We Indians have historically had a deep emotional connect with our rivers.

We see them as extension of our society, often elevating them to godly status.

While most rivers are treated as females (Nadi), there are instances where rivers have been treated as males (‘Nad‘). Many female rivers are also categorized as ‘Kanya‘ or, unmarried female.

A glimpse of how Indian rivers are personified can be also found in the writings of Kaka Kelkar, in his famous book ‘Jeevan Leela‘. However, despite our deep cultural association with rivers, today, our understanding of rivers has changed remarkably.

A river is now treated as key to economic development measured by the big dams, navigation and other developmental projects which has diluted our understanding of a river from a life-line to a resource available for exploitation.

Recently the New Zealand government has granted the status of a ‘living entity’ to Whanganui river. Afterwards, the Uttarakhand High Court has also given similar legal status to River Ganga and River Yamuna.

Few days ago, in a public event Shri Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh promised that his government will soon introduce a bill to give River Narmada (see photo) the rights of a living being. It’s expected that other state governments will follow soon.

Before this, however, it is critical for both citizens and the government to recognize and understand what constitutes the identity and existence of a river. Every river has its own characteristics, its own behaviour and an entirely unique ecology which it supports.

Only after that we can ask the secondary question-what do we mean by ‘rights’ of a river and what constitutes its ‘best interest’?

Rights of a river

For this, we should first and foremost understand the river and how it functions. Then, the peculiar characteristics of our rivers need to be accepted, respected and protected if we really want to make ‘rights’ of a river meaningful.

When a river flows, it erodes the rocks and soil and carries the sediments along with its water and ultimately deposits them in its lower stretches before it meets its destiny in the ocean. Erosion, transportation and deposition are three basic life functions of any river.

For effective erosion and transportation of sediments, it requires uninterrupted flow (aviral) which would mean unobstructed flow of ‘water’ and ‘sediments’. The deposition of sediments occurs mainly when the river flows through plains during floods and at the river mouth. Islands like the Sundarbans are result of such accumulation of sediments.

This process has been severely affected in last few decades due to obstruction of the River Ganga in the upstream. This has resulted in regular deposition of huge volume of sediments much earlier in states like Bihar and West Bengal which has now become a massive problem in itself.

A river not just flow longitudinally, but it also requires horizontal space to expand its spread, which in simple terms can be called flood. A river also repairs itself, creating new ways to flow which can be termed as a river’s expression.

Floods are often seen as a form of disaster. However, flooding is a very important ecological process which helps in rejuvenation of soils with nutrients as well as recharging groundwater. A flood, these days is disastrous because we have interrupted with the natural journey of a river or encroached its space for expansion.

Allowing our rivers to live – not just exist

We have several examples in India where attempts to control a River through embankments have miserably failed. Instead of transferring fertile fine silt, deposition of coarse sands have made thousands of hectares of land barren as we saw in 2008 historic flood when river Kosi breached an embankment causing irreparable damage in northern Bihar.

Uttarakhand floods in 2013 and Chennai floods in 2015 show how obstructing the natural flow of rivers can destroy to life and property. Therefore, our own interests are intimately tied with those of the river and the need to demarcate the floodplains of our rivers along with strong laws cannot be over-emphasised.

As the river plays through its journey, it bends and meanders, when it flows through shallower gradient, often part of active floodplains. Meandering also leads to formation of Oxbow lakes, where a portion of river gets cut off from mainstream and becomes a natural reservoir on its bank supporting both aquatic and terrestrial life besides providing water for irrigation.

Protection of floodplains should essentially protect the river’s right to meander as well.

A river is also not just stream of water flowing from upstream to downstream collecting surface water from its tributaries and surface of its catchment areas. The initial source can be a glacier in Himalayan region or even a lake / small stream like in case of most of non-Himalayan rivers. The primary source of water of a river during dry seasons come from subsurface water reservoirs which is known as ‘base flow’ – the groundwater discharge of the stream.

This base flow, though may not be visible actually keeps a river alive. With increasing dependence on groundwater for human needs, this base flow has drastically reduced. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that abstraction of groundwater be closely regulated and monitored and alternatives like creating offshore reservoirs and wetlands be promoted.

What are the ‘best interests’ of a river?

When we grant anybody a legal entity, naturally the question would arise – who will decide its best interest and who can be its custodian or guardian? Given the mixed perceptions and conflicting understanding of river, it is a significant challenge for a country like India.

While most governments are exploring possibilities of optimal utilisation of rivers as a resource, several environmental experts advocate protection of these rivers, its natural flow and its ecology for their and our own sustenance. Though both the concerns are well recognized, yet the hindsight suggests economic interests taking over ecological concerns.

For example, one thing which was very hard to be established and remained ‘an elephant in the room’ was the non-use value of the river. Governments and even big financial institutions like the World Bank have consistently neglected the non-use values of our rivers in their cost-benefit analysis of ‘developmental projects’ on the pretext that the same cannot be calculated with any precision.

But does the use value of river exhaust its whole value, or is there something beyond economics? Are there cultural, historical, emotional, aesthetic, religious and spiritual dimensions to a river’s being that make it far more than a mere ‘resource’?

The government seems to be recognizing the cultural flow of a river through programs like ‘Namami Gange’ and ‘Namami Narmade’ and look like taking steps in the right direction. However, river activists have equally criticized the same government for promoting dams, navigational dredging, river-inter-linking and undertaking constructions on river banks and floodplains which go against the best interest of the river.

Even the important law like ‘River Regulation Zone’ is pending with the Centre, though the roadmap was prepared in 2013 which itself casts doubts on the seriousness of such slogans and programmes.

Time to start correcting past mistakes

It is also important to understand that today we have hardly any major rivers remaining in its natural character and many of them are severely ill and dying either at the hands of engineering marvels or through poisons discharged into them through sewage and effluents.

In this, what place does a river enjoy in our imagination of sustainable development, whose sustenance and whose development are we talking about?

Therefore, we must strive to keep the best interest of the River at top priority and start by correcting our mistakes in past. That would certainly require some unconventional decisions by government and willingness to make sacrifices by the people.

Debadityo Sinha is an Environmentalist based in New Delhi. He is founder of Vindhya Bachao Abhiyan and has litigated extensively for protection of rivers, landscapes and other environmental justice issues.

In a recent landmark judgment on his petition, National Green Tribunal has quashed the Environmental Clearance of a 1320 MW thermal power plant which was planning to abstract water from River Ganga on the basis of insufficient impact assessment studies and concealment of facts. He was also member of the civil society delegation which convinced World Bank to reconsider the proposal of construction of barrages for National Waterways-1.

He is also working as Senior Resident Fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, New Delhi. He can be contacted at debadityo@gmail.com, and tweets @debadityo.

How we farm and feed ourselves says a lot about our society’s priorities.

Like many things in today’s world, food has largely been forced into hungry jaws of hyper-capitalism driven by the twin pistons of ‘economies of scale’ and ‘efficiency’.

Large-scale, industrial agri-business is proffered as the only way we can feed ourselves in the face of growing populations and dwindling resources.

But this is just one of the myths of our techno-capitalist worldview. And it needn’t be this way.

Small-scale, agro-ecological farming can, and does, provide a model for agriculture that provide enough food, equitably, ecologically and economically.

The Ecological Land Co-operative is a social enterprise helps new entrants into ecological agriculture in England supporting the growth of farming that works with the grain of nature.

Land, land, everywhere – but not a patch to farm!

Farming and horticulture are incredibly hard to get into for new entrants. It’s no surprise the average age of a British farmer stands at 59.

High set up costs, high costs of housing, a history of land amalgamation and a planning system anathema to small-scale agriculture make the barriers for new entrants seemingly insurmountable.

The price of agricultural land is now trading at record price levels of approximately £8,500 per acre. Between 2000-2010 new farm entrants accounted for just 4% of agricultural land purchasers. Wedded to this is the cost of rural housing. The average house price in rural England has more than doubled over the past decade to over £250,000, but the average salary is still £21,000.

The historical trend in land amalgamation has lead to the availability of a fewer number of predominantly large farms for purchase. This has happened at the same time that the number of County Farms and smallholdings has declined. The result is a substantial body of people who wish to farm an ecological smallholding but are unable to afford to do so.

“New entrants to farming have no possibility of buying a farm in England”, says Zoe Wangler, Executive Director of the Ecological Land Co-operative. “The cost of land and rural housing is too high. Yet new entrants have the passion, vision and skills needed to reduce the negative environmental impacts of conventional farming and globalised food distribution.”

The Ecological Land Co-operative

The core business of the ELC is the creation of smallholding clusters. The ELC buys agricultural land and seeks planning permission for new residential smallholdings as well as providing shared infrastructure. The ‘starter farms’ are then leased to smallholders – well below market rates – on a long and secure leasehold.

Sites are protected for affordability and ecological agriculture use in perpetuity on the ideas and advice of organic farmers, ecologists, planners, customers, and local residents, the prospective cluster of smallholdings has a binding whole site ecological management plan.

“Two things attracted us to the ELC”, says Ruth Wilson, of Steepholding, one of the smallholdings at the ELC’s first site, Greenham Reach. “One was the cost, which is based on the land price plus there was some infrastructure. The other really important one was the support for the planning side of things.

“Having two young children, setting up and doing this kind of thing, is quite hard work, and we wanted that element of risk – and potentially risk – taken out of it. Having met a lot of people getting into ecological agriculture and hearing their stories of having to go through planning appeals and seeing how much energy that had consumed was a major draw to us coming to the ELC to take that energy drain out of the equation.”

