Sharing the fruits of the Mekong
By Tony Henderson

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?