The will for transboundary management of the Mekong River, unevenly divided amongst six national borders, rises and falls as its water level does.
However, now, due to the assistance of the American space agency NASA, satellite data will play an increasingly vital role in studying the river’s pulse. In early May, the organization announced a growing initiative with the Mekong River Commission and the Asian Center for Disaster Preparedness. The partnership will monitor the present satellite network within the basin in hopes of narrowing the “data parity” gap between its upstream and downstream sections.
Data sharing between Mekong countries has long been a flashpoint on the river, which is facing a cascade of mounting pressures. The satellite network will prioritize data processing on the river’s most existential problems: hydropower development and climate change.
Experts hope that real-time information on reservoirs, rainfall and water flow will ultimately help riverside communities survive the changing “Mighty Mekong.” At the identical time, they warn that this data might not be available to local people for a minimum of several years, leaving many guessing concerning the extremes of the region’s monsoon climate.
“There is an urgent need for data transparency to better understand how all these different factors influence the Mekong,” said Ming Li Yong, who studies transboundary river management on the East-West Center, a U.S. government research group. “But data transparency is one thing, what you do with it to then make it useful to people is another thing entirely.”
Stretching 4,350 km, the Mekong is the longest river in Southeast Asia. The headwaters originate in China, where the water flows from the Tibetan plateau, and the river is generally known as the Lancang. Downstream, the river flows through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before emptying into the South China Sea.
In China, there are 11 major dams along the river. Although this infrastructure isn’t yet as robust within the Lower Basin, the will to develop is reflected within the proposal for 11 more dams for Laos and Cambodia.
“These dams are operated in different countries by different companies and there is not a lot of data transparency on how,” Yong said. “This has consequences for communities living along the river, whose levels depend on the seasonal rise and fall of the Mekong, as well as consequences for hydropower around the river.”
Relations between China and the five lower countries are “a little bit complicated,” Yong said with a diplomatic pause. She explained that upstream, China has the upper hand in managing the Mekong, making it “difficult to encourage or oblige China to share data or hearken to the concerns of downstream actors.”
China’s Ministry of Water Resources has agreed to share year-round rainfall and river level data from two monitoring stations in “a landmark agreement” in 2020. But river watchers have long argued that more information is required – each from China and from the five lower Mekong countries, where river data collection capabilities vary widely.
“[Since] data sharing can be based on the principle of reciprocity, within the absence of which there may be little incentive for countries to share data with one another,” Yong said.
Steering this policy pendulum, and the movement of the river itself, is the responsibility of the Mekong River Commission, an intergovernmental advisory organization with the seemingly thankless task of facilitating collaborative management and sustainable development of the waterways.
The Commission’s Director-General, Anoulak Kittikhoun, consistently emphasizes the importance of knowledge transparency. Last yr, in his first-ever State of the Mekong speech, he said data was the important thing to “water diplomacy” and asserted that Mekong management was decided by “facts, not feelings” – a sentiment he reiterated on this yr’s speech, notably calling for more transparency exchange of knowledge on dams and reservoirs.
“The new data from SERVIR will have a positive impact on the scientific conversation… They represent a step towards better and more effective river basin management,” the Mekong River Commission Secretariat wrote in an email to Globe of Southeast Asia. “Without sufficient information, effective management is a challenge. By incorporating additional data from different sources, we can compare and verify information, thus improving the quality of our knowledge.”
NASA developed the SERVIR satellite network as an entity cooperating with the river commission, with the American development agency USAID.
SERVIR uses a network of about 30 different satellites to process images for governments and regional organizations that manage natural resources, explained Amanda Markert, head of SERVIR’s regional science coordination team. The initiative has been lively within the Lower Mekong for nearly a decade, developing reservoir assessment tools and tracking air pollution.
Markert said that over the following five years, SERVIR will expand its reach into Southeast Asia and construct data tools specifically for the Mekong.
“The public facing page is a web interface tool, a map that provides information about the different components of water flow [in]water runoff, water level,” Markert said.
In relation to hydropower, Mekong utilities will give attention to tracking dam levels to learn how much water is being retained from the remaining of the river.
However, the SERVIR team quickly determined that the satellites wouldn’t be tilted upstream.
“We are looking at the river that flows into the Lower Mekong, but we are not working specifically in China,” Markert said.
The issue of China also appeared elsewhere within the partnership.
“Satellite data knows no borders between countries, so technically, yes, we can look at reservoirs in China,” said Peeranan Towashiraporn, department director on the Asian Center for Disaster Preparedness and party chief of the SERVIR project.
However, he added that the initiative “is not going to cover other reservoirs outside the region.”
Along the river, a dangerous duo of unannounced reservoir releases and heavy rainfall are making vulnerable riverside communities much more at risk of flash flooding. On the opposite hand, the unknown amount of water held back by upstream dams similtaneously low rainfall occurs could also cripple agriculture across the Mekong.
“Rainfall is vital… so people need real-time information,” Peeranan said from Bangkok, where the middle is predicated. “We can use this information to inform governments and regional institutions to take action to address specific issues that may impact their residents.”
As an example, he said that if farmers were notified months prematurely of regional weather patterns and mainstream water levels, they may then prepare different crops or techniques to guard against flood or drought.
While tools to gather this data are currently being developed, Peeranan said it could take as much as 4 years before the info is quickly available to the farming and fishing communities that need it most.
“We need to make sure that this information and data can flow from the satellites to regional institutions, to countries and all the way to the communities that can use it,” Peeranan said. “We may have to build on existing dissemination systems that countries already have in place, from national to sub-national to local levels.”
While it’s still a piece in progress, he said the project “ensures everyone within the region has equity in access to data and data.”
