Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
main. They also asked that the MRC make public any data-sharing agreements that exist
between it and the Chinese government (Save the Mekong Coalition 2010).
Such calls have only intensified in recent years as southwestern China and Southeast
Asia have faced the most serious and prolonged period of drought in a century. Between
2010 and 2013, news of the drought seized national headlines: farmers suffered billions
of dollars in economic damages from lost crops; millions of villagers lost reliable access
to drinking water and irrigation; and shipping was halted temporarily on the Lancang be-
cause the depleted flow could not accommodate vessels with deep drafts. By coincidence,
this period of drought overlapped with much of my fieldwork in Yunnan, and I became ac-
customed to seeing parched agricultural fields and dry riverbeds throughout the province.
So did Chinese citizens around the country: national news on the television and Internet
regularly featured stories about the drought and its impact on farmers and residents in the
southwest region, illustrating the reports with poignant photographs of agricultural fields
dried and fissured for lack of rain.
Speculation abounded that water shortages in the lower Mekong basin were more than
simply the result of drought conditions and that they were instead linked to water impound-
ments behind the Lancang dams. Xiaowan Dam, which has the largest reservoir capacity
of any of the dams on the Lancang and which was completed just prior to the onset of
the drought, was seen as a primary culprit. Mr. Qin Gang, a spokesman for the Chinese
Foreign Ministry, stated publicly that China was committed to maintaining positive rela-
tions with other countries in the Greater Mekong Subregion, countries that he referred to
as “China's good neighbors” (
China Daily
2010). But in the absence of specific data on
upstream flows and water impoundment, suspicion continued among downstream govern-
ments, NGOs, and citizens.
These problems have placed an international spotlight on the governance system of the
Mekong basin, which involves China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Viet-
nam. Formal, transnational cooperation on the Mekong goes back more than a half-century
when, in 1957, the Committee for Coordination of the Investigations of the Lower Mekong
Basin—commonlyreferredtoasthe“MekongCommittee”—was formed,withLaos,Cam-
bodia, Thailand, and South Vietnam as member states. Cambodia's political instability and
civil war kept that country from participating for nearly two decades, but it was readmitted
in 1991. The governments of these four nations signed the Agreement on the Cooperation
for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong River Basin in 1995, which formally es-
tablished the MRC with Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam as members (Feng and
Magee 2009:109). In 1996, China and Myanmar became “dialog partners” with the com-
mission, but they are not full, participating members.
In 2010, a small delegation from the MRC countries came to the United States under
the auspices of the State Department's Lower Mekong Initiative to learn about current best
practices in watershed management on transboundary rivers. I sat in on some of the meet-
