Mekong leaders fail to raise environmental concerns at summit in Phnom Penh

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha previously had said that he would push sustainable water use at the summit as countries on the lower Mekong River – Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam – are troubled by dams in the upper tributaries, most of which have been built or are being planned by China.
China has built eight hydropower dams in the main stream of the Mekong River and has more projects in the pipeline, while countries in the lower stretch such as Laos are also planning dams. They pose social and environmental impacts for people along the river, said Thailand-based environmentalist Pianporn Deetes.
The six leaders from LMC members China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam gathered in Phnom Penh for the summit to adopt a five-year plan of action for 2018-22 and the “Phnom Penh Declaration”, a statement of LMC members’ political will for cooperation. They also considered the “Joint List of the 2nd Batch of Cooperation Projects” and the “Report of the Six Joint Working Groups of Priority Areas”.
While the action plan focused very much on infrastructure development, leaders were paying less attention to the projects’ environmental impacts, said Pianporn, International River’s Thailand campaign director. “As all six leaders are sitting in the same forum, it would be significant if they properly address the transboundary environmental impact,” she said.
Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang and his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen co-chaired the summit, but neither raised any points regarding environmental concerns.
Hun Sen said at the opening that the summit theme of “our river of peace and sustainable development” must be realised in implementation. “We can never and should never take [those values] for granted. Amid the fast-changing regional and global uncertainties, our Mekong region will be tested once again,” he said.
Established in 2015, the LMC had made significant progress after foreign ministers meeting in Dali, China, last month approved the first batch of 132 projects, while leaders yesterday considered a second batch of 214 projects, Hun Sen said.
“Clearly, this is one of the most tangible and defining characteristics of the LMC being a project and cooperation-based mechanism, and not a mere talk shop,” he said.
Prayut said the LMC should promote modernity, innovation and sustainable development with a balance of social, economic, environmental and human development values as well as bridge the development gap.
In order to have balanced cooperative mechanisms in the region, the LMC and Mekong River Commission “need to obtain more connectivity for faster and more thorough information exchanges”, Prayut said. He underlined the need for economic corridors in the Mekong subregion as part of the China-Indochina Corridor and ultimately China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor. Thailand will host an LMC working group on water resources this year.