As a not-for-profit community benefit society the ELC largely relies on public financing to carry out their work. Members not only invest money, but are backing a values-led approach where the returns aren’t simply material and immediate but take a longer view longer such as the health of the land, the continuation of rural skills, rekindling local economies as well as the production of good, healthy food.

Their community share offer, in partnership with Ethex, experts in helping people make social investments, runs until 12th June (2017). Community Shares allow people to directly support enterprises that matter to them.

Inviting members of the public to invest, the ELC is looking to raise £340,000 for the creation of two new clusters of small farms. Investors are offered up to 3% interest on share capital annually. The minimum investment is £500 (in withdrawable shares) and anyone can invest.

The answer: small-scale ecological farming

Forward-thinking, stewardship-minded and ecologically based, small-scale farming injects creativity and care into agriculture. Small-scale farms make a distinctive contribution to rural life and economies. Providing local food, generating jobs (and income) such farmers are moving from being ‘price takers’ (as dictated by supermarkets) to ‘price makers’ (connecting with consumers).

Scaling back, not scaling up can provide a model for a truly ecological agriculture.

Studies have shown that the smaller the farm size the greater the yield per hectare. A 2014 UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report concludes that family farms produce over three-quarters of the world’s food. This is a direct challenge to the myth that Big Ag feeds the world.

Crop diversity, species rich polycultures and sound ecological land management means less use of chemicals, more care and more labour. And more labour translates as a higher quality of work inspired by an ecological ethic.

The industrial farming model has led to an ecological crisis in the UK. And we’ve a lot to answer for in our pursuit of more and more. Biodiversity loss, the degradation of soils, environmental contamination from agrochemicals, disease and antibiotic resistance, high greenhouse gas emissions, and huge amounts of food waste.

According to the UN 75% of the world’s food is generated from only 12 plants and five animal species. This narrowing and specialisation is prone to the shocks and challenges of a changing climate.

Despite this 84% of the world’s farms are less than two hectares. That’s a little over the size of two football pitches. For small-scale ecological agriculture biodiversity is the cornerstone of farm life.

Making the dream real in 21st century England

Such an approach can help create a more ecological healthy countryside which provides employment, produces good food and makes a positive contribution to wildlife and the natural world – the ultimate store of our natural capital which drives the planet.

And it’s increasingly taking root in the UK, drawing inspiration from the past while employing the latest ideas and techniques from organic, no-dig, permaculture, agroforestry and agroecology methods.

The ELC seeks to create such ecologically based stewardship-minded farms to make small-scale agriculture a viable reality in 21st century England.

Phil Moore is one half of the communications team for the Ecological Land Co-operative. He is passionate about ‘enlightened agriculture’ – in the words of Colin Tudge – and works to promote it through documentary film and writing. He tweets at @ecolandcoop and @permapeople

More information

The Ecological Land Co-operative community share offer seeks to draw investment from the public for the creation of two new clusters of farms. Inviting members of the public to invest, the ELC is looking to raise £340,000 for the creation of two new clusters of small farms.

Latest News: The community share offer has just pushed over the £200K mark! With three weeks to go, our supporters have already raised £205,651 of investment. Amazing!

Investors are offered up to 3% interest on share capital annually. The minimum investment is £500 (in withdrawable shares) and anyone can invest. The share offer runs until 12th June 2017.

The Ecological Land Co-operative is a social enterprise helps new entrants into ecological agriculture in England supporting the growth of farming that works with the grain of nature.

In Thai and Lao languages, Mekong roughly translates as ‘mother of rivers.’ As one of the world’s largest waterways it stretches more than 4,000 kilometers thrusting through China, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before emptying into the South China Sea.

For wildlife enthusiasts in the region, these are exciting times. A horned lizard and rainbow-headed snake were among 163 delightful new species documented last year by scientists alongside 10 endangered Irrawaddy dolphin calves. Fewer than 90 Irrawaddy dolphins exist on the planet.

But all is not well.

In January 2016, build on the 260-megawatt hydroelectric Don Sahong dam began less than a mile from Laos’ border with Cambodia. The area is home to a trans-boundary dolphin pool where numbers are critical. Just three remain. A figure the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warns is ‘no longer viable. (Functionally Extinct)

In recent months the dolphins have moved out of their two-kilometer preservation into areas where illegal fishing methods are rife. Villagers blame the daily boom of dynamite used to blast rocks in dam construction.

“Even when you are inside the water, it’s very loud,” says Mekong river ranger, Sok Laing, responsible for patrolling the dolphins’ protected area. “The noise is too loud and dolphins need to live in a place that is quiet,” he adds.

It’s a worry for villagers who rely on the thousands of tourists the dolphins bring yearly.

“Only local (protected) fishing is allowed in this part of the river but where the dolphins are now, no one is responsible for controlling,” says Bu Maen, a 27-year-old boat driver.

His village, Anlong Svay Thom, in Cambodia’s Stung Treng province, lies just south of the dam. It’s a smattering of wooden frame houses built on stilts in the Khmer fashion that overlook the river.

A new road was constructed to provide greater access to the secluded village. This boosted business for those driving tourists across the waters.

“Customers increased because of the road but now the dolphins have gone I don’t know what will happen,” Maen says.

Dolphin habitats threatened by human activity

Irrawaddy dolphins in Cambodia can be found in Stung Treng and Kratie, forming pools they generally live in for life.

These freshwater marine mammals are one of the oldest creatures in the world, long symbolizing the health of a river but forced now into near extinction by human activity.

Illegal fishermen are wise to the times when dynamite is used on the construction site say villagers. Some employ homemade bombs to blast fish; particularly in the new area the dolphins seek refuge.

“Poachers are very intelligent and very smart,” says Rin Narouen, conservation area manager at WWF Cambodia. “They use it on the same day so nobody can catch them.”

He believes if no action is taken, “they [dolphins] will become extinct.”

If such dire prognosis were to happen, “it means the income of people here will be affected,” says Laing. “Right now people come here because they want to see dolphins, if the dolphins are gone then no tourists will come again.”

Why governments are damming the Mekong

Around 120 million in Southeast Asia have no access to electricity. South East Asia Energy Outlook

In Cambodia this equates to 44 percent of its population according to Word Bank figures. Access To Energy

For governments that border the river, the cheaper and greener solution is to dam. In China for example, 88 percent of energy consumption uses fossil fuels. Fossil Fuel Energy Consumption

Large hydropower dams already exist on the Mekong in China, but more than 100 are planned by Mekong bordering countries. Of these, 11 will dam the river’s mainstream in Laos and Cambodia built by Thai, Malaysian, Chinese, and Vietnamese developers.

Laos, the poorest of its neighbors with a GDP of just $12.37 billion has declared its ambition to be ‘the battery of Southeast Asia.’ It will host nine of the dams for much needed revenue generation despite not benefitting from the electricity produced. For example, Don Sahong’s energy will be exported mainly to Thailand and Cambodia.

 Life in Preah Rumkel remains as it has for centuries

Fish is a staple sought from a river containing over 1,000 species of fish. The Mekong accounts for an astonishing one quarter of the world’s freshwater catch.  

Every morning, 29-year-old fisherman Horn Phoeun heads onto the Mekong.

“Before there was a lot of fish but now there are not many,” says Phoeun.  He has frequently changed the pools he fishes from in order to accommodate for the loss of catch. He blames illegal fishing and dams.

“It takes longer to catch the same amount of fish,” he says. Like many other villagers, he is considering switching to farming seeds and nuts. But it’s an expensive occupation costing $750 more to run and one riddled with risks of flooding.

“My father was a fisherman, my whole generation were fisherman,” he adds.

Upstream the Lower Sesan 2 dam is almost complete.

Some 34 miles east of the Don Sahong, fishermen and women gather on the muddy banks of the river’s Sesan channel with reams of mesh nets cascading around them.

Almost lost in the fabric of the net, they must decide whether any further attempts at fishing today will bring in a catch.

Here most come from Pluk Village in northern Cambodia, close to the $800m Lower Sesan 2 dam nearing completion on a Mekong tributary. It’s a venture between China’s Lancang Hydropower International Energy, Cambodia’s Royal Group, and Vietnam’s EVN International.

Utha Camy, a fisherman in his late 50s, stoops beside the nets. “Before the dams I would have caught more than 5 kilos by now,” says Camy. “And if I kept fishing from now until 6.30pm I would have caught a further 10 kilos.”

Today, after an unsettling 6am rise he has caught just one fish in five hours. The number of dams already built mean irregular variations in water levels that interfere with fish migration and spawning. There is no longer enough fish to go around.

“We all know this but right now there is no job for us to do, so we continue to just fish,” shrugs Camy.

A 2012 study by researchers from the U.S. and Cambodia estimated that the Sesan 2 dam once complete would reduce fish catch by 9 percent. Fish Biodiversity, Food Security & Hydropower in the Mekong River

The Mekong River Commission (MRC) oversees dam constructions on the lower Mekong through a 1995 agreement. It’s a committee of four member nations-Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. China is not part of the voluntary commission and it’s yet to resolve disagreements on projects.

And as the Ecologist has reported previously, many of the dams have gone ahead without backing from all member states. Death By Strangulation

So many dams are catastrophic for fisheries activists warn

According to conservationists, Cambodia’s 400-megawatt Sesan 2 dam will prevent sediment travel down to the Mekong’s delta, depriving it of nutrients needed for aquatic life and rice production.

A two and a half year study submitted by Vietnam to the MRC in 2016 concluded that there were “high to very high adverse effects on some of the key sectors and environmental resources in Cambodia and Vietnam,” as a result of planned dams.

