Mekong&Concerns_about_Xayaburi_Dam_Part1B.mpg

VTC 14 Channel's health and environmental in Viet Nam
According to International Rivers, around 2,100 people would be resettled, and more than 202,000 people living in the dam's area would suffer impacts due to the loss of agricultural land and riverbank gardens, an end to gold panning in the river, and worsened access to the forest resources. The Xayaburi dam will also have a significant effect on the biodiversity of the river ecosystem, and the fisheries within the larger Mekong river basin. According to a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report, the Xayaburi dam would drive the already critically endangered Mekong Giant Catfish (Pangasianodon gigas) to extinction. To address these issues, an Environmental Impact Assessment was conducted by Thai TEAM consultant Cie involved in the project. However, according to critics, this study fell drastically short of addressing the true impacts of the Xayaburi dam.
Because the Mekong is a unique and particularly complex ecosystem that hosts the most productive inland fisheries in the world, the stakes are high for the construction of such a dam. According to a study conducted by WWF and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and coordinated by the WorldFish Center, there are 229 fish species whose spawning and migratory patterns would be affected by a mainstream dam. This change in fish biodiversity and abundance would greatly affect the tens of millions of people in the Greater Mekong Subregion who depend on the river for their food and livelihood. According to Phnom-Penh based WorldFish Center, this damage to fisheries "cannot be mitigated by fish passes and reservoirs".[9]
A Strategic Environmental Assessment commissioned by the Mekong River Commission (MRC) recommends a 10-year deferral of all Mekong mainstream dams in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, and calls for further studies. According to a MRC spokeswoman construction of the Xayaburi dam "will result in irreversible environmental impacts". The MRC warns that if Xayaburi and subsequent schemes went ahead, it would "fundamentally undermine the abundance, productivity and diversity of the Mekong fish resources".
Milton Osborne, Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy who has written widely on the Mekong, warns: "The future scenario is of the Mekong ceasing to be a bounteous source of fish and guarantor of agricultural richness, with the great river below China becoming little more than a series of unproductive lakes."
Fish are a staple of the diet in Laos and Cambodia, with around 80 per cent of the Cambodian population's annual protein intake coming from fish caught in the Mekong River system, with no alternative source to replace them. Dams would also restrict the flow of water over agricultural areas linked to the river.

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