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Mekong River researchers hope to find ways to make dams less damaging

by Michael Taylor | @MickSTaylor | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Friday, 16 March 2018 06:23 GMT

Foodsellers wait for customers at a floating market on Mekong river in Can Tho city, Vietnam April 2, 2016. REUTERS/Kham

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The environmental impact of dams may drastically change the economies and social structures of communities, researchers say

By Michael Taylor

KUALA LUMPUR, March 16 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Researchers backed by multi-million dollar grants from NASA are heading to Southeast Asia's Mekong River region to find ways to improve dams so they are less harmful to people and the environment.

Researchers from Michigan State University (MSU) will spend three years analyzing sites in the lower Mekong River basin in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The project will be funded by two grants from the United States space agency, NASA, totaling $3 million, and the researchers hope their findings will improve dams around the world.

"The most egregious effects of dam building are displacement and relocation," said Daniel Kramer, a professor of fisheries and wildlife at MSU.

"But the research that we're doing is also suggesting that there are a lot of less obvious things that the effects of dams bring on local people and ecosystems," Kramer told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

There are concerns, for example, about damage to farming and fisheries due to dam projects along the lower Mekong, which is the world's largest freshwater fishery and home to 60 million people.

The environmental impact of dams may drastically change the economies and social structures of communities, Kramer added.

Dam building is experiencing a resurgence around the world - with many projects backed by Chinese funding - as more countries look for affordable way to generate energy for their growing populations.

Most Mekong countries, especially China, have been planning and building hydropower dams since the late 1980s but an uptick in dam projects began about 15 years ago.

The Mekong River's mainstream now has about 11 dams and more than 100 on its tributaries, said Jiaguo Qi, professor of geography at MSU.

The MSU researchers will analyze how dams impact the flow of rivers, local agriculture, fisheries, irrigations systems and wetland ecosystems, said Qi.

As well as analyzing satellite imagery, researchers will develop models to simulate historical water flows and project how those flows may change as a result of dam construction and shrinking glaciers in the Himalayan headwaters.

Interviews will also be conducted with local residents to find out how communities that surround or are downstream from dams cope with the loss of wetlands and fisheries, and what the economic benefits are.

The research team will regularly produce papers and hold workshops throughout the three-year period, with the final report available to the general public.

It is hoped that the research will be used to make existing dams and those still in the planning stage, to become more sustainable, Qi added.

While some preliminary research has already begun, the field work for the project will begin in May, he added.

(Reporting by Michael Taylor, Editing by Jared Ferrie. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)

The Thomson Reuters Foundation is reporting on resilience as part of its work on zilient.org, an online platform building a global network of people interested in resilience, in partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation.

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