རྟིན་འབྱུང
Trenjung: A Journal of Interconnections
Some Preliminary
Thoughts on “One River, One Destiny:” The Mekong, The MRC, The LMI, The LMCM,
Tibet, Climate Change and the Superpower of Water
D. H. Garrett
The Asia Institute
“Men may dam it and say that they have made a lake, but
it will still be a river. It will keep its nature and bide its time, like a
caged animal alert for the slightest opening. In time, it will have its way;
the dam, like the ancient cliffs, will be carried away piecemeal in the
currents.” —Wendell Berry
Introduction
A sad story may be told of the death of the Mekong: a river
that 60 million people depend on for their livelihood. A river, that a rough guess at an ecosystem
services evaluation would give a worth of perhaps tens of trillions of dollars.
And yet a river also, in its natural state that is truly beyond that sort of
evaluation, just as something that is living is incomparably more valuable,
than something that is dead, although all the same material parts may be in
both the corpse and the living being.
And yet, this sad story of strangulation by an old technology –dams,
known not to be cost effective, known to be damaging ecologically, known to be
destructive sociologically- is one that need not be told. There are better ways
of providing clean energy; there are better ways of controlling flood; there
are better ways of storing water for dry times; and there are better ways of
making this river a lifeline during the ravages of the Anthropocene.
Geostrategically, we must also ask ourselves, why would a
country poison its relations with its neighbors out of a misuse (perceived or
otherwise) of its ability to hegemonically control water, when water, water in
plenty, is available for all? There are
many answers to this question. Obviously the search for water security and
hydropower is part of the reason. Beyond that though, dams seem to be the most
readily available tool in the toolbox of the mind for most. Moreover, those who
make money from dams want to make more money from dams, and those who think
that big dams mean development -instead of really its opposite- are perhaps too
much in positions of power. Most importantly though the answer is that we
aren’t thinking creatively and innovatively.
We are stuck in the mindset of a technology that is centuries, even
millenniums, old. Instead of “rivercide” we have the ability to save, and
enhance the river, and still have enough water for all of our endeavors.
It must be asked if the collapse of the Syrian state would
have occurred if its upriver hegemon, Turkey, had been a little bit more
sharing of the water it had husbanded behind its dams. That drought is settling permanently in the
Middle East is no surprise. All of the climate change predictions call for it,
and call for it to worsen. As I write,
the temperatures in the Middle East have in fact gotten to just a few degrees
short of unlivable. The same dire
predictions are true for Southeast Asia.
Does China really want to live with failed states and anti-Chinese
actors on so many of its borders? No of course it doesn't. It wants economically able trading partners,
and peaceful coexistence as it refashions its near world into a harmonious
vision of prosperity for all. The
Mekong, and the other rivers China shares with its neighbors, lies at the heart
of successfully fulfilling this vision.
The phrase, “one river, one destiny” is more than apt, it is the
truth. The question then is how to turn
a tarnished, degraded destiny into a shining, abundant, healthful one
The View from Up High
In truth, whatever the future holds, China is already a
superpower: a superpower of water. It holds in its hands the destiny of perhaps
2 billion people who depend on the water in the rivers originating on the
Tibetan Plateau. And the picture that
climate change paints of water from the Tibetan Plateau, originating as it does
from glacier melt, from fast disappearing glaciers is a grim one. With temperatures rising twice as fast as the
rest of the planet, polar regions excepted, the high arid zone of Tibet is fast
becoming a permanent high desert, while the glaciers themselves are
disappearing faster than anyone had predicted.
China is perhaps, the world’s only real, natural superpower, but it’s
own natural inclination for dealing with this resource, has been one of
self-preservation. In doing so though it risks, even if it saves itself, being
surrounded by desperate, thirsty peoples.