Around 40 percent of Vietnam’s rice stock is grown in the delta. The country is still recovering from last year’s scathing El Nino induced drought – its worst in a century. [http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/vietnam-hit-by-worst/2562802.html].

“The further downstream a hydropower is sited, the more impact it will have on fisheries, notably on fish migration,” Marc Goichot, water lead at WWF’s Greater Mekong Programme said via email.

In the case of Don Sahong, for example the dam would block the only channel known as a year round route for migrating fish, vital to around 60 million people who rely on the protein the Mekong’s fish provide.

Mega First Corporation, the dam’s developers have in the past dismissed concerns, saying a new fish passage would be built.

“What the developers have done is widen some of the other surrounding channels and blast clear them out so that they are passable for fish migration as alternative routes,” says Maureen Harris, Southeast Asia program director at advocacy group International Rivers. “The problem is they’ve been doing this as they build the dam.”

Scientists believe there is lack of sufficient evidence that fish would migrate through new channels. The Myth of Sustainable Hydropower

“There are no example of success in large tropical rivers,” says Goichot.

In northern Cambodia villagers battle developers

Bai Pumsen, a 30-year-old rice farmer and his family of five were relocated six months ago to make way for the Sesan 2. His old home in Kbal Romeas will be flooded along with 5,000 others when the dam opens later this year.

Pumsen’s resettlement village currently called Kbal Romeas II is a regimented mix of yellow and blue concrete houses alongside traditional wooden builds.

Each family is entitled to either a house or $6,000 to build a new home as compensation and a 12-acre land to farm. New villages boast schools, health centers, and crucially electricity. However villagers complain the land isn’t ideal for farming, and is far from freshwater sources.

“Staying here is more difficult,” says Pumsen. “More than 50 families are waiting with no job to do.”

Land is yet to be cleared for agriculture.

Like Pumsen, many frequently make the two hour round trip back to their old rice fields for work and food and are demanding to move back.

“Here I have to spend a lot of money,” says 31-year-old mother of two, Sarun Nan. “Before there was no need to buy food, we just go down to the river and catch fish … now also for drinking and cooking I need to buy water.”

Nan and her husband commute by motorbike to their old village to fish and hunt in the forest. “I don’t know what I will do if I cannot continue to go,” she says.

There are some in Kbal Romeas who refuse to move to the resettlement site having seen how their former neighbours are struggling.

Dams are not the problem say experts but they need to be better planned

“It is easy to assess which ones will have the greatest negative impacts and the most positive. Common sense would be to prioritise the ones with least negative impacts, and postpone the ones with the greatest,” says Goichot. “Don Sahong, Lower Sesan, are in the 20 percent group with the highest negative impacts. They should not have been prioritised.”

Others point to more ecological means of energy generation through solar power. But these are difficult to attract financial investment and slow to generate immediate revenue.

“Typically what’s usually done in these projects is an economic impact assessment, where they weigh up the benefit but not the costs,” believes Mark Zeitoun, professor of water policy and security, at the University of East Anglia in England.

Zeitoun has been researching similar environmental issues on the $2.4 billion Merowe dam built on the River Nile in Northern Sudan. It’s displaced more than 50,000 people, blocking fish migration and degrading water quality. Impacts of Merowe Dam

In the US, older dams are being decommissioned. After its largest dam removal – the 210-foot-high Glines Canyon dam – salmon have returned to the Elwha river in Washington after almost a century of absence say scientists. River Restoration

But, “decommissioning is very expensive, much more expensive than building a dam,” adds Zeitoun. “Once you build a dam you are locked into it for a very long time.”

“The dams are affecting everyone who live along the river,” reflects Laing as he sits, legs crossed in front of his house looking ahead towards the calm waters. “We have to try to find a way to keep the fish and the dolphins within the Mekong. But how I don’t know.”

This author

Nosmot Gbadamosi is a freelance journalist based in London. She can be followed on Twitter @nosmotg

Nicolas Axelrod and Thomas Cristofoletti are co-founders of Ruom, a collective of journalists based in Asia. Read stories here [http://www.ruom.net/feature-stories/]

More information: Save the Mekong [https://savethemekong.org] campaign.

Also on The Ecologist: How the largest inland fisheries in the world are being destroyed. Destuction of the world’s largest inland fisheries

We Indians have historically had a deep emotional connect with our rivers.

We see them as extension of our society, often elevating them to godly status.

While most rivers are treated as females (Nadi), there are instances where rivers have been treated as males (‘Nad‘). Many female rivers are also categorized as ‘Kanya‘ or, unmarried female.

A glimpse of how Indian rivers are personified can be also found in the writings of Kaka Kelkar, in his famous book ‘Jeevan Leela‘. However, despite our deep cultural association with rivers, today, our understanding of rivers has changed remarkably.

A river is now treated as key to economic development measured by the big dams, navigation and other developmental projects which has diluted our understanding of a river from a life-line to a resource available for exploitation.

Recently the New Zealand government has granted the status of a ‘living entity’ to Whanganui river. Afterwards, the Uttarakhand High Court has also given similar legal status to River Ganga and River Yamuna.

Few days ago, in a public event Shri Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh promised that his government will soon introduce a bill to give River Narmada (see photo) the rights of a living being. It’s expected that other state governments will follow soon.

Before this, however, it is critical for both citizens and the government to recognize and understand what constitutes the identity and existence of a river. Every river has its own characteristics, its own behaviour and an entirely unique ecology which it supports.

Only after that we can ask the secondary question-what do we mean by ‘rights’ of a river and what constitutes its ‘best interest’?

Rights of a river

For this, we should first and foremost understand the river and how it functions. Then, the peculiar characteristics of our rivers need to be accepted, respected and protected if we really want to make ‘rights’ of a river meaningful.

When a river flows, it erodes the rocks and soil and carries the sediments along with its water and ultimately deposits them in its lower stretches before it meets its destiny in the ocean. Erosion, transportation and deposition are three basic life functions of any river.

For effective erosion and transportation of sediments, it requires uninterrupted flow (aviral) which would mean unobstructed flow of ‘water’ and ‘sediments’. The deposition of sediments occurs mainly when the river flows through plains during floods and at the river mouth. Islands like the Sundarbans are result of such accumulation of sediments.

This process has been severely affected in last few decades due to obstruction of the River Ganga in the upstream. This has resulted in regular deposition of huge volume of sediments much earlier in states like Bihar and West Bengal which has now become a massive problem in itself.

A river not just flow longitudinally, but it also requires horizontal space to expand its spread, which in simple terms can be called flood. A river also repairs itself, creating new ways to flow which can be termed as a river’s expression.

Floods are often seen as a form of disaster. However, flooding is a very important ecological process which helps in rejuvenation of soils with nutrients as well as recharging groundwater. A flood, these days is disastrous because we have interrupted with the natural journey of a river or encroached its space for expansion.

Allowing our rivers to live – not just exist

We have several examples in India where attempts to control a River through embankments have miserably failed. Instead of transferring fertile fine silt, deposition of coarse sands have made thousands of hectares of land barren as we saw in 2008 historic flood when river Kosi breached an embankment causing irreparable damage in northern Bihar.

Uttarakhand floods in 2013 and Chennai floods in 2015 show how obstructing the natural flow of rivers can destroy to life and property. Therefore, our own interests are intimately tied with those of the river and the need to demarcate the floodplains of our rivers along with strong laws cannot be over-emphasised.

As the river plays through its journey, it bends and meanders, when it flows through shallower gradient, often part of active floodplains. Meandering also leads to formation of Oxbow lakes, where a portion of river gets cut off from mainstream and becomes a natural reservoir on its bank supporting both aquatic and terrestrial life besides providing water for irrigation.

Protection of floodplains should essentially protect the river’s right to meander as well.

A river is also not just stream of water flowing from upstream to downstream collecting surface water from its tributaries and surface of its catchment areas. The initial source can be a glacier in Himalayan region or even a lake / small stream like in case of most of non-Himalayan rivers. The primary source of water of a river during dry seasons come from subsurface water reservoirs which is known as ‘base flow’ – the groundwater discharge of the stream.

This base flow, though may not be visible actually keeps a river alive. With increasing dependence on groundwater for human needs, this base flow has drastically reduced. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that abstraction of groundwater be closely regulated and monitored and alternatives like creating offshore reservoirs and wetlands be promoted.

What are the ‘best interests’ of a river?

When we grant anybody a legal entity, naturally the question would arise – who will decide its best interest and who can be its custodian or guardian? Given the mixed perceptions and conflicting understanding of river, it is a significant challenge for a country like India.

While most governments are exploring possibilities of optimal utilisation of rivers as a resource, several environmental experts advocate protection of these rivers, its natural flow and its ecology for their and our own sustenance. Though both the concerns are well recognized, yet the hindsight suggests economic interests taking over ecological concerns.

For example, one thing which was very hard to be established and remained ‘an elephant in the room’ was the non-use value of the river. Governments and even big financial institutions like the World Bank have consistently neglected the non-use values of our rivers in their cost-benefit analysis of ‘developmental projects’ on the pretext that the same cannot be calculated with any precision.

But does the use value of river exhaust its whole value, or is there something beyond economics? Are there cultural, historical, emotional, aesthetic, religious and spiritual dimensions to a river’s being that make it far more than a mere ‘resource’?

The government seems to be recognizing the cultural flow of a river through programs like ‘Namami Gange’ and ‘Namami Narmade’ and look like taking steps in the right direction. However, river activists have equally criticized the same government for promoting dams, navigational dredging, river-inter-linking and undertaking constructions on river banks and floodplains which go against the best interest of the river.

