Nam Theun's Historical Legacy
A regional approach to the development of water resources in the Lower Mekong Basin has been enabled by the presence of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) as it is known today, a much transformed institution that first arose as the Mekong Committee in 1957. Presently, the MRC consists of its political body the Joint Committee (formerly the Mekong Committee) and its Secretariat (MRCS) which acts as the operational unit of the Joint Committee.
It is significant that from its inception, against the background of the cold war, the dominant worldview of river basin development that drove the Mekong Secretariat, as it was known at the
Photo: Philip Hirsch
The Mekong River Commission Secretariat at its
former location in Bangkok. In 1998, the Secretariat
was relocated to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
time, came from the United
States Bureau of Reclamation and the United Nations supported by donors who favoured a
capitalist approach to development in the region. In 1956 the Bureau carried out a
preliminary survey of the Mekong Basin which served as the initial framework for resource
development planning in the basin. It is no coincidence that the planning that followed,
resembled the grandiose technocratic models of river basin development that exists in the
United States. From the MRC’s inception as the Mekong Committee in 1957 the
Secretariat’s role was to provide the decision making committee with
‘ideas’ for river basin projects that were both regional and national in scope,
and to take approved ideas through to at least pre-feasibility stage.
Today the MRC, which receives the bulk of its funding from the UNDP as well as bilateral
donors, has responsibility for the coordination of regional scale developments which are
geographically located across boundaries such as main stream dams, or where projects have
international components such as the transmission of power across borders. Where projects
are wholly located within a country’s boundaries, developments are driven along by
national agencies often assisted by international donors.
It was evident from this early study that environmental and social impacts at Nam Theun 2 were being given little priority at this stage. The study concluded that detailed surveys of wildlife and fisheries were not available. Social impacts were identified from topographic maps and aerial photographs.
Two thousand people were required to be resettled, but was not regarded as a serious impediment to construction. The cost of losing commercially valuable timber from inundation was turned into a benefit through a recommendation that logging be implemented at an early stage to recover its commercial value. The study recommended that future efforts be concentrated on Nam Theun 2 because it was the least cost per KW generated option of the three dams. Significantly, non-hydro alternatives were never considered and the projects were justified in terms of meeting Thailand’s burgeoning energy needs.