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DAM-L LS: UN official says Chinese dams could help SE Asia fight floods (fwd)
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Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:23:33 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: LS: UN official says Chinese dams could help SE Asia fight floods
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071101 INTERVIEW-Chinese dams could help SE Asia fight floods-UN (Reuters)
By Dominic Whiting
BANGKOK, July 11 (Reuters) - Chinese plans to dam the upper Mekong river
could help Southeast Asia cope with flooding caused by global warming, a
senior United Nations official said on Wednesday.
Researchers say global warming threatens to increase flooding in low-lying
areas of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
In recent years the Mekong river has burst its banks with ever greater
force. Last year floods caused more than 500 deaths and hundreds of
millions of dollars of damage across the four countries.
But planned hydro-electricity projects in China's Yunnan province are
raising hopes the mighty Mekong can be tamed.
"China could really control the flow of water into the Mekong delta
region," said David Jezeph, chief of Water and Mineral Resources at the
Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
"Its dams -- three are built already and they're planning up to eight more
-- could have an impact," he told Reuters.
"China is pushing the argument that storage would mitigate high flows in
the wet season and increase dry season flows.
"The water supply in the dry season could be irrigated, and for more of the
year saline water would be pushed out and that would have benefits for
agriculture," he said.
Jezeph said the completed dams were too small to have any noticeable affect
on the Mekong's level.
But the planned 300-metre-high Xiaowan dam, which would hold 10,000 million
cubic metres, could help relieve the heavy annual flooding in the Mekong
river delta, he said.
"The Chinese are so excited about it they're even proposing that lower
Mekong countries contribute to the building costs."
Jezeph said governments in the Mekong delta region were concerned China
could exert too much power over water resources.
A draft report prepared for the Asian Development Bank has said the Chinese
dams pose a threat to people, wildlife and water systems across the region.
But Jezeph said the lower Mekong's fishery resources -- potentially worth
over $1 billion a year -- were not in danger because the dams were too high
upstream.
SOUTHEAST ASIA HARDEST HIT
Jezeph said the threat of global warming was very real.
"All models say Southeast Asia would be the hardest hit by global warming.
Levels of rainfall would be higher and more prolonged, and seasons would
change," he said.
"Most river systems coming out of the Himalayas -- China and Tibet -- flow
towards Southeast Asia. Imagine what affect a two degree temperature rise
would have on melting ice and the water flow," he said.
But global warming was an abstract concept to most people living in the
region, Jezeph said.
Instead governments should concentrate on preparing their citizens to live
with flooding, he said.
"Sometimes it's not worth talking about global warming because there are
millions of poor people in the region more concerned with where they'll be
in three years," he said.
"The countries in the region need to cooperate and make strategic plans to
learn to live with the flooding.
"Governments should be prepared, with remote sensing to warn of typhoons
and better predictive models.
"Houses can then be put on stilts and better evacuation processes
implemented, but dykes are not much use because they stop fertile soils
coming into the flood plains," he said.
Jezeph said the nascent Mekong River Commission, which counts Thailand,
Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam as its members, was the best forum for managing
the region's water resources.
But he said, closer involvement of China was needed.
"We need China in the dialogue process," he said.
"There could be potential conflicts over water allocation, and this needs
to be managed and turned into co-operation."
09:33 07-11-01
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