To the Friends of the Mekong ? & VN 2020 Mekong Group

“Normally, before we start blasting the riverbed, the Lao tradition is to ask the spirits in the area to forgive us for disturbing the river,” said Viraphonh Viravong, deputy minister of Energy and Mines, the chief technocrat behind the project.

“A Lao energy official says construction on the Pak Beng dam is pending approval from the government. Developers of the second dam proposed on the Mekong River in Laos have completed the design and impact assessment for the project and are awaiting the government green light to proceed with construction.”

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XAYABURI: THE FIRST DOMINO TO FALL

On Wednesday, November 7, 2012, Rewat Suwanakitti, the Deputy Director of the Xayaburi hydroelectric dam project, announced that the ground breaking ceremony for the building of the dam has been conducted because: “The Lao authorities told us that we could begin construction.” One day prior [Tuesday Nov. 6, 2012] the Prime Minister of Laos, Thongsing Thammavong, confirmed with the Wall Street Journal that the project was suspended pending further study. (11)

Clearly, this represents a breach of faith of a prior agreement Laos entered with her neighbors of the Mekong region. On a previous occasion, Viraphonh Viravong, the Lao Vice Minister of Energy and Mines, told reporters: “It has been assessed, it has been discussed the last two years. We have addressed most of the concerns.” (10)

With the ground breaking ceremony done, the construction team will start works on the “coffer dam” in order to redirect the Mekong’s current. This phase of the project is scheduled to last until May, 2013 whereafter actual construction of the “permanent dam” will begin.

The ground breaking ceremony only formalizes the violation of the commitments the Lao Government made with the Mekong countries after the Siem Reap Meeting on 12/8/2011. Reporters at the scene noticed that besides the Lao high officials, reprentatives from Cambodia and Vietnam were also present. The attendance of those diplomats is hard to understand considering their governments’strong opposition to the Xayaburi dam project. It can only be explained that the “wind has shifted” and opposition has now turned into approbation or consent.

Xayaburi is the first to be built in the series of projected 11dams straddling the main current of the Lower Mekong. The project was quietly implemented in the face of fierce clamors from the environmentalists who are concerned about the long-term or permanent negative impacts on the ecosystem of the Mekong, the source of alluvia, fish population and fishery, as well as the main protein intake of the approximately 70 million inhabitants living along the Mekong’s banks.

The power genrerated by the Xayaburi Dam will be exported to Thailand and Lao officials expect their country to receive billions of American dollars in reveunue from the project. Observers who monitor the construction works for several months reported significant strides in the implementation of the project. The Thai company Ch. Karnchang has built roads cutting through the deep jungle to bring in the heavy equipment. In the mean time, conservationists continue to condemn the Lao Government for turning a blind eye to the devastating impacts of the dam as it proceeds with the works.

Ame Trandem, Southeast Asia Program Director for International Rivers observed: “The international community should not let the Lao government get away with such a blatant violation of international law, we are calling on donor governments and the governments of Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia to take a firm stand against Laos. The Xayaburi Dam is the first of a cascade of devastating mainstream dams that will severely undermine the region’s development efforts. The food security and jobs of millions of people in the region are now on the line.” (10)

Pianporn Deetes, Thailand Campaign Coordinator for International Rivers added: “Laos is playing roulette with the Mekong River, offering unproven solutions and opening up the Mekong as a testing ground for new technologies. When the Mekong River Commission stays quiet and tolerates one country risking the sustainability of the Mekong River and all future transboundary cooperation, something is seriously wrong,” She continued: “… This move by Laos sets a dangerous precedent for the future of the Mekong region. If Laos is allowed to proceed unhindered, then in the future all member governments will proceed unilaterally on projects on the Mekong River. The Mekong Agreement will become yet another useless piece of paper.” (10)

XAYABURI: A CONTINUITY IN IMPLEMENTATION

Many months before the ground breaking ceremony, the Xayaburi building site was already abuzz with activities from thousands of workers and tens of earth-movers working day and night to beat the completion deadline of 2018. New roads leading to the site facilitated the building of dormitories for workers, and electricity poles. A number of villagers had to be moved to relocation centers. A section of the river had to be widened and at another a dyke had to be dug deep into the river bed. The project lead engineer from the Poyry conglomerate informed the diplomatic delegation that the works on the “coffer dam” will be done by May, 2013 to pave the way for the building of the permanent dam. Very soon the main structure and shape of the Xayaburi Dam will emerge. (9)

Figure I_ Diagram of the Xayaburi Dam, 1,260 MW, project cost US$ 3.5billion, projected date of completion and operationMarch, 2018.
Diagram of dam: [1] Navigation locks, [2] Spillway, [3] Power House, [4] Fish Passage. [source: from Poyry's July 16th presentation on next steps of Xayaburi construction part 4 ]

The fast pace of construction in Laos raises considerable concern among her neighbors. The Mekong is a common natural resource and whatever happens upstream in Laos may impact her neighbor Thailand and especially Cambodia and Vietnam, the two nations downstream. According to the 1995 Agreement on the exploitation of the Mekong, the governments of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam must jointly decide on the feasibility of the Xayaburi Project. However, Laos looks the other way and takes the unitaleral decision to construct the dam in the absence of any joint consent.

