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BANGKOK (Reuters) – A US-funded project was announced on Monday that uses satellites to track and publish water levels at Chinese dams on the Mekong River, adding to the rivalry of superpowers in Southeast Asia.
The 4,350 km (2,700 mile) waterway, known as the Lancang in China and flowing south through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, has become a hotbed of competition.
Beijing has dismissed a US investigation that says Chinese dams have held back water to the detriment of downstream nations, where 60 million people depend on the river for fishing and agriculture.
The Mekong Dam Monitor https://www.stimson.org/project/mekong-dam-monitor, partially funded by the State Department, uses cloud-drilling satellite data to track dam levels in China and other countries.
The information will be open to all in almost real time from Tuesday.
A separate indicator of “surface moisture” is to show which parts of the region are wetter or drier than usual: a guide to how much natural flows are being affected by dams.
“The monitor provides evidence that China’s top 11 dams are sophisticatedly orchestrated and operated in a way to maximize hydropower production for sale to the eastern provinces of China without taking downstream impacts into account,” said Brian Eyler of the Washington-based Stimson Center. a global think tank that operates virtual water meters.
‘POSITIVE BENEFITS’
China has criticized previous research, including a study by Eyes on Earth, part of the Mekong Dam Monitor project, which said that water had been held back in 2019 due to other countries suffering from severe drought.
“The United States has not been able to provide good evidence at all times,” the state-backed China Renewable Energy Engineering Institute said in a Dec. 4 report.
“The positive benefits of hydropower upstream the Lancang River in the neighboring downstream of the Mekong are clear and obvious,” he said, adding that the water stored in the reservoirs during the flood season helped prevent both flooding and flooding. downstream droughts.
China agreed earlier this year to share data on water with the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an advisory body for Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam that has long sought the information for better planning.
China and the United States have rival bodies that work with the Mekong countries: the Beijing-based Lancang-Mekong Cooperation and the Mekong-United States Association.
The two nations are also at odds in the South China Sea, where Washington challenges Beijing’s claim on most of the waterway, an important conduit for trade that is also rich in energy resources.
(Additional reporting from David Stanway in Shanghai; edited by Andrew Cawthorne)
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