China’s Mekong dams turn Thai fishing villages into ‘ghost towns’- Context

Mekong River (by Dominique Bergeron CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via Flickr).

From February to April each year, Kam Thon spends most of her days knee-deep in the waters of the Mekong River by her village in northern Thailand, gathering river weed to sell and cook at home.

Kam Thon and other women who live by the Mekong have been collecting river weed, or khai, for decades, but their harvest has fallen since China built nearly a dozen dams upstream.

The dams have altered the flow of water and block much of the sediment that is vital for khai and rice cultivation, researchers say.

“Generally, the water is clear and the level is lower in the dry season, and we can easily wade in and harvest khai. But now, the water level is higher during dry season, which makes it more difficult,” said Kam Thon, who sells khai at the local market.

“We need to spend more time collecting khai, and there is also less khai, which has affected our income,” the 48-year-old said, as she rolled handfuls of the stringy green weed into balls and placed them in a nylon bag slung on her shoulder.

Kam Thon, who lives in Chiang Khong by the Thai-Laos border, said she only makes only about a third of what she used to earn when the Mekong’s waters ran low in the dry season and the khai was plentiful.

Her husband’s fish catch has also fallen, she said.

Stretching from the Tibetan Plateau to the South China Sea for about 4,350 km (2,700 miles), the Mekong is a farming and fishing lifeline for tens of millions of people across China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

But with China building more dams to generate hydropower, fears are growing over the unseasonal flooding and droughts they cause – and for the future of Southeast Asia’s longest river, which is now being shaped by powerful state-backed corporations.

Local communities and campaigners say their concerns and complaints are being ignored in the push for clean energy.

“The upstream dams are affecting fish catch, rice cultivation and river weed, a major source of income for women and the elderly,” said Pianporn Deetes, campaign director for Thailand and Myanmar at Rivers International, an advocacy group.

“When the river is turned into just being a source of hydropower, it affects the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. It’s about their food, their tradition and custom, their way of life,” she said in an interview…

Grains of Sand: Too Much and Never Enough – EOS Magazine

Sand dunes in Kernel - Sydney, Australia (by Bea Pierce CC BY-NC 2.0 via Flickr).

Sand is a foundational element of our cities, our homes, our landscapes and seascapes. How we will interact with the material in the future, however, is less certain…

“The use of sand is now faced with two major challenges,” said Xiaoyang Zhong, a doctoral student in environmental science at Leiden University in the Netherlands. “One is that it has caused enormous consequences in the environment,” he explained. “The second challenge is that easily usable sand resources are running out in many regions…”

Starving the Mekong – Reuters

Mekong Basin (by Shannon1, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons).

Lives are remade as dams built by China upstream deprive the Mekong River Delta of precious sediment

Standing on the bank of the Mekong River, Tran Van Cung can see his rice farm wash away before his very eyes. The paddy’s edge is crumbling into the delta.

Just 15 years ago, Southeast Asia’s longest river carried some 143 million tonnes of sediment – as heavy as about 430 Empire State Buildings – through to the Mekong River Delta every year, dumping nutrients along riverbanks essential to keeping tens of thousands of farms like Cung’s intact and productive…

Environmentalists and dam operators, at war for years, start making peace

The industry that operates America’s hydroelectric dams and several environmental groups announced an unusual agreement Tuesday to work together to get more clean energy from hydropower while reducing the environmental harm from dams, in a sign that the threat of climate change is spurring both sides to rethink their decadeslong battle over a large but contentious source of renewable power.