Waking from the Illusion of Paris
You might say, that all of this is well understood. That the Paris Agreement has saved us from
the worst of the warned-of climate change hells. But this is an illusion. Paris has done very
little, certainly not enough, and what is worse, it has perhaps instilled a
sense of complacency, that all is solved, and we can get on with manifest,
consumer consuming, destiny. In fact Paris itself was a well-crafted political
compromise. Climate change physics itself though is not susceptible to
compromise. Given the fact that pollution (acting as a form of cheap and dirty
geoengineering) has already suppressed temperature rise by about 1 degree, then
in fact we are well past the 1.5 degree target and already at a 2 degree
increase. This confirms that ESS (Earth System Sensitivity) is at the high end
of estimates. We are in other words in uncharted water, in a no-analogue state,
in which the fairly stable climate of the last 10,000 years is wobbling like a
top at the end of its spin, and climate chaos has begun. We see it everywhere: forests burning up, ice
receding, methane from melting permafrost being released, and 1,000-year flood
and rainfall events occurring on a regular basis.
All of the Acronyms Add Up to Nothing
You might say, that the MRC (Mekong River Commission) and
the LMI (Lower Mekong Initiative) are organizations that will optimize river
use while taking due consideration of climate change. Even the LMCM (Lancang-Mekong Cooperation
Mechanism) has opened itself to a willingness to discuss water issues. But the MRC has no enforcement ability;
witness the construction of the Xayaburi Dam in Laos, definitely a deathblow to
the river. The LMI on the other hand
-viewed somewhat nervously by China as a U.S. means to consolidate Southeast
Asia as a reliable, coordinated anti-Chinese hedge- is in fact best characterized
as amateurish and inept. Probably the only thing really keeping it together is
Chinese intransigence to acquiescing to internationally accepted shared
international water basin norms.
The Only Solution to the Near Future is a New Future
The near future, really any day, tomorrow or the day after
tomorrow, is going to bring some new climate change driven calamity. And these are just the beginning. The only solution to this radical new Earth,
is a radical new level of human ingenuity when it comes to food, and
particularly water. All of the dams
constructed to date are outdated. They
were designed for a different state of the earth. But stationarity is dead. Existing dams are either dangerous in the
face of ahistorical levels of flooding, or uneconomical in the face of extended
and mega-droughts, or more likely they are both unsafe and uneconomical. Dams
built with expected lifetimes of scores of years, need to be decommissioned as
soon as possible. The rivers need to be set free, need to be given room to ebb
and flow as they will in their extended range of less flow and more flow. It is not the rivers that can or should be
controlled. It is the nature and manner
of human settlement and expansion that poses the danger. The new super-rivers of the Anthropocene
cannot be stopped. The new periodically
drying up rivers of the Anthropocene cannot be damned for power.
So What Do We Do?
1) First we form a virtual super-transparent all-sector
river basin organization. The
capabilities that satellites and drones provide make real-time water quantity
and quality monitoring possible. We link
this information with smart-water point of use information and so determine
optimum water use strategies based first and foremost on high-tech water
efficiency technologies. Water
efficiency is the low-hanging fruit, and this must be applied basin-wide and
across all sectors including industrial, agricultural and private and in all
this a robust maintenance of the ecosystem, which is the true matrix for
preserving water, must have an equal vote.
2) Next we must look to Tibet. Although only about 25% of
the water in the Mekong comes from China, this figure rises to about 40% in the
dry season, and most of this comes from the snow and glacier meltwater from
Tibet. If it is in fact too expensive to put in place a space-based solar
radiation screen for the plateau, artificial north slope glaciers should be constructed.
"Snowmaking-Snowdam" technologies should also be examined. Sadly and
dangerously because the rate of climate change is too fast for natural
adaptation in many if not most cases, investigations of hybrid and genetically
engineered plants capable of surviving high temperatures and drought at high
elevations probably needs to be examined. Local peoples must be empowered to
undertake these adaptations as a way of preserving the plateau and in
compassionate service to their downstream neighbors.
3) Because water vapor is the main component driving climate
change, as much water vapor as possible must be taken out of the atmosphere.
