(8 Aug 2016) LEAD IN:
The landlocked state of Laos is building a dam across the Mekong River that its neighbours say will threaten the livelihoods of millions of Southeast Asia's poorest people.
The government plans to build nine dams in total across the river, which experts warn will damage precious inland fisheries and affect rice production in the Mekong delta.
STORY-LINE:
Sunrise in Chiang Khong, a sleepy town perched on the side of the Mekong River in Thailand.
Once bustling with hundreds of fishing boats, it's now mainly a point for petty border trade and where backpackers cross to Huay Xai in Laos for a boat trip downriver to Luang Prabang, a World Heritage city.
But this area could soon be feeling the impact of a dam under construction in neighbouring Laos.
Laos is rapidly building a Mekong River dam that neighbouring countries say threatens fisheries crucial to millions of Southeast Asia's poorest people.
The site of the Don Sahong dam, less than 2 kilometres (1 mile) from the Lao-Cambodian border, is in an area famous for spectacular waterfalls and deep pools that is among the few habitats of the endangered Irrawaddy dolphin.
A "coffer dam" blocks one of the Mekong's main channels to allow construction of the hydropower project, which will suck in as much as half of the river's water during the dry season.
Landlocked Laos is Southeast Asia's poorest state, and all its neighbours far exceed its population of 7 million.
But by virtue of geography and burgeoning Chinese influence, its secretive authoritarian leaders wield huge, unaccountable power over a 4,800-kilometre-long (3,000-mile-long) river that begins in Tibet and winds through six countries before emptying into the South China Sea.
China has built six dams on its stretch of the Mekong since the mid-1990s, and Laos plans nine.
Many dams have been built on Mekong tributaries as well, and dozens more are planned.
Experts say they are already damaging the world's largest inland fisheries and degrading a rice bowl delta that helps feed Cambodia and Vietnam, the two countries farthest downstream.
Even building a few dams on the lower Mekong will magnify the damage to a river basin that 60 million people rely on, according to scientific models of dam impacts.
In Chiang Khong in the far north of Thailand where the Mekong forms the country’s border with Laos, the effects of two decades of dam building are apparent to many.
More than a decade ago, a Chiang Khong fisherman's day's catch could be ten or more kilograms. Now, it's one or two kilograms or often nothing.
Some species of fish have gone altogether. Fishing as a main livelihood has almost disappeared.
"Dam is very dangerous for the river," says Niwat Roykaew, the founder of Chiang Khong Conservation Group.
"It's very dangerous because dam changes everything. Change ecology, change level of the water, change way of the water. So I think have problem. Big problem."
Rapid progress is being made in nearby Laos on the Don Sahong dam.
Research indicates the combined effect of planned Mekong dams will be devastating, turning one of the few major world rivers still relatively untouched by development into a series of placid and sterile lakes.
"Every single community uses this vast piece of land along the Mekong River or on the sand dune for at least four or five months of the dry season to grow watermelon, lettuce and all the other crops that they need," says Pianporn Deetes, a campaigner with advocacy group, International Rivers.
Less sediment downstream would also increase the risk of saltwater incursion that can render land infertile.
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