Mekong Clean-Up Day: Thank You!

On Saturday, more than 150 volunteers from both sides of the river us for our biggest clean-up so far. Together we collected 214 kilograms of rubbish a two-kilometre stretch of the riverbank.

Plastic bottles made up almost half of the total, food packaging and old fishing nets. Thanks to careful counting by two young volunteers, we now know that one brand of drinking water for nearly a third of all the bottles we found.

We will share these results with local businesses and ask them to part in a bottle-return scheme. If you would like to help, our next meeting is on 3 August. experience is necessary; all you need is a pair of gloves and a little patience. See you on the river, !

Somchai Inthavong, Mekong Friends Club

The River Remembers · by Ploy Chantarasri, Grade 11

My great-grandfather was a fisherman. Every morning he took his small boat out on the Mekong, and by nine o’clock he home with enough fish for the whole family. Today, my grandmother says, a fisher can spend an entire day on the river and catch nothing.

Last weekend I joined a clean-up of the riverbank and met Dr. Sarah Lin, a scientist who studies fish in the Mekong. She told me that plastic is a serious problem, but not the one. Fish depend on floods that arrive at the right time of year, and dams far upstream have changed that timing.

What surprised me most was not the science. It was my grandmother’s answer when I asked anyone had consulted the fishers before the dams were built. “Nobody asked us,” she said. “We read about it in the newspaper.”

I believe that people who depend on a river should have a voice in decisions about it. we cannot stop every dam, we can at least make sure that the people who live beside the river are heard. That is why our club plans to the stories of older fishers in our district. If we do not record these stories now, they forever.

A clean riverbank is a good start. , a river that has lost its fish is still a river in trouble.

From: Customer Relations, Clear Spring Drinking Water Co.
To: Bank Chantarasri, Mekong Friends Club
Subject: Your letter about bottle waste

Dear Mr. Chantarasri,

Thank you for your letter and for the bottle count your club carried out on the Mekong riverbank in Nong Khai. We were surprised, and frankly a little embarrassed, to learn that our bottles made up nearly a third of the plastic you collected.

You suggested that we introduce a deposit of one baht per bottle, which customers would get back when they return the empty bottle to a shop. We have discussed your idea with our sales team. Our main concern is cost: shops would need space to store the returned bottles, and we would need lorries to collect them.

However, we would like to run a three-month trial in Nong Khai before making any decision. We will begin in twenty shops near the river, starting in October. If at least 60 per cent of bottles are returned during the trial, we will consider extending the scheme to other provinces.

We would also welcome your club’s help in counting bottles on the riverbank again after the trial, so that we can compare the results.

Yours sincerely,
Malee Wongsa, Customer Relations Manager

The River’s Heartbeat

Scientists sometimes describe the Mekong as a river with a heartbeat. Every year the monsoon rains swell the river between June and October, and the water spreads far across the surrounding land. When the rains end, the water slowly drains away again. This yearly rise and fall, known as the flood pulse, is the engine of one of the richest freshwater fisheries in the world.

The flood pulse matters because many Mekong fish migrate. As the water rises, they swim into flooded forests and rice fields, where they find food and safe places to lay their eggs. When the water falls, young fish are carried back into the main river. If the floods arrive late, or are smaller than usual, many fish never complete this journey.

Over the past twenty years, dozens of large dams have been built on the Mekong and the rivers that flow into it. Dams store water during the wet season and release it during the dry season, which makes the river’s flow more even throughout the year. For electricity companies, this is useful. For fish, it can be disastrous, because a river with an even flow has a weaker heartbeat.

Dams also trap sediment, the fine soil that the river carries downstream. Sediment feeds the plants and tiny animals that fish eat, and it keeps the land around the river fertile. Without it, riverbanks wear away more quickly and farmland becomes less productive.

None of this means that every dam must be removed. But it does suggest that the true cost of a dam is often paid by people who live far away from it.

Letter to the editor: Do not forget the people who need electricity

I read Ploy Chantarasri’s article “The River Remembers” with great interest, and I agree that fishers deserve a voice. As an engineer who has worked on energy projects in the region for fifteen years, however, I would like to add another point of view.

Millions of people in the Mekong countries still have unreliable electricity. Hospitals in some districts lose power several times a week, and many factories cannot expand because the supply is not dependable. Hydropower produces electricity without burning coal, which makes it one of the cleaner choices available. If we reject every dam, we may end up building coal plants instead, and the whole planet will pay for that.

That said, I do not believe dams should be built the way they were in the past. Modern designs can include fish passages, which allow fish to travel around the dam, and operators can release water at times that copy the natural flood pulse. These measures cost more, but they are far cheaper than losing a fishery.

What we need is not a choice between fish and electricity, but honest planning that counts both. Ploy is right that the people beside the river must be consulted. So must the patients in hospitals that need light.

Anan Phrommin, Udon Thani