Even the important law like ‘River Regulation Zone’ is pending with the Centre, though the roadmap was prepared in 2013 which itself casts doubts on the seriousness of such slogans and programmes.

Time to start correcting past mistakes

It is also important to understand that today we have hardly any major rivers remaining in its natural character and many of them are severely ill and dying either at the hands of engineering marvels or through poisons discharged into them through sewage and effluents.

In this, what place does a river enjoy in our imagination of sustainable development, whose sustenance and whose development are we talking about?

Therefore, we must strive to keep the best interest of the River at top priority and start by correcting our mistakes in past. That would certainly require some unconventional decisions by government and willingness to make sacrifices by the people.

Debadityo Sinha is an Environmentalist based in New Delhi. He is founder of Vindhya Bachao Abhiyan and has litigated extensively for protection of rivers, landscapes and other environmental justice issues.

In a recent landmark judgment on his petition, National Green Tribunal has quashed the Environmental Clearance of a 1320 MW thermal power plant which was planning to abstract water from River Ganga on the basis of insufficient impact assessment studies and concealment of facts. He was also member of the civil society delegation which convinced World Bank to reconsider the proposal of construction of barrages for National Waterways-1.

He is also working as Senior Resident Fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, New Delhi. He can be contacted at debadityo@gmail.com, and tweets @debadityo.

How we farm and feed ourselves says a lot about our society’s priorities.

Like many things in today’s world, food has largely been forced into hungry jaws of hyper-capitalism driven by the twin pistons of ‘economies of scale’ and ‘efficiency’.

Large-scale, industrial agri-business is proffered as the only way we can feed ourselves in the face of growing populations and dwindling resources.

But this is just one of the myths of our techno-capitalist worldview. And it needn’t be this way.

Small-scale, agro-ecological farming can, and does, provide a model for agriculture that provide enough food, equitably, ecologically and economically.

The Ecological Land Co-operative is a social enterprise helps new entrants into ecological agriculture in England supporting the growth of farming that works with the grain of nature.

Land, land, everywhere – but not a patch to farm!

Farming and horticulture are incredibly hard to get into for new entrants. It’s no surprise the average age of a British farmer stands at 59.

High set up costs, high costs of housing, a history of land amalgamation and a planning system anathema to small-scale agriculture make the barriers for new entrants seemingly insurmountable.

The price of agricultural land is now trading at record price levels of approximately £8,500 per acre. Between 2000-2010 new farm entrants accounted for just 4% of agricultural land purchasers. Wedded to this is the cost of rural housing. The average house price in rural England has more than doubled over the past decade to over £250,000, but the average salary is still £21,000.

The historical trend in land amalgamation has lead to the availability of a fewer number of predominantly large farms for purchase. This has happened at the same time that the number of County Farms and smallholdings has declined. The result is a substantial body of people who wish to farm an ecological smallholding but are unable to afford to do so.

“New entrants to farming have no possibility of buying a farm in England”, says Zoe Wangler, Executive Director of the Ecological Land Co-operative. “The cost of land and rural housing is too high. Yet new entrants have the passion, vision and skills needed to reduce the negative environmental impacts of conventional farming and globalised food distribution.”

The Ecological Land Co-operative

The core business of the ELC is the creation of smallholding clusters. The ELC buys agricultural land and seeks planning permission for new residential smallholdings as well as providing shared infrastructure. The ‘starter farms’ are then leased to smallholders – well below market rates – on a long and secure leasehold.

Sites are protected for affordability and ecological agriculture use in perpetuity on the ideas and advice of organic farmers, ecologists, planners, customers, and local residents, the prospective cluster of smallholdings has a binding whole site ecological management plan.

“Two things attracted us to the ELC”, says Ruth Wilson, of Steepholding, one of the smallholdings at the ELC’s first site, Greenham Reach. “One was the cost, which is based on the land price plus there was some infrastructure. The other really important one was the support for the planning side of things.

“Having two young children, setting up and doing this kind of thing, is quite hard work, and we wanted that element of risk – and potentially risk – taken out of it. Having met a lot of people getting into ecological agriculture and hearing their stories of having to go through planning appeals and seeing how much energy that had consumed was a major draw to us coming to the ELC to take that energy drain out of the equation.”

As a not-for-profit community benefit society the ELC largely relies on public financing to carry out their work. Members not only invest money, but are backing a values-led approach where the returns aren’t simply material and immediate but take a longer view longer such as the health of the land, the continuation of rural skills, rekindling local economies as well as the production of good, healthy food.

Their community share offer, in partnership with Ethex, experts in helping people make social investments, runs until 12th June (2017). Community Shares allow people to directly support enterprises that matter to them.

Inviting members of the public to invest, the ELC is looking to raise £340,000 for the creation of two new clusters of small farms. Investors are offered up to 3% interest on share capital annually. The minimum investment is £500 (in withdrawable shares) and anyone can invest.

The answer: small-scale ecological farming

Forward-thinking, stewardship-minded and ecologically based, small-scale farming injects creativity and care into agriculture. Small-scale farms make a distinctive contribution to rural life and economies. Providing local food, generating jobs (and income) such farmers are moving from being ‘price takers’ (as dictated by supermarkets) to ‘price makers’ (connecting with consumers).

Scaling back, not scaling up can provide a model for a truly ecological agriculture.

Studies have shown that the smaller the farm size the greater the yield per hectare. A 2014 UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report concludes that family farms produce over three-quarters of the world’s food. This is a direct challenge to the myth that Big Ag feeds the world.

Crop diversity, species rich polycultures and sound ecological land management means less use of chemicals, more care and more labour. And more labour translates as a higher quality of work inspired by an ecological ethic.

The industrial farming model has led to an ecological crisis in the UK. And we’ve a lot to answer for in our pursuit of more and more. Biodiversity loss, the degradation of soils, environmental contamination from agrochemicals, disease and antibiotic resistance, high greenhouse gas emissions, and huge amounts of food waste.

According to the UN 75% of the world’s food is generated from only 12 plants and five animal species. This narrowing and specialisation is prone to the shocks and challenges of a changing climate.

Despite this 84% of the world’s farms are less than two hectares. That’s a little over the size of two football pitches. For small-scale ecological agriculture biodiversity is the cornerstone of farm life.

Making the dream real in 21st century England

Such an approach can help create a more ecological healthy countryside which provides employment, produces good food and makes a positive contribution to wildlife and the natural world – the ultimate store of our natural capital which drives the planet.

And it’s increasingly taking root in the UK, drawing inspiration from the past while employing the latest ideas and techniques from organic, no-dig, permaculture, agroforestry and agroecology methods.

The ELC seeks to create such ecologically based stewardship-minded farms to make small-scale agriculture a viable reality in 21st century England.

Phil Moore is one half of the communications team for the Ecological Land Co-operative. He is passionate about ‘enlightened agriculture’ – in the words of Colin Tudge – and works to promote it through documentary film and writing. He tweets at @ecolandcoop and @permapeople

More information

The Ecological Land Co-operative community share offer seeks to draw investment from the public for the creation of two new clusters of farms. Inviting members of the public to invest, the ELC is looking to raise £340,000 for the creation of two new clusters of small farms.

Latest News: The community share offer has just pushed over the £200K mark! With three weeks to go, our supporters have already raised £205,651 of investment. Amazing!

Investors are offered up to 3% interest on share capital annually. The minimum investment is £500 (in withdrawable shares) and anyone can invest. The share offer runs until 12th June 2017.

The Ecological Land Co-operative is a social enterprise helps new entrants into ecological agriculture in England supporting the growth of farming that works with the grain of nature.

In Thai and Lao languages, Mekong roughly translates as ‘mother of rivers.’ As one of the world’s largest waterways it stretches more than 4,000 kilometers thrusting through China, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before emptying into the South China Sea.

For wildlife enthusiasts in the region, these are exciting times. A horned lizard and rainbow-headed snake were among 163 delightful new species documented last year by scientists alongside 10 endangered Irrawaddy dolphin calves. Fewer than 90 Irrawaddy dolphins exist on the planet.

But all is not well.

In January 2016, build on the 260-megawatt hydroelectric Don Sahong dam began less than a mile from Laos’ border with Cambodia. The area is home to a trans-boundary dolphin pool where numbers are critical. Just three remain. A figure the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warns is ‘no longer viable. (Functionally Extinct)

In recent months the dolphins have moved out of their two-kilometer preservation into areas where illegal fishing methods are rife. Villagers blame the daily boom of dynamite used to blast rocks in dam construction.

“Even when you are inside the water, it’s very loud,” says Mekong river ranger, Sok Laing, responsible for patrolling the dolphins’ protected area. “The noise is too loud and dolphins need to live in a place that is quiet,” he adds.

It’s a worry for villagers who rely on the thousands of tourists the dolphins bring yearly.

“Only local (protected) fishing is allowed in this part of the river but where the dolphins are now, no one is responsible for controlling,” says Bu Maen, a 27-year-old boat driver.

His village, Anlong Svay Thom, in Cambodia’s Stung Treng province, lies just south of the dam. It’s a smattering of wooden frame houses built on stilts in the Khmer fashion that overlook the river.

A new road was constructed to provide greater access to the secluded village. This boosted business for those driving tourists across the waters.

“Customers increased because of the road but now the dolphins have gone I don’t know what will happen,” Maen says.

Dolphin habitats threatened by human activity

Irrawaddy dolphins in Cambodia can be found in Stung Treng and Kratie, forming pools they generally live in for life.

These freshwater marine mammals are one of the oldest creatures in the world, long symbolizing the health of a river but forced now into near extinction by human activity.

