 Energy 808 Hawaii the cutting edge here. We are with Marco Mangelsdorf, and he is in what Hanoi today, right? I get that, right? Capital of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Hanoi so very pleasant Sientau to you in Vietnamese. Yes, and it's what 300 kilometers from the border with China Yeah, that sounds about right maybe a little bit less yeah And that means that that border is porous in the sense that it's not closed now And it's it's always an important commercial entry point for the Chinese who who are important tourists and tourism is an important part of the Vietnamese economy So they're still coming in and therefore And it's not that far from Wuhan and all so there's still a certain risk You know in Vietnam especially northern Vietnam. I hate to tell you this especially Hanoi But i'm sure you've been thinking about that so we can can we talk about it. Tell me what you're thinking Sure. I actually sat down with four of our fine foreign service officers yesterday at the us embassy Talking about energy and of course, you know the kind of the prelude to many conversations is talking about the corona virus and Vietnam shut down air traffic with china 100 percent Week or two ago The border as you mentioned they share a border their northern border and a southern border with china and That has also constricted greatly in terms of the free flow of people and goods has been vastly restricted and the I'm going by memory here. I believe there were Somewhere between 12 to 20 cases so far of coronavirus detected here in vietnam and none in Hanoi And understandably those cases that have been detected have all been In and around the border region. So The the vietnamese authorities are taking things very very seriously and Being a lot more restrictive of like I said the free flow of People and and goods across the border You know one thing that the the paper reported that shijing ping His opinion is that I don't know exactly what science is based on Is that as as the season gets warmer, you know into may and june Uh and the temperature gets warmer. The virus does not do as well then And that could that could slow it down. You heard anything like that. Do you believe that? Oh No, I have not I've been pretty voraciously keeping up with multiple new sources and and not being neither of being an epidemiologist I believe One of the the main reasons why the the flu season peaks during The winter time for us and the colder months for us Is that people are spending more time in close quarters Whereas when it's warmer they're outside war and therefore Interacting less with people in a very close fashion perhaps to some degree So I I know nothing as far as whether ambient temperature Or what the what the best ambient temperature range is for this particular virus or or other Flu type viruses So I'm beyond that Dr. J. I I I don't know. Okay. Well, I mean, let me say that Here in Honolulu if you want to buy hands hand sanitizer and you go to Walmart The shelf is empty not a single bottle. I did that personally myself this morning And if you go to a long drug store here downtown not a single bottle the shelf is empty. So whatever drives people probably fear They they have bought up all the hand sanitizer in And I think masks are also gone One short supply issue, which I'm really not familiar with. I mean, I don't know the status of it is the test kits You know, uh, when I talked to the department of health last week, they said there was no way to diagnose this Um, I I don't believe that's so I think there is a way to diagnose it And I think there are test kits out there, but the test kits are in such short supply It's it's very hard predictably to get them Um, you know, they talk about confirmed cases. Well, how do they confirm it? There must be a way to confirm the case Um, anyway, this is this is going round the world the uk the uk decided today that it was a I don't know an emergency Hong Kong obviously, you know has had a number of cases and deaths too. I think Hong Kong they found two cases in an apartment building 10 stories apart So they closed the whole apartment building Um, that's that's a little bit heavy, but that's what they did now. All those people are out of a out of home Um, so I think there's uh, you know a lot of fear a lot of overreaction if you will Happening, especially in Asia Asia, but in other places too. And my question to you is, uh, Uh, do you foresee any challenges getting back to harnaloo? Well, excuse me, I was planning to And looking forward to spending, uh, my last week, which is the first week or so in march, uh, of being in my in my favorite chinese city of shanghai there on the east sea and a week or 10 days ago It just became beyond abundantly clear that You know, even if I could get there if I could get into shanghai flying from ching my thailand Uh, then I would need to eventually get out I would and my plan is to fly to Seoul South korea and then catch a flight to honolulu and I had doubts as to well. I mean fundamentally Did I want to go to a city that is under also its version of lockdown? Where people are holed up in their in their places in their homes Did I did I want to subject myself to that? You know, and it just became very clear that that did not make sense so I've canceled my trip to to shanghai and I I can't foresee the circumstances where The united states or acyan airlines would stop service between Seoul And and honolulu. So I just have to get myself to Seoul And and get home so to answer your question j Unless things change very dramatically I can't see problem in getting home. I'll be going back to to my my home as I call it in luang pro bong tomorrow And then kambodia penan pen which also has some