Farmers and fishermen in downstream countries are complaining about the impact of Mekong River dams located upstream in both China and Laos.
But a think tank now has a plan to reduce the damage done to crops and fish stocks by hydroelectric dams. Its focus is on Laos, Southeast Asia’s poorest country, which it says could benefit from scaling back on some of its planned dams.
The Stimson Center, a nonpartisan research center in Washington, D.C., says in a recent report that Laos may be able to mitigate the damage by creating an efficient national power grid and by turning to other sources of power.
Brian Eyler, Stimson’s director for Southeast Asia, says, “…there’s still time to make strategic choices regarding water-energy planning in Laos that can minimize to some extent the effects of dams on downstream environmental flows.”
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