Opportunities and Challenges for the Greater Mekong Subregion

Building a Shared Vision of Our River

Charles Samuel Johnston, Xin Chen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000024890
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The Mekong River is a vital and valuable resource, with huge development potential for the six states through which it flows. Given the significant asymmetry of power between those states, however, there is a real risk that some might utilise it to the detriment of others.

Without a sense of regional belonging, it is difficult to imagine that these states and their constituent communities will take regional imperatives to heart, participate in joint regulatory frameworks, or adopt behaviours for upstream-downstream and lateral cooperation over the appropriation and use of their shared resources. How effectively has closer interdependence of the Mekong countries accommodated the development of a political-social-cultural space conducive to the growth of a regional "we-ness" among not only political elites, but also the general public? The contributors to this volume approach this question from a range of directions, including the impacts of tourism, regional development programmes, the Mekong Power Grid, and Sino-US rivalry.

This edited volume presents valuable insights for scholars of international relations, Asian studies, development studies, environment studies, policy studies, and human geography.

1 Introduction

Economic growth and community construction in the Greater Mekong Subregion

Xin Chen and Charles Samuel Johnston

A nourishing and inspiring “mother”

Originating from the Tibetan Plateau and emptying into the South China Sea, the Mekong River flows through China (Yunnan Province), Myanmar, Lao PDR, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The “Mother of Rivers”, mae khong, ¹ has not merely carved out this unique Subregion, which has a landmass the size of Western Europe and a population close to that of the US.² It has also provided tens of millions of the region’s riparian residents with food and livelihoods.³ The Mekong has moreover served as an essential means for intra-regional transport, social interactions, and cultural activities.⁴ Being the eighth largest river in the world measured by water flow,⁵ the Mekong has meanwhile endowed the region with immense resources for small-to-large-scale hydropower projects and irrigation systems.

The Mekong is often acknowledged as one of the world’s last great rivers to remain mostly undammed.⁶ Indeed, with few large cities, a relatively sparse population, and little industry along its course, the River is arguably the least exploited among the major rivers in the world. Decades of violent conflicts and civil strife in recent history have also resulted in much of the region being frequently referred to as undeveloped and stuck in economic stagnation. As the great majority of the 300-plus million people in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) still live subsistence or semi-subsistence agricultural lifestyles, poverty is believed to be endemic.⁷ With peace settling in the whole of Indochina since the early 1990s, however, the Subregion has experienced a significant turnaround. The six member states have devised a range of national, bilateral, and multilateral development schemes for banking on the rich resources of the Mekong. By the second Subregion leaders’ summit held in July 2005, more than a hundred development projects had been jointly launched in energy, agriculture, transportation, telecommunications, trade and investment, tourism, environment, and human resources.⁸

Poverty reduction is a primary mission for all six governments. It thus follows that economic growth invariably dominates their domestic and foreign policy deliberations. Furthermore, they all seem to espouse the idea that harnessing the resources of the Mekong would serve as a most effective springboard for their respective economic development. This belief is put in words by Cambodia’s former Minister of Transportation Khy Tainglim, who says that the Mekong “is our oil, our mines of gold, our main natural resource, and we should use our water to export and get foreign currency to develop the country”.⁹ Indeed, to raise living standards, the six countries in the Subregion have all been committed to promoting and facilitating infrastructure networking for hydropower development and transfer, flood control and irrigation, improved navigation channels, and easier cross-border movement of goods and people.¹⁰

An asymmetrical common-pool resource

Yet while the economic imperative enjoys common primacy throughout the Subregion, the six member states differ in the rates and pace of their economic and social development. The disparity and corollary power differential have unsurprisingly bred anxieties over uneven distribution of the Mekong resources and potentials among the riparian states and communities.¹¹ Striving to ensure an adequate measure of fair and equitable resource sharing, the six countries are actively engaged in diplomatic negotiations and joint development programmes. At the same time, however, they have also been racing to maximise their own benefits from the Mekong by pressing ahead with national hydroelectric, water diversion, and channel dredging projects on the stretches of the river or its tributaries within their respective boundaries. The fear that ever more development schemes are being introduced or implemented without sufficient region-wide consultation has led many to worry that resource rivalries may ultimately become the fault lines between the countries in the Mekong area.¹²

An international/regional river such as the Mekong perhaps projects a worst-case scenario for problems surrounding common pool resources. Not only may the use of the river by one party limit the access of others to its potential consumptive benefits, but the consequences of the former’s exploitation may also “flow” with the water to the latter.¹³ Meanwhile, efforts to coordinate the development in the Mekong region are often challenged by the sensitive issue of sovereignty and the “ASEAN way” of non-interference. The upstream-downstream problem in relation to the shared resources is further complicated by the fact that divergent interests and priorities of the states in the Subregion have resulted in their different reactions to controversial projects initiated by members of the community unilaterally, or through bilateral or multilateral arrangements.¹⁴ An often cited example in this regard is the Lancang-Mekong Navigation Improvement Project signed in 2000 by China, Thailand, Lao PDR, and Myanmar. The scheme is aimed at facilitating trade and tourism by opening the route to vessels of up to 500 tons. Yet the removal of reefs, shoals, and rapids necessitated by the project reportedly has Cambodia and Vietnam down the stream worried about the impact of altered river flows on their farming and other production activities.¹⁵ While impact studies within and without the region since 2000 have yet to reach any convincing or consoling conclusions, the 2015–25 Development Plan of the Langcang-Mekong navigation project has nevertheless been set in motion.¹⁶