cases but Very few and then Thailand again and then back to to Seoul. So I I don't think I'll have a problem knock on knock on jade Yeah, safe travels on that. So I hope you'll be back with us two weeks since is that tell me you will Uh, I most likely will be in uh, in shanghai so we can Pick it up from uh from northern thailand. Okay, great Well, and let's talk about southeast asian energy. We've shared articles about what's happening on the maykong and And I passed you an article about what's happening on the nile. Believe it or not Yeah, and it's all about water and it's all about, um, you know the environment And it's all about elect uh hydroelectric because that's a big issue on the nile as well as the maykong Can you talk about what's going on in southeast asia? Yeah, first, I think you're you know, you're absolutely right that the uh the backdrop is water the the value of water the the commodity of water the necessity of water And it especially becomes more dicey when when there's not enough water and A number of of writers and scholars and and deep thinkers over the years or longer have been pondering and researching Coming water scarcity For much of the world affecting as many as perhaps two billion people Uh, which is uh nothing to uh to sneeze that of course So I think these issues are going to get nothing but incredibly more pronounced and and oftentimes dire and in the case of the lower maykong or sub maykong region which In comprises of of lao lao pdr laos peoples democratic republic me and mar vietnam cambo de and thailand the River rivers the main river rivers rivers like the irawati and maykong and other tributaries are of vital importance to the the livelihoods of tens of millions of people and They're 245 million or people are so in the five countries. I just mentioned which is quite a bit of humanity and the the water flowing from north to south starting in the case of the maykong and the high altitudes of southern china and the Tibetan plateau and in yinan province Those waters as they wind their way down thousands of miles to the delta area south Of of ho chi ben city saigon are are incredibly vitally important to to tens of millions of people and and they're They're fishing their protein intake their commerce and there there's already a Very serious very serious drought across southeast asia So there there's less water to begin with Is that climate change? uh Probably i mean they're calling it an el nino year But i mean we seem to be getting a lot of Of these droughts which statistically people have been telling us so this is a one in one hundred year drought Or this is a one in twenty year drought and these one in one hundred year droughts You know lo and behold they're happening every two or three years. So You know the the stats are failing as jay as far as You know the the real life conditions on the ground across southeast asia You know climate change is real and it's having a very serious impact and One of the things that is happening in the nile Is that egypt's population is growing very quickly? Uh and the article that i that i uh saw and sent you Talked about that as one of the one of the elements that that made this so Volatile and that degraded the the river Is that the same thing in southeast asia? Is it that the population in say in vietnam Is more than it was and increasing And and that affects The use of the river and the dependency of all those countries on the river Well the the more or less current population of vietnam is uh is a few million under 100 million and i believe it's 97 million as of last year And more than half of those people so if you do the math you're talking let's say roughly 48 49 million people more than half of those people Were born have been born since 1975 Which is when the the country was re reunified So you know you go back uh 45 years to 1970 not 1975 and uh Uh going from roughly you know 40 some odd million of the population in the country then to more than double that 45 years later is that uh a hefty population growth. I would say yes and The vietnamese you know to a broad generalization the vietnamese Are hard-working industrious My gosh, you know walking around the streets of the saigon or Hanoi and the you know, it's kind of a frenetic Haste lots of vendors street vendors stores people walking the streets both locals and tourists You know and it's it's definitely turned into a heavy heavy heavy consumer based society And that includes construction of new new buildings Uh a new infrastructure and that that requires uh Concrete and concrete requires sand and I remember a piece that I saw a few months ago Uh about um developers uh pulling sand out of the maykong And dredging the sand out in large quantities. This also has a a negative effect on the quality of the river and the future of the river And I saw that in the article you sent me to that sand And removing sand from you know all these juncture points in the river is a big problem But how important is it? Well, in fact jay, I think you should mention that because uh in kambodia The uh export or the sale making off with so to speak of sand has been made illegal By the the government in panam pan and that hasn't stopped unfortunately that has not stopped The continued practice of shall we say unscrupulous people Continuing to sell sand by by the megatons for money to To uh to the construction trades And the chinese of course have got a very heavy presence in In kambodia in a place like sea and oakville, which is on the coast There so yeah, I mean who would have thought that there would be a scarcity of sand But yeah, these governments are recognizing that That this could just cannot continue when they're trying to trying to cut down