It should be noted that Vietnam, a nation located at the mouth of the Mekong, has committed a strategic misstep 17 years ago (1995) at Chiang Rai, Thailand.when its Foreign Minister Mr. Nguy?n M?nh C?m signed “The Agreement on the Cooperation for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong River Basin”. A fundamental modification was adopted by the Commission: It revoked the veto power its predecessor the Mekong River Committee gave to its member countries. More than a decade ago, during a conference in Southern California, this author had ventured the observation that this Commission is only a “poor and downgraded version” of the defunct Mekong River Committee.[The 1999 Conference on the Mekong River at Risk: The Impact of Development on the River, her Delta, and her People.] (7)

The countries of Cambodia and Vietnam have requested that Laos conduct assessments on the transboundary impacts caused by the dam only to be told that no further studies are forthcoming.

CHRONOLOGY FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF XAYABURI DAM

• May, 2007: the Laotian government signed the contract with the Thai company Ch. Karnchang to build the Xayaburi Dam.


• November, 2008: the company AF Calenco of Switzerland started the feasibility study of the dam in collaboration with Thai consultants.


• February, 2010: the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was submitted to the Lao government.


• July, 2010: the Lao government officially signed the agreement to sell the power generated by the Xayaburi Dam to Thailand with the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT).


• April, 2011: the Joint Committee of the Mekong River Commission (MRC/JC) issued a press release to the effect that the MRC member countries had not reached a common agreement to start the implementation of the Xayaburi Project.


• April, 2011: the governments of Cambodia and Vietnam requested Laos to conduct additional studies on the transboundary impacts of the project


• June, 2011: the Laotian government unilaterally gave the nod to the company Ch. Karnchang of Thailand to start the project.


• December, 2011: at the Siem Reap Meeting all the four member countries of the Mekong River Commission came to a common decision that it is necessary to conduct further studies on the impacts of the Xayaburi and the 10 other dams on the main current.


• August, 2012: Thai nationals who opposed the Xayaburi Project unsuccessfully filed a suit against the Thai Government to seek a court order to stop the purchase of electricity generated by this dam pending further studies.


• September, 2012: the Minister of Energy Soulivong Daravong stated that the Lao Government will resume the works on the US$ 3.5 billion Xayaburi Dam. However, two months prior, the Lao Foreign Minister announced at the ASEAN Meeting that the Xayaburi Project will be put on hold pending the results of additional studies.


• The official press corps in Laos was informed that the Lao Government has given the “green light” to Ch. Karnchang Company to proceed with their works as planned including the relocation of the inhabitants in the surrounding areas of the dam. (13)


• October, 2012: the Vietnamese Minister of Natural Resources and Environment met with the Lao Prime Minister and requested that all works on the Xayaburi Project be suspended until the necessary environmental impacts assessments of the dam on the Mekong are done.

To this day, no regional agreement has been reached concerning the start date of the Xayaburi Dam Project as mandated by the 1995 Agreement of the Mekong River Commission.

Through its Press Release dated November 5, 2012, the International Rivers Network observed: “Laos said it would cooperate with neighboring countries, but this was never genuine. Instead, the project always continued on schedule and was never actually delayed. None of Vietnam and Cambodia’s environmental and social concerns have been taken seriously. Laos has never even collected basic information about the ways that people depend on the river, so how can it say that there will be no impacts?” (10)

Laos continues to refute the existence of any negative transboundary impacts of the dam citing its past implementation of the preventive measures recommended by the Finnish consulting firm Poyry and the French company Compagnie Nationale du Rhône / CNR eventhough those two enterprises had not conducted any transboundary impact assessment. The Cambodian and Vietnamese governments along with the scientists in the region are unanimous in their condemnation of the works done by those two concerns.

Even though the 1995 Agreement of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) has revoked the veto power of the member countries, all projects involving the Mekong must still go through these three PNPCA stages: (a) Procedures of Notification, (b) Prior Consultation, (c) Agreement.

Probably, we should pause at this point to review the conventions and time frame applied to each of the three steps in the PNCPA process as defined in the 1995 Agreement of the MRC: member countries are required to notify the Mekong River Commission of new Mekong projects in order to initiate the PNPCA process.

In the case of the Xayaburi Dam: (a) Procedures for Notification (PN) stage: the Mekong River Commission was officially notified by the Laotian government of the Xayaburi Dam Project in September of 2010. (b) The time frame allotted to the Prior Consultation stage is six months counting from the day the Notification is received. However, in case the member countries fail to reach a consensus, the Joint Committee of the Mekong River Commission is authorized to approve an extention of this six month period.