The New York Times

As we traveled down the Mekong River, I kept hearing variations of the same story: “There are fewer fish.”

Our guide in the Four Thousand Island region of Laos relayed that fishermen now work longer hours and catch fewer fish. At a fishing camp just below Khone Falls, at the border of Laos and Cambodia, a boat captain described how in his youth (three decades ago) they would regularly catch 30-pound fish at the base of the falls — a rare occurrence today.

He shared this story as we surveyed the days’ catch drying in the sun, consisting entirely of fish that would fit in just fine in my son’s aquarium back home. It’s not a big aquarium.

I also always asked the fishermen where the fish were coming from, and always heard the same answer: “They’re coming from Tonle Sap.”

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Today, May 22, is the International Day of Biodiversity, which this year, coincides with the 2013 Year of Water Cooperation. It’s the ideal day to spend the coffee break mulling over the relationship between water, biodiversity, and agriculture in some of the world’s most critical life raft ecosystems – regions where poverty is high, populations are dense and highly dependent upon nature (agriculture, fisheries, logging) for livelihoods, and where ecosystem services are severely degraded.

The notion of Life Raft Ecosystems was put forth by The Nature Conservancy’s controversial Chief Scientist, Peter Kareiva, as a call to ecologists and conservation biologists to shift their focus from conserving pristine wilderness areas to critical regions where both nature and human populations are threatened. The CGIAR research programs on Aquatic Agricultural System (AAS), and Water Land and Ecosystems (WLE) are taking up this call by redefining agricultural research with a greater focus on the contribution of ecosystem service based approaches that integrate aquatic systems, irrigated production systems, and interactions from field to basin scales. Cambodia’s Tonle Sap provides a critical example of one of our major challenges.

The lake’s unique ecosystem has been likened to the heart of the Mekong due to its annual flood pulses. During half the year (November to May) the lake drains into the Mekong, shrinking to 2500 km², whereas during the monsoon, the flood waters from the Mekong backup in the river’s delta reversing the flow of the Tonle Sap river into the lake, which expands up to 15,800 km² in size absorbing the excess water from the monsoon and slowly releasing it as flood waters recede. Some would liken this ecosystem function to the role of a bladder rather than a heart, a more functional definition, but granted less romantic.

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The News Star

American coastal experts have traveled to Vietnam to gain help in saving the Mississippi River delta system.

Experts from around the world will spend much of next week in Vietnam addressing coastal land loss, particularly along the Mississippi and Mekong river systems.

Representatives from the America’s WETLAND Foundation, Vietnam National University and the Netherlands in Building Communique of Cooperation will gather beginning Sunday in Ho Chi Minh City for DELTAS2013VIETNAM, the second World Delta Dialogues involving global leaders since 2010.

The America’s WETLAND Foundation hosted the first World Delta Dialogues conference in New Orleans in October 2010.

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MongaBay

Deforestation may significantly decrease the hydroelectric potential of tropical rainforest regions, warns a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The study, led by Claudia M. Stickler at the International Program at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM-International), used climate, hydrological, and land use models to forecast the impact of potential forest loss on hydropower generation on the Xingu River, a major tributary of the Amazon where the world’s third largest dam — Belo Monte — is currently under construction. They find that deforestation could inhibit rainfall and discharge by 6 to 36 percent, potentially limiting Belo Monte’s electricity output to just a quarter of its installed capacity.

Yet despite the potential impact, the researchers say that policymakers are largely failing to account for the effects of deforestation on power generation.

“The problem is that power plant designers typically ignore the effects of future deforestation. Or, if they do consider it, they presume that deforestation will increase the amount of water flowing to the dams,” said Stickler in a statement. “When we incorporated the effects of deforestation at the regional level, our results show quite the opposite.”

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Dredging Today

Deltares is coordinator of the Dutch presentations of the DELTAS2013-World Delta Dialogues II Conference in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from 19 to 23 May 2013.

The Dutch presentations will include the results of the ‘Mekong Delta Plan’ and ‘Climate Proofing of Delta Cities’ (a comparative perspective on New Orleans and Ho Chi Minh City). Another relevant topic that will be presented by the Dutch is: ‘Building with Nature & Living with Water: Solutions for the Mekong River and Vietnam Coastal Areas’.

The aim of the conference is to stimulate broad participation and promote substantial input at the conference to contribute to cooperation and data sharing between delta countries.

Focusing on the world’s delta regions through the lens of the Mekong River, the conference will identify best practices and comprehensive strategies for sustaining deltas in order to support the intertwined goals of political stability, economic growth and environmental health. The conference will formulate a ‘Communiqué for the World Deltaic Cooperation’ intended as an agenda for cooperation between delta countries.