on it trying to outlaw But uh, you know word there's a will and there's money to be made and fortunately often there's a way Yeah, well, I'm sure the chinese are involved in financing some of those projects Including the the big dam and dams They're also involved in in uh controlling the waters at the headwaters On the chinese side And if they if they were to tighten that up, uh that would all in itself Would create a big problem for everybody You know downstream so I wonder, you know, I mean how how much have the chinese got their hand on this Not only in the construction of infrastructure and the motivation to do dams And in the control of the headwaters Well, you bring up an excellent point and there they are very much part of this consultative group and and bodies and commissions With the lower mekong the five countries lower mekong The chinese are very much involved because as you just pointed out There are a number of mega dams on the upper mekong That the the chinese can control the water flow, right? So there have been a number of times over the past months and years where The lower mekong countries one or more of them will say hey, uh, could you please release more water? And to my knowledge the chinese have been Cooperative they have been willing to do that which is provided and you know at important times some some relief to the downstream countries so, you know, it's extremely political and One of the interesting things and maybe uh, you can show the images of that I sent this past week is that there is a A dam being proposed about 20 25 kilometers Uh north uh or upstream of uh of luang pro bong and then you have the image on the screen there So that is the proposed dam site of what would be somewhere over a 1500 megawatt 1.5 gigawatt dam and it would essentially be kind of a A run of the river dam as opposed to a great big tall high dam Uh, which would have less of an effect from what as I understand less of an effect than a great big Tall high dam in terms of sediment flow and and fish A migration and then there's the map of of the mekong across southeast asia and it's it's a very Very instructive map in terms of showing the number of dams both existing and planned from north to south and the The lau government saw or somebody at some point in the past decades Said gee we could become the battery of asia The battery of asia with all these hydropower dams and we could Use these dams as a way of uh of earning export dollars selling power and and the discussion over the luang pro bong dam, which uh Is generating a tremendous amount of discussion. In fact, this last week there was a meeting in luang pro bong, which I did not attend A meeting of the mekong river commission, which is the consultative body that's relatively Consultative body made up of the lower mekong countries that there was a meeting there at the pulmon hotel I know a number of people who went And uh, you know the the lau government gives every indication that they want to move forward with this This dam and of course you need money to do that and right now the money if it happens jay the money would come from the ties Who are in need of more electricity as well over time? and the vietnamese and the people i've been talking to Have observed that This particular dam would would sell power with transmission lines going west and south and west and south of luang pro bong happens to be thailand and To the east of luang pro bong is is vietnam, but there are no transmission lines at present between the luang pro bong area And vietnam and to do so to construct these transmission lines would be Would add to the cost of the project I won't say perhaps exponentially but add substantially So the question is posed why would the vietnamese? Which are many state-backed companies? Why would the vietnamese be involved? excuse me Be involved in another in a major dam project on the upper mekong That if completed by pretty much everybody's account If completed would have a negative to very negative impact on The the millions of vietnamese downstream of this dam once once the mekong gets to vietnam especially The mekong ruber delta area. Why would the chinese? Why would the vietnamese be in support of a dam? That would be kind of cutting the you know cutting their nose despite their face. Why would and the answer I'm getting to that Why would they is is because not because it would be necessarily good For a vietnamese interest in the in the lower mekong area But because if they bail The chinese would be right behind the door. They're willing to step in And and and and take over that position. So from a geopolitical perspective The vietnamese are not willing at this point at least To back out out of fear that if they were to do that it would open the door for chinese participation In this project. So that shows That shows that the the the relationships amongst the the countries here is multilayered very complex Very complicated and very Rife with intrigue and and plotting in terms of oh Well, this may not necessarily be in our best interest to move forward with this project But we sure as heck don't want to allow the chinese to step in And and have anything to do with this. So it's pretty wild jay. It's it's really quite And a fundamental point is that they all distrust china Probably with good cause. I mean after all of vietnam had a war with china after the american war So, uh, but let me let me go to two things you were talking about it You know one is what about the notion of of vietnam simply investing in what looks like a profitable project I mean surely for their investment. They'll get a return on their on their capital wouldn't that justify Uh, and I want to get to the you know the environmental