BAN NONG CHAN, Thailand, (Reuters) – By this time of year, the Mekong River should have been rising steadily with the monsoon rains, bringing fishermen a bounty of fat fish.
Instead, the river water in Thailand has fallen further than anyone can remember and the only fish are tiny.
Scientists and people living along the river fear the impact of the worst drought in years has been exacerbated by upstream dams raising the prospect of irreversible change on the river that supports one of Southeast Asia’s most important rice-growing regions.
A Chinese promise to release more dam water to ease the crisis has only raised worries over the extent to which the river’s natural cycles – and the communities that have depended on it for generations – have been forever disrupted.
“Now China is completely in control of the water,” said Premrudee Deoruong of Laos Dam Investment Monitor, an environmental group.
“From now on, the concern is that the water will be controlled by the dam builders.”
In the northeastern Thai province of Nakhon Phanom, where the now sluggish river forms the border with Laos, the measured depth of the Mekong fell below 1.5 metres this week. The average depth there for the same time of year is 8 metres.
“What I have seen this year has never happened before,” said Sun Prompakdee, who has been fishing from Ban Nong Chan village for most of his 60 years. “Now we only get small fish, there are no big fish when the water is this low.”
The collapse in the water level is partly due to drought – with rainfall during the past 60 days more than 40 percent below normal for the time of year.