Illegal fishermen are wise to the times when dynamite is used on the construction site say villagers. Some employ homemade bombs to blast fish; particularly in the new area the dolphins seek refuge.

“Poachers are very intelligent and very smart,” says Rin Narouen, conservation area manager at WWF Cambodia. “They use it on the same day so nobody can catch them.”

He believes if no action is taken, “they [dolphins] will become extinct.”

If such dire prognosis were to happen, “it means the income of people here will be affected,” says Laing. “Right now people come here because they want to see dolphins, if the dolphins are gone then no tourists will come again.”

Why governments are damming the Mekong

Around 120 million in Southeast Asia have no access to electricity. South East Asia Energy Outlook

In Cambodia this equates to 44 percent of its population according to Word Bank figures. Access To Energy

For governments that border the river, the cheaper and greener solution is to dam. In China for example, 88 percent of energy consumption uses fossil fuels. Fossil Fuel Energy Consumption

Large hydropower dams already exist on the Mekong in China, but more than 100 are planned by Mekong bordering countries. Of these, 11 will dam the river’s mainstream in Laos and Cambodia built by Thai, Malaysian, Chinese, and Vietnamese developers.

Laos, the poorest of its neighbors with a GDP of just $12.37 billion has declared its ambition to be ‘the battery of Southeast Asia.’ It will host nine of the dams for much needed revenue generation despite not benefitting from the electricity produced. For example, Don Sahong’s energy will be exported mainly to Thailand and Cambodia.

 Life in Preah Rumkel remains as it has for centuries

Fish is a staple sought from a river containing over 1,000 species of fish. The Mekong accounts for an astonishing one quarter of the world’s freshwater catch.  

Every morning, 29-year-old fisherman Horn Phoeun heads onto the Mekong.

“Before there was a lot of fish but now there are not many,” says Phoeun.  He has frequently changed the pools he fishes from in order to accommodate for the loss of catch. He blames illegal fishing and dams.

“It takes longer to catch the same amount of fish,” he says. Like many other villagers, he is considering switching to farming seeds and nuts. But it’s an expensive occupation costing $750 more to run and one riddled with risks of flooding.

“My father was a fisherman, my whole generation were fisherman,” he adds.

Upstream the Lower Sesan 2 dam is almost complete.

Some 34 miles east of the Don Sahong, fishermen and women gather on the muddy banks of the river’s Sesan channel with reams of mesh nets cascading around them.

Almost lost in the fabric of the net, they must decide whether any further attempts at fishing today will bring in a catch.

Here most come from Pluk Village in northern Cambodia, close to the $800m Lower Sesan 2 dam nearing completion on a Mekong tributary. It’s a venture between China’s Lancang Hydropower International Energy, Cambodia’s Royal Group, and Vietnam’s EVN International.

Utha Camy, a fisherman in his late 50s, stoops beside the nets. “Before the dams I would have caught more than 5 kilos by now,” says Camy. “And if I kept fishing from now until 6.30pm I would have caught a further 10 kilos.”

Today, after an unsettling 6am rise he has caught just one fish in five hours. The number of dams already built mean irregular variations in water levels that interfere with fish migration and spawning. There is no longer enough fish to go around.

“We all know this but right now there is no job for us to do, so we continue to just fish,” shrugs Camy.

A 2012 study by researchers from the U.S. and Cambodia estimated that the Sesan 2 dam once complete would reduce fish catch by 9 percent. Fish Biodiversity, Food Security & Hydropower in the Mekong River

The Mekong River Commission (MRC) oversees dam constructions on the lower Mekong through a 1995 agreement. It’s a committee of four member nations-Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. China is not part of the voluntary commission and it’s yet to resolve disagreements on projects.

And as the Ecologist has reported previously, many of the dams have gone ahead without backing from all member states. Death By Strangulation

So many dams are catastrophic for fisheries activists warn

According to conservationists, Cambodia’s 400-megawatt Sesan 2 dam will prevent sediment travel down to the Mekong’s delta, depriving it of nutrients needed for aquatic life and rice production.

A two and a half year study submitted by Vietnam to the MRC in 2016 concluded that there were “high to very high adverse effects on some of the key sectors and environmental resources in Cambodia and Vietnam,” as a result of planned dams.

Around 40 percent of Vietnam’s rice stock is grown in the delta. The country is still recovering from last year’s scathing El Nino induced drought – its worst in a century. [http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/vietnam-hit-by-worst/2562802.html].

“The further downstream a hydropower is sited, the more impact it will have on fisheries, notably on fish migration,” Marc Goichot, water lead at WWF’s Greater Mekong Programme said via email.

In the case of Don Sahong, for example the dam would block the only channel known as a year round route for migrating fish, vital to around 60 million people who rely on the protein the Mekong’s fish provide.

Mega First Corporation, the dam’s developers have in the past dismissed concerns, saying a new fish passage would be built.

“What the developers have done is widen some of the other surrounding channels and blast clear them out so that they are passable for fish migration as alternative routes,” says Maureen Harris, Southeast Asia program director at advocacy group International Rivers. “The problem is they’ve been doing this as they build the dam.”

Scientists believe there is lack of sufficient evidence that fish would migrate through new channels. The Myth of Sustainable Hydropower

“There are no example of success in large tropical rivers,” says Goichot.

In northern Cambodia villagers battle developers

Bai Pumsen, a 30-year-old rice farmer and his family of five were relocated six months ago to make way for the Sesan 2. His old home in Kbal Romeas will be flooded along with 5,000 others when the dam opens later this year.

Pumsen’s resettlement village currently called Kbal Romeas II is a regimented mix of yellow and blue concrete houses alongside traditional wooden builds.

Each family is entitled to either a house or $6,000 to build a new home as compensation and a 12-acre land to farm. New villages boast schools, health centers, and crucially electricity. However villagers complain the land isn’t ideal for farming, and is far from freshwater sources.

“Staying here is more difficult,” says Pumsen. “More than 50 families are waiting with no job to do.”

Land is yet to be cleared for agriculture.

Like Pumsen, many frequently make the two hour round trip back to their old rice fields for work and food and are demanding to move back.

“Here I have to spend a lot of money,” says 31-year-old mother of two, Sarun Nan. “Before there was no need to buy food, we just go down to the river and catch fish … now also for drinking and cooking I need to buy water.”

Nan and her husband commute by motorbike to their old village to fish and hunt in the forest. “I don’t know what I will do if I cannot continue to go,” she says.

There are some in Kbal Romeas who refuse to move to the resettlement site having seen how their former neighbours are struggling.

Dams are not the problem say experts but they need to be better planned

“It is easy to assess which ones will have the greatest negative impacts and the most positive. Common sense would be to prioritise the ones with least negative impacts, and postpone the ones with the greatest,” says Goichot. “Don Sahong, Lower Sesan, are in the 20 percent group with the highest negative impacts. They should not have been prioritised.”

Others point to more ecological means of energy generation through solar power. But these are difficult to attract financial investment and slow to generate immediate revenue.

“Typically what’s usually done in these projects is an economic impact assessment, where they weigh up the benefit but not the costs,” believes Mark Zeitoun, professor of water policy and security, at the University of East Anglia in England.

Zeitoun has been researching similar environmental issues on the $2.4 billion Merowe dam built on the River Nile in Northern Sudan. It’s displaced more than 50,000 people, blocking fish migration and degrading water quality. Impacts of Merowe Dam

In the US, older dams are being decommissioned. After its largest dam removal – the 210-foot-high Glines Canyon dam – salmon have returned to the Elwha river in Washington after almost a century of absence say scientists. River Restoration

But, “decommissioning is very expensive, much more expensive than building a dam,” adds Zeitoun. “Once you build a dam you are locked into it for a very long time.”

“The dams are affecting everyone who live along the river,” reflects Laing as he sits, legs crossed in front of his house looking ahead towards the calm waters. “We have to try to find a way to keep the fish and the dolphins within the Mekong. But how I don’t know.”

This author

Nosmot Gbadamosi is a freelance journalist based in London. She can be followed on Twitter @nosmotg

Nicolas Axelrod and Thomas Cristofoletti are co-founders of Ruom, a collective of journalists based in Asia. Read stories here [http://www.ruom.net/feature-stories/]

More information: Save the Mekong [https://savethemekong.org] campaign.

Also on The Ecologist: How the largest inland fisheries in the world are being destroyed. Destuction of the world’s largest inland fisheries

We Indians have historically had a deep emotional connect with our rivers.

We see them as extension of our society, often elevating them to godly status.

While most rivers are treated as females (Nadi), there are instances where rivers have been treated as males (‘Nad‘). Many female rivers are also categorized as ‘Kanya‘ or, unmarried female.

A glimpse of how Indian rivers are personified can be also found in the writings of Kaka Kelkar, in his famous book ‘Jeevan Leela‘. However, despite our deep cultural association with rivers, today, our understanding of rivers has changed remarkably.

A river is now treated as key to economic development measured by the big dams, navigation and other developmental projects which has diluted our understanding of a river from a life-line to a resource available for exploitation.

Recently the New Zealand government has granted the status of a ‘living entity’ to Whanganui river. Afterwards, the Uttarakhand High Court has also given similar legal status to River Ganga and River Yamuna.

Few days ago, in a public event Shri Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh promised that his government will soon introduce a bill to give River Narmada (see photo) the rights of a living being. It’s expected that other state governments will follow soon.

Before this, however, it is critical for both citizens and the government to recognize and understand what constitutes the identity and existence of a river. Every river has its own characteristics, its own behaviour and an entirely unique ecology which it supports.