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Radio Australia

Large hydropower dams are controversial across the world, but if the experts are right, this dam will be far more damaging than most.

Reporter: Robert Carmichael

Speakers: Pa Tou, resident of Srekor village; Dr Eric Baran, Senior Research Scientist at the WorldFish Centre

CARMICHAEL: A small herd of water buffalo beats the afternoon heat in the cool waters of the Se San River. Nearby Srekor village is a tranquil place of 400 families that has stood on the southern bank of the Se San River for as long as anyone here can remember. It won’t be here much longer: in the next year or so, the residents will have to leave.

The reason? A vast hydropower dam with an 8-kilometre-long wall will be built downstream. Its reservoir will cover more than 300 square kilometres, and once the waters rise, Srekor village with its stilted, wooden houses, its well-established garden compounds and its mature fruit trees will be swallowed up.

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Voice of America

As work begins on Cambodia’s biggest dam, those advocating against its construction have warned that the region’s rush for hydropower will have a disastrous effect on millions of people who rely on the Mekong River to survive.

Last month, workers began preparing an area in northeastern Cambodia for a huge hydropower project, the 400-megawatt Lower Se San 2 Dam.

The $800 million dam on the Se San River, a major tributary of the Mekong, will take the Cambodian, Chinese and Vietnamese companies behind it five years to build.

Opponents say the dam’s real cost will be paid by the millions of people who rely on fish for the bulk of their protein intake.

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Vietnam Net

Hundreds of tons of fish and shrimp have been crossing the border gates every day to enter the Vietnamese market. Border management agencies said they have seized a lot of illegally imported consignments. However, a bigger amount of imports still could escape their net to penetrate the domestic market.

A Vietnamese farmer calls Chinese fishes as “strange creatures.” Chinese ca tre (sheatfish) can grow so rapidly that it can be weighted 6 kilos just after one year, as twice as the growth rate of Vietnamese fish. This makes him think that this is a kind of genetically modified organism (GMO). However, Chinese ca tre is not reproduced. This is believed to be the invasive species which may harm the local species.

The farmer also said that the shrimps and crabs Chinese export to Vietnam are the products they bought from Vietnam before. “I believe that they (Chinese merchants) did something with the shrimps and crabs. They might inject something in the creatures to make them heavier, and then re-export back to Vietnam,” he said.

“The shrimps and crabs are abnormally big and heavy,” he added.

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The New York Times

In my last post, I described how our attempts at fishing in the Mekong River had produced meager results, which was somewhat puzzling because the Mekong produces the largest harvest of freshwater fish in the world, by far.

As a father, this was frustrating; catching fish was the top priority of my 10-year old son, Luca, and I was determined that he fulfill that goal. But as a river ecologist, our low success rate had me curious about the status of fish populations in this river.

And it wasn’t just that I’m an inexperienced angler trying to catch fish in a big, complicated river (and using a rod and reel in a place where people generally use nets and traps). We’d spent one afternoon with experienced fishers — using the right equipment — and we’d hauled in a pretty small catch for the effort. Were Mekong fisheries in decline?

We had reached the southern border of Laos, an area called Si Phan Don, or “Four Thousand Islands.” Here the Mekong, which for thousands of miles has flowed as a single, muscular channel, abruptly shatters into a twisting labyrinth of land and water. The eighth biggest river in the world, it becomes a tapestry of lesser rivers and streams — here a channel the size of the Potomac, over there the Hudson, and flowing between them and across a rocky island is something the size of my backyard creek. Hundreds of these channels weave between and across thousands of islands that range in size from a minivan to Manhattan.

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Saigon Daily

In previous years, vehicular traffic found it difficult to maneuver in the Mekong Delta, which has a dense network of canals and river systems. But in recent years, the development of some key traffic projects like Highway 1A, from Ho Chi Minh City to Nam Can; HCMC-Trung Luong Expressway; and many other roadways and large bridges like My Thuan, Can Tho, Rach Mieu and Ham Luong, have made accessibility in the region more possible.

Construction of the second phase of the Ho Chi Minh Road and a belt road along the southeastern sea has already begun. Can Tho and Phu Quoc Airports have been built, while Rach Gia and Ca Mau Airports have been upgraded.

Several waterway routes have been improved to link HCMC with various places in the Mekong Delta. An Thoi and Cai Cui Seaports have also been completed.

However, the region still needs more capital for many other traffic works, such as Vam Cong Bridge, Trung Luong-Can Tho Expressway, HCMC-My Tho Railway and lead roads to communes and ports along Tien and Hau Rivers.

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