Notes from Bloomberg article

• ·      Mekong river translate to ‘Mother of the waters’ in the Thai language
• ·      4,800-kilometer-long. 
• ·      The Mekong and its tributaries provide food, water and transportation to about 60 million people in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam
• ·      In 1993, China built one hydroelectric dams, with 3 following, without Consulting other countries
• ·      China wants to almost double its hydropower capacity to at least 300 gig watts by 2020 by building four more dams on the Mekong – would give china 15 giggawatts of power on the Mekong
• ·      Laos has proposed 10 hydropower plants on the mainstream of the Mekong that will export electricity and transform the nation -- one of Asia’s poorest, with a GDP per capita of $886
• ·      Cambodia is planning 2 dams
• ·      More then 130 hydroelectric projects planned on the Mekong and tributaries
• ·      Dams would transform 55 % of the Downstream river into a reservoir, resulting in slow water movement
• ·      The dams “have the potential to create Tran boundary impacts and international tensions,” the Mekong river commission report says. “One dam across the lower Mekong mainstream commits the river to irrevocable change.”
• ·      Chinese say they are aiding the environment, not harming it. Building dams “is an important step taken by the Chinese government to vigorously develop renewable and clean energy and contribute to the global endeavor to counter climate change,” Song Tao, the country’s vice minister of foreign affairs told a summit meeting of the MRC in April.
• ·      China hopes to generate 15% of it’s power from renewable resources – right now it’s 8%
• ·      1,200 species of fish in the Mekong – second in biodiversity to the Amazon
• ·      The lower Mekong basin is the world’s largest inland source of fish, accounting for almost 20 percent of the world’s freshwater fish yield, worth as much as $9.4 billion a year, according to the World Fish Center, an international nonprofit research group based in Malaysia.
• ·      Dependent on food for protein – 70% of the protein is from fish for the Cambodians
• ·      Replenish crops, livestock and households and are used in recreation and transportation
• ·      China says that the dams can help control flooding in the rainy season, and can store water for the dry season
• ·      The Laotian government is set to earn an average of $80 million per year during the first 25 years of the dam’s operation, the World Bank report says
• ·       6,200 villagers were relocated 60 km away from the river to make way for the reservoir
• ·      Some say life’s have improved – clinics, schools, wooden stilt houses, but harder to irrigate
• ·      “I’ve vaguely heard of some dams, but no one is really talking about it here,” says Pich Pov, 28, who operates a small cruise boat and lives aboard it with his family. “The Mekong is my mother. Everyone I know was born on this river, and she provides us with food and shelter.”