In addition to issues of asymmetric distribution among the GMS countries of benefits and consequences from the development of the shared river, economic growth pressures, in the forms of hydroelectric dams, industrial development, intensive farming, rapid urbanisation, and navigation improvement attempts have also given rise to serious concerns about increasing environmental, ecological, social, cultural, and livelihood disturbances. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), environmental advocates, scientists, and academics have been particularly vocal about potential adverse impacts and undesirable effects of many development initiatives that are proposed and/or already under way in the region.¹⁷ They call into question the widespread discursive classification that reduces social, cultural, economic, ecological, and geographic specificities of the region to a homogenous lot of economic “challenges” and “opportunities”.¹⁸ They urge planners and developers to provide explicit terms of reference for the public to assess social and environmental impacts of projects with potential transboundary effects.¹⁹ They challenge the paternalistic attitude of many political elites and institutional donors who insist on development “for” the people rather than “by” the people.²⁰ They argue that failing to uphold visions of, or to consult with, the affected peoples and communities in the region, development projects would only serve the interests of donor countries, international lending agencies, and/or private investors, who are vying for contracts or opportunities to exploit the vast and varied natural resources in the region.²¹ They worry that local communities will be left only to deal with the economic, social, and cultural consequences such as displacement of families, removal from ancestral homeland, destruction of agricultural fields, and alienation from traditional livelihood resources.²²

Towards an “our” river?

Yet the Subregion has to break away from poverty; and some sort of economic development will have to occur. Following this rationale, it may become more understandable that many communities along the river have pinned their hopes for prosperity on the Mekong. The same logic may also render it legitimate to argue that while it is important and necessary to scrutinise development initiatives proposed for the region and vigilantly detect detrimental impact of projects intended mainly for national self-sufficiency, it is also crucial to identify constructive means towards transforming the Mekong Subregion defined by sovereign nation states and fragmented sub-entities into a mode of coexistence and gradually reaching a strong sense of “we”. Without a sense of regional belonging, it is difficult to imagine that the six states and their constituent communities would take regional, or others’, imperatives to heart, participate in joint regulatory frameworks, and adopt policies of and behaviours for upstream-downstream and lateral cooperation over the appropriation and use of their shared resources. That many programmes with potential transboundary effects in the region are donor/corporate/special-interest-driven and are intended primarily for trade/investment liberalisation, market returns, or tax revenues also signifies that the impetus for coordinated and sustainable development of the Mekong River will have to come from within the region.

The sense of belonging, more than anything else, determines the precincts of a region and behaviours within it. This sense of community is not given, but socially constructed or re-invented through reflexive interactions of its members. In other words, regional socialisation is a complex but enabling evolutionary process, which may facilitate the development, or redefinition, of norms and patterns of regional relations and national positions on issues with regional consequences.²³ In the Mekong Subregion, the conversion of battlefields into market places in the 1990s has reportedly lifted the flood gates to economic and social contact among its six members. Their ever-growing interactions are, in turn, expected to help expand opportunities for them to develop informed assumptions of each other’s interests. Better mutual understanding and higher level of perceived mutual predictability should arguably be conducive to confidence building among the six countries and hence the construction of a “we”. Admittedly, however, the ever closer and broader interactions among the six Mekong countries occur in the context of their distinct national interests, diverse political history, varied governance structures, and different priorities in their double transitions from subsistence agricultural and centrally planned to more diversified and market-based economies.

Since the six countries share both the gifts of the Mekong and the impact of their respective actions on the river, the establishment of an integrated water resources management in the region is mainly an issue of people management. It thus follows that to realise their respective development visions and aspirations in a sustainable and equitable manner requires not only contractual arrangements at the governmental level, but, more importantly, a profound popular basis at the grassroots. Indeed, only when their peoples also share the feeling of regional “belonging”, will the six nations be able to self-enforce the limits of acceptable behaviour towards the River.

In short, given that development of the Mekong is imperative for reducing poverty and improving the living standards of local communities, given that the River is subject to rivalries or even conflicts over the up-mid-down-stream water distribution for multiple uses, and given that effects of resource over-consumption and pollution will likely be devastating and asymmetrical among the riparian communities along the River, there is a pressing need for the six countries of the Subregion to align their divergent national interests and plan and work jointly for their “common benefits” and “shared prosperity”. In this regard, the Mekong itself has often been described as a central thread and active bond of kinship and friendship for the various population groups in the Subregion over a long time span and over many geographical areas.²⁴ In other words, the River itself may be a facilitating asset for regional community building among the peoples of the six countries. In fact, burgeoning people-to-people contact along the Mekong in recent years through economic and trade relations, joint development ventures, tourism and recreation, academic exchanges, and cultural activities have already helped revive ties between people of the same ethnic groups straddling the Mekong.²⁵

Yet how effectively have increased horizontal links among the people of the six member states helped awaken a sense of shared identity and a desire for regional cohesion in the Mekong development? Or how effectively has closer interdependence of the Mekong countries accommodated the development of a political-social-cultural space conducive for the growth of a regional “we-ness” among not only political elites, but also the general public? The contributors to this volume approach these questions through their analyses of the historical evolution of the Mekong as a region,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• 1. Introduction: Economic growth and community construction in the Greater Mekong Subregion
• 2. Constructing a region (the Greater Mekong Subregion) out of a river
• 3. 100% Pure Mekong: The key to identity, development, and tourism in the Greater Mekong Subregion?
• 4. Developmental change in the Greater Mekong Subregion: Economic growth yes, community construction?
• 5. The Sino-US strategic rivalry in the development of the Mekong
• 6. Regional cooperation through the Greater Mekong Subregion programme: Focus on hydropower development and the Mekong power grid
• 7. Vietnam Mekong River Delta: A regional connection perspective
• 8. Participatory water governance and impact assessment: A case study of the Hua Na Irrigation project in northeast Thailand
• 9. China and the Mekong: Domestic hydro politics
• Index