GROUP 5

Mekong River



Uses:
- Fishing/Food
- Tourism

Problems associated with this river:
Poverty stricken Cambodia is one nation that is completely dependent
on the river for food and the vast majority of its fledgling economy.
The annual floods provide much needed water for crops of the
otherwise dry dusty land, and to refresh Tonle Sap, yet its major cities
are all vulnerable to flooding.
The Mekong River Commission, a panel of the region's nations, has
accused China of blatantly disregarding the nations downstream in its
plans to dam the river in an effort to stop the dams, but to no avail.
Since the building of the first Chinese dam, many species have become
endangered including the Mekong dolphin and manatee, water levels
have dropped as ferries get stuck, fish caught are small and the catch
is less than half of before the dam.
Despite all these problems, new dams planned will have significantly
worse impact if carried out as planned. All nations downstream and
the environment will suffer from added pollution (due to development
and relatively lax regulation and enforcement in China compared to
Thailand, poisoning the food supply from pesticide runoff and heavy
industry, as well as promoting algal blooms from organophosphates
from agriculture, as well as water hyacinth infestation), river blockage
problems as fish cannot swim upstream to spawn, and potentially
devastating very low water flow.