailand — For Pianporn Deetes, the Mekong is more than a river.

“This is not just liquid, but this is the entire life-supporting system,” Deetes, a local activist, said recently on a wooden long-tail boat heading upstream in northern Thailand’s Chiang Rai province.

The Mekong, one of the world’s longest waterways, runs about 2,500 miles from its source in the heights of the Tibetan Plateau. Its sinuous path takes it through six countries: China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, where it flows into the South China Sea. Tens of millions of people rely on the river, whose name is sometimes translated as the “mother of waters,” for food, water, energy and income.

Now Deetes, who calls herself a “child of the Mekong,” is battling to save the river she grew up with.

The banks of the fast-moving river are lined with crops, grazing livestock and pontoons for fishing villages. But the fish have been disappearing: The Mekong River Commission — an intergovernmen tal group made up of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam — estimated that this stretch of river has 40 percent fewer fish than it did 10 years ago.

Environmentali sts and experts blame 11 dams China has built on the Upper Mekong within its borders, which they say are contributing to historic flooding and droughts that have damaged fish spawning areas and upended people’s lives. They say water levels could be further disrupted by another 11 dams — many of them financed by Chinese companies — that are planned for the Lower Mekong, including two that Laos has opened since 2019.

“We’re not talking about one or two people or one or two problems,” said Deetes, 42, the regional campaigns and communications director for Southeast Asia at International Rivers, a nonprofit group based in California. “What we are talking about is a large number of people and the regional economy.”

A fishing village in the district of Chiang Saen was nearly deserted on a recent visit, with 18 pontoons for boats but only five fishermen. Singkham Wantanam, 64, has been fishing since he was 12. Once, he made enough money to put his children through college, he said, but now the fish are gone, and so is his livelihood. He said he had caught no fish that day.

[DuMa]

Like here with the sacramento river.  The upper river by oroville has a dam.  He who controls the flow of water will control some species.  The flow of water is needed for certain fishes to spawn and migrate.  There is a decline in the salmon population and other fishes that depended on the sacramento river to flow at its peak like the American Shad.  By slowing the flow of water, a species of fish thrive as it produces the most optimal conditions for their own population blooming growth, the invasive sacramento pike minnow. 

Even in my country, without conservation, the nets are getting bigger and the catches are getting smaller. 

[ProudLao]

Chiang Khong was my neighboring city. Been to that city a few times. My birth place is across from it. Still have great memories from it.