Technologies for doing this are multiple including some which do not require
external power. The water derived in this way is sufficient for almost all
human needs, even in desert areas. Moreover global modeling shows that even if
all water vapor were removed from the atmosphere evaporation mostly from the
oceans would restore water vapor percentages to previous levels in about 10
days. This is in other words
an almost perpetually renewable source of water that cools the earth and also
provides its own transport to the point of use.
The universal implementation of this distributed water processing (DWP)
system is analogous to the switch from old-fashioned hardline telephone lines
to cell phones.
4) For water storage and flood control, as dams are
decommissioned flood plains must be restored as much as possible. Where human
habitation exists on flood plains, innovative architectural solutions to
periodic flooding are probably preferable to population relocation. To recharge
aquifers, in addition to flood plain restoration, ASR (Aquifer Storage and
Reuse) technologies should also be widely deployed.
5) To make up loss of power from dams, in addition to the
obvious candidate of solar, widespread deployment of artificial mangrove off
shore wind installations in critical areas off populated coasts is required.
The will not stop multilevel sea level rise but will protect against storm
surge and wind intensity from the super storms and super typhoons of the
Anthropocene.
5) As part of a DWP system and to further make up for loss
of dam storage capacity and empower individual families and local communities
instead of large hydropower companies, funds must be made available for ever
family and community to build rainwater harvesting facilities. These can be
intelligently linked so that families and communities can be reimbursed for
release in times of downstream or ecosystem need.
6) Because most transport of water vapor to the interior is
by means of bio transport, i.e., the transevaporation of water vapor from
forests and plants, reforestation and afforestation is of prime importance, not
just for water transport, but also for drawing carbon dioxide out of the
atmosphere and fixing the carbon in a natural process. Because drought is
already devastating our remaining forests they must be seeded with autonomous
water from air units to try and preserve them where feasible and necessary.
7) There are a variety of new technologies which may help
most of us survive the climate chaos as the earth tips over into a new hot
climate state (and we are) and until we can all work together to restabilize
the climate. They include vertical farming, cool suits, biomimicking super
capillary systems, hydro matting flood defenses, microwave stop-start
rainmaking, and non-material radical decoupling virtual consuming new economic
systems.
Conclusion
Borders are magic entities. They help us decide who is in,
and who is out. They help us arrange the world into those people whom we must
treat well, and those we can disregard.
Borders, of course, are a perennial inspiration for magnificent
disagreements and that biggest money-maker of all, war. These days even rivers are being taught to
obey the dictates of borders. Water on
one side is mine, whatever makes it to the other side, well, you can do what
you want with it, even if we have taken quite a bit and sent you polluted
stuff. But this approach is fundamentally a shared hallucination.
Fundamentally this is an issue of abundance that is
misperceived as a problem of scarcity.
It is a problem of thinking that an old technology, -with all of its
well-documented costs- is the best solution for a new challenge, when in fact a
totally new technological approach repairs, provides, and enriches all parties,
including nature itself. It is a problem
of perceiving neighbors as potential enemies, instead of partners in building
an ecoharmonious civilization that has the strength and vision and natural and
human joy needed to last beyond the current time of troubles.
Appendix 1: From the 31st March 2014, report ‘Climate Change 2014:
Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability’, from Working Group II[1]
1.
Dams and infrastructure projects contribute significantly to “non-climate
impacts” which, after interacting with changing climate, exacerbate the overall
impact on human societies and ecosystems
o Sediment Trapping by reservoirs,
exacerbates impact of sea level rise
o Hydropower affects local options
o Climate change and dams together
affect a greater eco-region
o Increased flow fluctuations by dams
exacerbate through climate change
2.
In case of Flood Protection, dams and embankments may do more harm than good.
Ecological measures would fare better.
3.
Dams and Hydropower projects affect biodiversity, which is critical in facing
climate change challenges.
4.
In the tropics, global warming potential of hydropower may exceed that of
Thermal Power
5.
Dams increase vulnerability of weaker sections to climate change
6.
Existing Dams have to be managed sustainably, with ecological considerations
7.
Hydropower itself is vulnerable to Climate Change