considerations and problems later, but wouldn't that justify Making the investment if they got a return from the sale for example of of all this hydro power to Uh, you know to the lower end of the macon And to thailand and so forth Well, uh, that is on the positive side of the ledger. Okay is You you spring for part of the construction costs and the financing for a mega project like this and You make money doing it on the negative side of the ledger is the the widespread Consensus on the part of other parties in vietnam As well as parties in cambodia And and also other parties in lao that Have very serious and legitimate concerns that another dam on the main of the macong above Luan Prabang would negatively affect the lives and the livelihoods of Tens of millions of people downstream including millions of people in the river delta region of Not far from what's in the city. Well, how does that work? You know, is it environmental? Uh, would it deprive them of their agriculture? I mean, what what exactly are we talking about when we say that they They oppose the dam. They oppose the The hydro projects on the river what would happen in fact to them. What's the negative there? Well, there's increasing salinity for one thing Over as less water is coming eventually down into the east river or excuse me into the east sea, which is off the the delta region So, uh, that's a very serious concern there. They are drawing because there's less river coming than the macong There's a drawing down of ground water As in drill drill drill and suck it suck up the water that is deep underground Which is we both know you keep on doing that keep on doing that keep on doing that it leads to uh, uh The subsidence now the subsidization. That's not the right word The the the ground level actually starts to sink Because the water on which the ground was resting on You know, which was acting as as a as a as a support to the the megatons of earth above like in california That's happening in california right now. Yeah, exactly Exactly, so that is happening and so the more that happens in the region And and as seawater levels rise, you know, some of the projected maps Of the macong river delta area in around Ho Chi Minh City Over the next decades shows more and more of that entire region effectively going underwater But all that not notwithstanding despite all of the problems that people see in the environmental issues Agricultural issues water issues You know fact is this is going ahead This project is likely to be completed for economic reasons geopolitical reasons Uh, who knows corruption reasons It's going ahead and and when it goes ahead, then there'll be a piper to pay at the end of the line And what piper will that be? I mean in the case of the Nile Um, there are clear threats between egypt and ethiopia of war Over the Nile over the hydro power and the water and the agriculture same list of of awful's Same problems in the Nile, you know, this is like a global phenomenon here Um, so what would happen though in the worst case analysis? They go ahead with the project They ignore these side effects, if you will Uh, are they facing war also are they facing water shortages that that are going to You know wreck the relations with these these various countries Well, i'm going to push back on a little a little bit of that jay, which is to say that Uh, there are quite a few people and groups who are far from resigned to To fighting this this proposed dam above Luan Prabang and there are a number of number of examples In the region including a dam that was proposed in cambodia called the sambore dam Which uh was eventually fought and killed by enough opposition To effectively stop this particular dam project so I don't believe that The folks who are post the dam have given up You know that said the lau government. I read a piece in the vn10 times just a couple days ago Which is one of the english language newspapers in vn10 the capital lau and it made every, you know Indication that the government According to the piece was was still you know very much moving forward with with this dam but There is a case for hope and optimism that A dam like this can be especially In light of water levels being more suspect or more at risk Now and in the decades to come I think the case can be made that it is possible it could be possible to fight this dam And and and it could stop it So this is a really interesting problem on the maykong as it is on the nile And what that tells us is that the great rivers of the world are under under attack They'll be political political discussion and debate and argument about it Who knows what but something we have to watch i'm so glad you're there And you can tell us about it and you met with people talk with people And I hope we can discuss it further when you get back. Maybe even next week Anyway, Marco, thank you so much Really enjoy this kind of long-term long long distance discussion And um, and I think we all benefit by knowing more what happens More about what happens in southeast asia Have a good trip on and thank you j you know, I appreciate very much sincerely. I appreciate your Your interest and your willingness your enthusiasm to To explore these issues because of those thousands of miles away from From your home and my home and beautiful beautiful hawaii day I mean these are issues which ultimately affect our brothers and sisters far away and and Things that are worth discussing. So, you know kudos to you For and your staff for doing all this great work over the years with think tech and and Fostering these discussions. I'm very very pleased to have been A part of of your ohana all these past years. So thank you. Thank you Marco aloha until next time