Only after that we can ask the secondary question-what do we mean by ‘rights’ of a river and what constitutes its ‘best interest’?

Rights of a river

For this, we should first and foremost understand the river and how it functions. Then, the peculiar characteristics of our rivers need to be accepted, respected and protected if we really want to make ‘rights’ of a river meaningful.

When a river flows, it erodes the rocks and soil and carries the sediments along with its water and ultimately deposits them in its lower stretches before it meets its destiny in the ocean. Erosion, transportation and deposition are three basic life functions of any river.

For effective erosion and transportation of sediments, it requires uninterrupted flow (aviral) which would mean unobstructed flow of ‘water’ and ‘sediments’. The deposition of sediments occurs mainly when the river flows through plains during floods and at the river mouth. Islands like the Sundarbans are result of such accumulation of sediments.

This process has been severely affected in last few decades due to obstruction of the River Ganga in the upstream. This has resulted in regular deposition of huge volume of sediments much earlier in states like Bihar and West Bengal which has now become a massive problem in itself.

A river not just flow longitudinally, but it also requires horizontal space to expand its spread, which in simple terms can be called flood. A river also repairs itself, creating new ways to flow which can be termed as a river’s expression.

Floods are often seen as a form of disaster. However, flooding is a very important ecological process which helps in rejuvenation of soils with nutrients as well as recharging groundwater. A flood, these days is disastrous because we have interrupted with the natural journey of a river or encroached its space for expansion.

Allowing our rivers to live – not just exist

We have several examples in India where attempts to control a River through embankments have miserably failed. Instead of transferring fertile fine silt, deposition of coarse sands have made thousands of hectares of land barren as we saw in 2008 historic flood when river Kosi breached an embankment causing irreparable damage in northern Bihar.

Uttarakhand floods in 2013 and Chennai floods in 2015 show how obstructing the natural flow of rivers can destroy to life and property. Therefore, our own interests are intimately tied with those of the river and the need to demarcate the floodplains of our rivers along with strong laws cannot be over-emphasised.

As the river plays through its journey, it bends and meanders, when it flows through shallower gradient, often part of active floodplains. Meandering also leads to formation of Oxbow lakes, where a portion of river gets cut off from mainstream and becomes a natural reservoir on its bank supporting both aquatic and terrestrial life besides providing water for irrigation.

Protection of floodplains should essentially protect the river’s right to meander as well.

A river is also not just stream of water flowing from upstream to downstream collecting surface water from its tributaries and surface of its catchment areas. The initial source can be a glacier in Himalayan region or even a lake / small stream like in case of most of non-Himalayan rivers. The primary source of water of a river during dry seasons come from subsurface water reservoirs which is known as ‘base flow’ – the groundwater discharge of the stream.

This base flow, though may not be visible actually keeps a river alive. With increasing dependence on groundwater for human needs, this base flow has drastically reduced. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that abstraction of groundwater be closely regulated and monitored and alternatives like creating offshore reservoirs and wetlands be promoted.

What are the ‘best interests’ of a river?

When we grant anybody a legal entity, naturally the question would arise – who will decide its best interest and who can be its custodian or guardian? Given the mixed perceptions and conflicting understanding of river, it is a significant challenge for a country like India.

While most governments are exploring possibilities of optimal utilisation of rivers as a resource, several environmental experts advocate protection of these rivers, its natural flow and its ecology for their and our own sustenance. Though both the concerns are well recognized, yet the hindsight suggests economic interests taking over ecological concerns.

For example, one thing which was very hard to be established and remained ‘an elephant in the room’ was the non-use value of the river. Governments and even big financial institutions like the World Bank have consistently neglected the non-use values of our rivers in their cost-benefit analysis of ‘developmental projects’ on the pretext that the same cannot be calculated with any precision.

But does the use value of river exhaust its whole value, or is there something beyond economics? Are there cultural, historical, emotional, aesthetic, religious and spiritual dimensions to a river’s being that make it far more than a mere ‘resource’?

The government seems to be recognizing the cultural flow of a river through programs like ‘Namami Gange’ and ‘Namami Narmade’ and look like taking steps in the right direction. However, river activists have equally criticized the same government for promoting dams, navigational dredging, river-inter-linking and undertaking constructions on river banks and floodplains which go against the best interest of the river.

Even the important law like ‘River Regulation Zone’ is pending with the Centre, though the roadmap was prepared in 2013 which itself casts doubts on the seriousness of such slogans and programmes.

Time to start correcting past mistakes

It is also important to understand that today we have hardly any major rivers remaining in its natural character and many of them are severely ill and dying either at the hands of engineering marvels or through poisons discharged into them through sewage and effluents.

In this, what place does a river enjoy in our imagination of sustainable development, whose sustenance and whose development are we talking about?

Therefore, we must strive to keep the best interest of the River at top priority and start by correcting our mistakes in past. That would certainly require some unconventional decisions by government and willingness to make sacrifices by the people.

Debadityo Sinha is an Environmentalist based in New Delhi. He is founder of Vindhya Bachao Abhiyan and has litigated extensively for protection of rivers, landscapes and other environmental justice issues.

In a recent landmark judgment on his petition, National Green Tribunal has quashed the Environmental Clearance of a 1320 MW thermal power plant which was planning to abstract water from River Ganga on the basis of insufficient impact assessment studies and concealment of facts. He was also member of the civil society delegation which convinced World Bank to reconsider the proposal of construction of barrages for National Waterways-1.

He is also working as Senior Resident Fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, New Delhi. He can be contacted at debadityo@gmail.com, and tweets @debadityo.

Until now it has been normal to consider military might as the determinant of an international pecking order. Possession of the weapons and the forces to deter or frighten other nations has even determined the structure of the United Nations, giving the power of veto to the five permanent members of the Security Council, who also happen to be among the world’s biggest arms sellers as well as the first possessors of nuclear weapons.

War makes a relatively few people extremely rich. Global military expenditure in 2015 was an estimated US$1.67 trillion, equal to US$217 for each person in the world. The total value of the global arms trade in 2014 was at least US$94.5 billion. By contrast, US$24 billion per year would ensure clean water and safe sanitation for everyone on the planet.

Those who thrive in war are also people traffickers, arms smugglers, money launderers, drug dealers and others who require a lawless environment to make a fortune.

Stopping war, because it is such an unfamiliar concept to us, requires a substantial shift in assumptions. Traditionally it has been assumed that weaponry and “defence” will bring security, and therefore that more weaponry will bring more security.

How peace can be built
Humanity has now entered a new era where these assumptions require an overhaul. The major threats to our security now emanate from issues that cannot be dealt with by weaponry, namely global warming, migration, cyber attack and the rich–poor gap.

Our security now depends on our ability to cooperate with nations who might previously have been our enemies. We now know enough about preventing armed violence to avoid the catastrophic consequences of recent wars. The overall strategy in my latest book,  The Business Plan for Peace: Making a World Without War Possible, is to develop a whole-systems approach to building peace worldwide, from the local level to national, regional and global levels. The three basic principles include dialogue, prevention, and valuing women.

Dialogue
Attempts to stop war from the top down often fail because of the mindsets – fear, aggression, competition, greed – shared by most of those leaders filtered to the top by our current systems. One of the best ways to overcome the force of these attitudes and emotions is by systematically building trust through dialogue.

The Oxford Process is a tried and tested programme developed by Oxford Research Group over three decades, facilitating high-level dialogue between those involved in some of the world’s most intractable conflicts. It uses the tools of analysis, cultural savvy and human psychology to understand and manage both the tensions and the human relationships that underpin conflict.

These same tools can be learned and applied by any of us to transform conflicts in the family, in the community, or further afield.

Prevention
The keys to successful prevention of war are respect, speed of reaction, and developing an understanding of how power works. All the research I have seen over 35 years shows that the main cause of fighting is humiliation: interviews with death row inmates revealed that this was the most common motivation for homicide. The best antidote to humiliation is respect. It’s hard to find something to respect in those you may hate or despise, but they too are human and have qualities you can unearth and salute. It works: it produces the possibility of dialogue.

Your speed of reaction requires practice. This can be acquired through meditation, martial arts, and all practices that train you in self-awareness. The more self-knowledge you have, the more effective you will be in preventing violence – whether verbal or physical.

Locally led peace-building initiatives excel in the skills of prevention. The organisation Peace Direct was set up to support grass-roots peace builders, because local people tend to know best how to resolve local conflicts. Peace Direct’s research in turn resulted in Insight on Conflict, an online initiative that currently reports on over 1,400 peace-building organisations across 44 different conflict-affected regions.

Breaking the cycle of violence
The cycle of violence starts with an atrocity, causing terror and trauma, followed by grief and then anger, which leads to the drive for retaliation and revenge, causing an escalation of atrocities. Thus the cycle of violence can continue over generations and even centuries.

The cycle can be broken by tried and tested methods of conflict transformation, including consultation with religious leaders, bridge building, setting up truth and reconciliation commissions, training mediators, freeing child soldiers, trauma counselling and strengthening the rule of law.

At national level, governments can establish an infrastructure for peace, a process pioneered in South Africa by Nelson Mandela, developing peace councils at national, regional, city, town and even village levels through which respected community leaders can be trained in violence-prevention methods and developing a peace plan for their area should violence break out. This has already been copied in Ghana and Kenya.

Enable women to help make peace
Women are shown to be the most effective and tenacious peace builders. However, more than 90% of negotiators and those in policymaking positions on peace and conflict are male, meaning that the suffering and trauma of women and children in war are not taken into account at the peace table.

