“The challenge of regional cooperation remains elusive for the Mekong basin because of the large discrepancies in national power amongst riparian nations.
Australia and the international development community have an important role to play in balancing geopolitical forces and supporting the effort towards regionally equitable and sustainable utilisation of the basin’s water resources, but such interventions must be unbiased and based on robust scientific evidence.”
The study “Monitoring the quantity of water flowing through the upper Mekong basin under natural (unimpeded) conditions by Basist and Williams from Eyes on Earth (hereafter “the EoE study’) is an innovative and important effort to understand a longstanding issue of interest to the Lower Mekong Basin Countries – what level of influence or control does China’s cascade of large hydropower projects on Lancang River have on flow conditions in the Lower Mekong River.
In recent years, both droughts and floods in the Mekong Basin have been blamed on the regulatory control exerted by the large Lancang projects. However, with China reluctant to fully share data on the upper Lancang River and the operations of its cascade it has been difficult to establish a conclusive answer to this problem.
This Commentary is a review of the findings of the EoE analysis and the conclusions extrapolated by the Stimson Centre based on the EoE study.
It attempts to situate the new findings and conclusions within the body of scientific evidence that scientists and researchers have built up about the Mekong system over the past two decades.
The Commentary can be found by clicking on the title of this post.