Swanee Hunt, a former US ambassador to Austria, and the Women Waging Peace Policy Commission have conducted 15 field-based case studies to document women’s contributions to conflict prevention, peace negotiations and post-war reconstruction. This has now yielded a network of over 1,000 trained women leaders from more than 30 conflicts, and strategies to ensure their acceptance in policymaking positions and peace negotiations.

What it will cost
To my knowledge no one has so far attempted to cost the strategies necessary to build a world without war. So in my book I have laid out a first blueprint for a business plan for peace – based on 20 years developing dialogue between nuclear weapons decision-makers and their informed critics, as well as 15 years supporting locally led peace-building initiatives. This plan describes and costs the following:

• Four systems for preventing conflict and building peace at local level, at a total cost of US$159 million;
• Nine systems for preventing conflict and building peace at national/regional level, at a total cost of US$664 million; and
• Twelve systems for preventing conflict and building peace at international level, at a total cost of US$1,178 million.

The total cost of local, national and international systems for preventing conflict over a 10-year period comes to just over US$2 billion. By comparison, in a year we spend US$59 billion on ice cream, Procter & Gamble spent US$9.3 billion on advertising in 2012, and the decommissioning costs of the Fukushima reactors will top US$105 billion.

Who can do it?
The key strategy is to do the personal work – the inner development – that is essential if people are to be effective in their efforts to make the world a safer place. This is for a specific reason: when we have strong emotions like fear or anger, if we’re not awake to what’s going on inside us we tend to project those emotions onto others.

This projection, on a larger scale, is what causes wars. Leaders become excessively incensed with the aggressivity of the other side when they have not examined and dealt with their own internal anger. This demonisation of the other permits all kinds of horror.

If we are to work effectively in conflict, whether in government or at the grass roots, we need to understand this kind of projection on a personal level. To do this can be uncomfortable and can require real courage, because we are confronting our own deeply embedded convictions and emotions. But when we really get it – that is, really get what a hugely powerful force it can be – we become ten times more effective.

What becomes evident in this work is that we are living through an age of profound transformation in the human condition. The human-made issues we face in this turbulent age are challenging our human capacity to evolve. We have the opportunity now, as never before, to develop our consciousness – and therefore our way of treating one another – to a new level.

This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine, May/June 2017.

Scilla Elworthy founded the Oxford Research Group in 1982 to develop dialogue between nuclear weapons policymakers and their critics. She has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times. She founded Peace Direct in 2003 and was awarded the Niwano Peace Prize in the same year. In 2013 she co-founded Rising Women Rising World.

How we farm and feed ourselves says a lot about our society’s priorities.

Like many things in today’s world, food has largely been forced into hungry jaws of hyper-capitalism driven by the twin pistons of ‘economies of scale’ and ‘efficiency’.

Large-scale, industrial agri-business is proffered as the only way we can feed ourselves in the face of growing populations and dwindling resources.

But this is just one of the myths of our techno-capitalist worldview. And it needn’t be this way.

Small-scale, agro-ecological farming can, and does, provide a model for agriculture that provide enough food, equitably, ecologically and economically.

The Ecological Land Co-operative is a social enterprise helps new entrants into ecological agriculture in England supporting the growth of farming that works with the grain of nature.

Land, land, everywhere – but not a patch to farm!

Farming and horticulture are incredibly hard to get into for new entrants. It’s no surprise the average age of a British farmer stands at 59.

High set up costs, high costs of housing, a history of land amalgamation and a planning system anathema to small-scale agriculture make the barriers for new entrants seemingly insurmountable.

The price of agricultural land is now trading at record price levels of approximately £8,500 per acre. Between 2000-2010 new farm entrants accounted for just 4% of agricultural land purchasers. Wedded to this is the cost of rural housing. The average house price in rural England has more than doubled over the past decade to over £250,000, but the average salary is still £21,000.

The historical trend in land amalgamation has lead to the availability of a fewer number of predominantly large farms for purchase. This has happened at the same time that the number of County Farms and smallholdings has declined. The result is a substantial body of people who wish to farm an ecological smallholding but are unable to afford to do so.

“New entrants to farming have no possibility of buying a farm in England”, says Zoe Wangler, Executive Director of the Ecological Land Co-operative. “The cost of land and rural housing is too high. Yet new entrants have the passion, vision and skills needed to reduce the negative environmental impacts of conventional farming and globalised food distribution.”

The Ecological Land Co-operative

The core business of the ELC is the creation of smallholding clusters. The ELC buys agricultural land and seeks planning permission for new residential smallholdings as well as providing shared infrastructure. The ‘starter farms’ are then leased to smallholders – well below market rates – on a long and secure leasehold.

Sites are protected for affordability and ecological agriculture use in perpetuity on the ideas and advice of organic farmers, ecologists, planners, customers, and local residents, the prospective cluster of smallholdings has a binding whole site ecological management plan.

“Two things attracted us to the ELC”, says Ruth Wilson, of Steepholding, one of the smallholdings at the ELC’s first site, Greenham Reach. “One was the cost, which is based on the land price plus there was some infrastructure. The other really important one was the support for the planning side of things.

“Having two young children, setting up and doing this kind of thing, is quite hard work, and we wanted that element of risk – and potentially risk – taken out of it. Having met a lot of people getting into ecological agriculture and hearing their stories of having to go through planning appeals and seeing how much energy that had consumed was a major draw to us coming to the ELC to take that energy drain out of the equation.”

As a not-for-profit community benefit society the ELC largely relies on public financing to carry out their work. Members not only invest money, but are backing a values-led approach where the returns aren’t simply material and immediate but take a longer view longer such as the health of the land, the continuation of rural skills, rekindling local economies as well as the production of good, healthy food.

Their community share offer, in partnership with Ethex, experts in helping people make social investments, runs until 12th June (2017). Community Shares allow people to directly support enterprises that matter to them.

Inviting members of the public to invest, the ELC is looking to raise £340,000 for the creation of two new clusters of small farms. Investors are offered up to 3% interest on share capital annually. The minimum investment is £500 (in withdrawable shares) and anyone can invest.

The answer: small-scale ecological farming

Forward-thinking, stewardship-minded and ecologically based, small-scale farming injects creativity and care into agriculture. Small-scale farms make a distinctive contribution to rural life and economies. Providing local food, generating jobs (and income) such farmers are moving from being ‘price takers’ (as dictated by supermarkets) to ‘price makers’ (connecting with consumers).

Scaling back, not scaling up can provide a model for a truly ecological agriculture.

Studies have shown that the smaller the farm size the greater the yield per hectare. A 2014 UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report concludes that family farms produce over three-quarters of the world’s food. This is a direct challenge to the myth that Big Ag feeds the world.

Crop diversity, species rich polycultures and sound ecological land management means less use of chemicals, more care and more labour. And more labour translates as a higher quality of work inspired by an ecological ethic.

The industrial farming model has led to an ecological crisis in the UK. And we’ve a lot to answer for in our pursuit of more and more. Biodiversity loss, the degradation of soils, environmental contamination from agrochemicals, disease and antibiotic resistance, high greenhouse gas emissions, and huge amounts of food waste.

According to the UN 75% of the world’s food is generated from only 12 plants and five animal species. This narrowing and specialisation is prone to the shocks and challenges of a changing climate.

Despite this 84% of the world’s farms are less than two hectares. That’s a little over the size of two football pitches. For small-scale ecological agriculture biodiversity is the cornerstone of farm life.

Making the dream real in 21st century England

Such an approach can help create a more ecological healthy countryside which provides employment, produces good food and makes a positive contribution to wildlife and the natural world – the ultimate store of our natural capital which drives the planet.

And it’s increasingly taking root in the UK, drawing inspiration from the past while employing the latest ideas and techniques from organic, no-dig, permaculture, agroforestry and agroecology methods.

The ELC seeks to create such ecologically based stewardship-minded farms to make small-scale agriculture a viable reality in 21st century England.

Phil Moore is one half of the communications team for the Ecological Land Co-operative. He is passionate about ‘enlightened agriculture’ – in the words of Colin Tudge – and works to promote it through documentary film and writing. He tweets at @ecolandcoop and @permapeople

More information

The Ecological Land Co-operative community share offer seeks to draw investment from the public for the creation of two new clusters of farms. Inviting members of the public to invest, the ELC is looking to raise £340,000 for the creation of two new clusters of small farms.

Latest News: The community share offer has just pushed over the £200K mark! With three weeks to go, our supporters have already raised £205,651 of investment. Amazing!

Investors are offered up to 3% interest on share capital annually. The minimum investment is £500 (in withdrawable shares) and anyone can invest. The share offer runs until 12th June 2017.

The Ecological Land Co-operative is a social enterprise helps new entrants into ecological agriculture in England supporting the growth of farming that works with the grain of nature.

In Thai and Lao languages, Mekong roughly translates as ‘mother of rivers.’ As one of the world’s largest waterways it stretches more than 4,000 kilometers thrusting through China, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before emptying into the South China Sea.

For wildlife enthusiasts in the region, these are exciting times. A horned lizard and rainbow-headed snake were among 163 delightful new species documented last year by scientists alongside 10 endangered Irrawaddy dolphin calves. Fewer than 90 Irrawaddy dolphins exist on the planet.

But all is not well.

In January 2016, build on the 260-megawatt hydroelectric Don Sahong dam began less than a mile from Laos’ border with Cambodia. The area is home to a trans-boundary dolphin pool where numbers are critical. Just three remain. A figure the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warns is ‘no longer viable. (Functionally Extinct)

In recent months the dolphins have moved out of their two-kilometer preservation into areas where illegal fishing methods are rife. Villagers blame the daily boom of dynamite used to blast rocks in dam construction.

“Even when you are inside the water, it’s very loud,” says Mekong river ranger, Sok Laing, responsible for patrolling the dolphins’ protected area. “The noise is too loud and dolphins need to live in a place that is quiet,” he adds.

It’s a worry for villagers who rely on the thousands of tourists the dolphins bring yearly.

“Only local (protected) fishing is allowed in this part of the river but where the dolphins are now, no one is responsible for controlling,” says Bu Maen, a 27-year-old boat driver.

His village, Anlong Svay Thom, in Cambodia’s Stung Treng province, lies just south of the dam. It’s a smattering of wooden frame houses built on stilts in the Khmer fashion that overlook the river.

A new road was constructed to provide greater access to the secluded village. This boosted business for those driving tourists across the waters.

“Customers increased because of the road but now the dolphins have gone I don’t know what will happen,” Maen says.

Dolphin habitats threatened by human activity

Irrawaddy dolphins in Cambodia can be found in Stung Treng and Kratie, forming pools they generally live in for life.

These freshwater marine mammals are one of the oldest creatures in the world, long symbolizing the health of a river but forced now into near extinction by human activity.

Illegal fishermen are wise to the times when dynamite is used on the construction site say villagers. Some employ homemade bombs to blast fish; particularly in the new area the dolphins seek refuge.

“Poachers are very intelligent and very smart,” says Rin Narouen, conservation area manager at WWF Cambodia. “They use it on the same day so nobody can catch them.”

He believes if no action is taken, “they [dolphins] will become extinct.”

If such dire prognosis were to happen, “it means the income of people here will be affected,” says Laing. “Right now people come here because they want to see dolphins, if the dolphins are gone then no tourists will come again.”

Why governments are damming the Mekong

Around 120 million in Southeast Asia have no access to electricity. South East Asia Energy Outlook

In Cambodia this equates to 44 percent of its population according to Word Bank figures. Access To Energy

For governments that border the river, the cheaper and greener solution is to dam. In China for example, 88 percent of energy consumption uses fossil fuels. Fossil Fuel Energy Consumption

Large hydropower dams already exist on the Mekong in China, but more than 100 are planned by Mekong bordering countries. Of these, 11 will dam the river’s mainstream in Laos and Cambodia built by Thai, Malaysian, Chinese, and Vietnamese developers.

Laos, the poorest of its neighbors with a GDP of just $12.37 billion has declared its ambition to be ‘the battery of Southeast Asia.’ It will host nine of the dams for much needed revenue generation despite not benefitting from the electricity produced. For example, Don Sahong’s energy will be exported mainly to Thailand and Cambodia.

 Life in Preah Rumkel remains as it has for centuries

Fish is a staple sought from a river containing over 1,000 species of fish. The Mekong accounts for an astonishing one quarter of the world’s freshwater catch.  

Every morning, 29-year-old fisherman Horn Phoeun heads onto the Mekong.

“Before there was a lot of fish but now there are not many,” says Phoeun.  He has frequently changed the pools he fishes from in order to accommodate for the loss of catch. He blames illegal fishing and dams.

“It takes longer to catch the same amount of fish,” he says. Like many other villagers, he is considering switching to farming seeds and nuts. But it’s an expensive occupation costing $750 more to run and one riddled with risks of flooding.

“My father was a fisherman, my whole generation were fisherman,” he adds.

Upstream the Lower Sesan 2 dam is almost complete.

Some 34 miles east of the Don Sahong, fishermen and women gather on the muddy banks of the river’s Sesan channel with reams of mesh nets cascading around them.

Almost lost in the fabric of the net, they must decide whether any further attempts at fishing today will bring in a catch.

Here most come from Pluk Village in northern Cambodia, close to the $800m Lower Sesan 2 dam nearing completion on a Mekong tributary. It’s a venture between China’s Lancang Hydropower International Energy, Cambodia’s Royal Group, and Vietnam’s EVN International.

Utha Camy, a fisherman in his late 50s, stoops beside the nets. “Before the dams I would have caught more than 5 kilos by now,” says Camy. “And if I kept fishing from now until 6.30pm I would have caught a further 10 kilos.”

Today, after an unsettling 6am rise he has caught just one fish in five hours. The number of dams already built mean irregular variations in water levels that interfere with fish migration and spawning. There is no longer enough fish to go around.

“We all know this but right now there is no job for us to do, so we continue to just fish,” shrugs Camy.

A 2012 study by researchers from the U.S. and Cambodia estimated that the Sesan 2 dam once complete would reduce fish catch by 9 percent. Fish Biodiversity, Food Security & Hydropower in the Mekong River

The Mekong River Commission (MRC) oversees dam constructions on the lower Mekong through a 1995 agreement. It’s a committee of four member nations-Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. China is not part of the voluntary commission and it’s yet to resolve disagreements on projects.

And as the Ecologist has reported previously, many of the dams have gone ahead without backing from all member states. Death By Strangulation

So many dams are catastrophic for fisheries activists warn

According to conservationists, Cambodia’s 400-megawatt Sesan 2 dam will prevent sediment travel down to the Mekong’s delta, depriving it of nutrients needed for aquatic life and rice production.

A two and a half year study submitted by Vietnam to the MRC in 2016 concluded that there were “high to very high adverse effects on some of the key sectors and environmental resources in Cambodia and Vietnam,” as a result of planned dams.

Around 40 percent of Vietnam’s rice stock is grown in the delta. The country is still recovering from last year’s scathing El Nino induced drought – its worst in a century. [http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/vietnam-hit-by-worst/2562802.html].

“The further downstream a hydropower is sited, the more impact it will have on fisheries, notably on fish migration,” Marc Goichot, water lead at WWF’s Greater Mekong Programme said via email.

In the case of Don Sahong, for example the dam would block the only channel known as a year round route for migrating fish, vital to around 60 million people who rely on the protein the Mekong’s fish provide.

Mega First Corporation, the dam’s developers have in the past dismissed concerns, saying a new fish passage would be built.

“What the developers have done is widen some of the other surrounding channels and blast clear them out so that they are passable for fish migration as alternative routes,” says Maureen Harris, Southeast Asia program director at advocacy group International Rivers. “The problem is they’ve been doing this as they build the dam.”

Scientists believe there is lack of sufficient evidence that fish would migrate through new channels. The Myth of Sustainable Hydropower

“There are no example of success in large tropical rivers,” says Goichot.

In northern Cambodia villagers battle developers

Bai Pumsen, a 30-year-old rice farmer and his family of five were relocated six months ago to make way for the Sesan 2. His old home in Kbal Romeas will be flooded along with 5,000 others when the dam opens later this year.

Pumsen’s resettlement village currently called Kbal Romeas II is a regimented mix of yellow and blue concrete houses alongside traditional wooden builds.

Each family is entitled to either a house or $6,000 to build a new home as compensation and a 12-acre land to farm. New villages boast schools, health centers, and crucially electricity. However villagers complain the land isn’t ideal for farming, and is far from freshwater sources.

“Staying here is more difficult,” says Pumsen. “More than 50 families are waiting with no job to do.”

Land is yet to be cleared for agriculture.

Like Pumsen, many frequently make the two hour round trip back to their old rice fields for work and food and are demanding to move back.

“Here I have to spend a lot of money,” says 31-year-old mother of two, Sarun Nan. “Before there was no need to buy food, we just go down to the river and catch fish … now also for drinking and cooking I need to buy water.”

Nan and her husband commute by motorbike to their old village to fish and hunt in the forest. “I don’t know what I will do if I cannot continue to go,” she says.

There are some in Kbal Romeas who refuse to move to the resettlement site having seen how their former neighbours are struggling.

Dams are not the problem say experts but they need to be better planned

“It is easy to assess which ones will have the greatest negative impacts and the most positive. Common sense would be to prioritise the ones with least negative impacts, and postpone the ones with the greatest,” says Goichot. “Don Sahong, Lower Sesan, are in the 20 percent group with the highest negative impacts. They should not have been prioritised.”

Others point to more ecological means of energy generation through solar power. But these are difficult to attract financial investment and slow to generate immediate revenue.

“Typically what’s usually done in these projects is an economic impact assessment, where they weigh up the benefit but not the costs,” believes Mark Zeitoun, professor of water policy and security, at the University of East Anglia in England.

Zeitoun has been researching similar environmental issues on the $2.4 billion Merowe dam built on the River Nile in Northern Sudan. It’s displaced more than 50,000 people, blocking fish migration and degrading water quality. Impacts of Merowe Dam

In the US, older dams are being decommissioned. After its largest dam removal – the 210-foot-high Glines Canyon dam – salmon have returned to the Elwha river in Washington after almost a century of absence say scientists. River Restoration

But, “decommissioning is very expensive, much more expensive than building a dam,” adds Zeitoun. “Once you build a dam you are locked into it for a very long time.”

“The dams are affecting everyone who live along the river,” reflects Laing as he sits, legs crossed in front of his house looking ahead towards the calm waters. “We have to try to find a way to keep the fish and the dolphins within the Mekong. But how I don’t know.”

This author

Nosmot Gbadamosi is a freelance journalist based in London. She can be followed on Twitter @nosmotg

Nicolas Axelrod and Thomas Cristofoletti are co-founders of Ruom, a collective of journalists based in Asia. Read stories here [http://www.ruom.net/feature-stories/]

More information: Save the Mekong [https://savethemekong.org] campaign.

Also on The Ecologist: How the largest inland fisheries in the world are being destroyed. Destuction of the world’s largest inland fisheries