A Mekong River Water Resources Monitoring website (https://monitor.mekongwater.org), funded in part by the U.S. government, was officially launched Tuesday (Dec. 15, 2020). A senior U.S. State Department official said the launch of the website will greatly enhance the transparency of information on the Mekong’s water resources. Communist regime officials say it is a malicious provocation by extraterritorial countries.
The Stimson Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank, and EarthEye, a U.S. environmental research organization, officially launched the Mekong Dam Monitoring website Tuesday in a videoconference.
Brian Eyler, director of the Stimson Center’s Mekong Dam Monitoring Program, said the new website “will be a game changer” for China’s massive construction of dams and power plants on the upper Mekong River’s Lancang River, which has long been unavailable to countries downstream of the Mekong without regard for the needs of the people there.
Speaking at the conference, Aylor showed in detail how the monitoring website shows the amount of rainfall in the Mekong basin, the storage and discharge of water from Chinese dams and the amount of water at various monitoring points downstream. He said satellite imagery and remote sensing monitoring technology allows users to see information on the hydrological resources of the basin in almost real time.
Speaking on behalf of the U.S. government, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs David R. Stilwell cited an Eye on Earth study from April that said last year, when the lower Mekong River countries were facing a rare drought, China’s dam reservoirs were holding large amounts of rainwater away from the downstream countries. That continues to happen this year, he said, and has become more severe because of the new crown epidemic.
The key to solving the problem is information transparency, and if China won’t provide the information, then let a program like the Mekong Water Resources Monitoring website disclose it, said Stalwell. You can’t cover up the truth,” he said.
Stalwell urged the Southeast Asian Association to use the real-time information provided by the monitoring site to mount a unified response to China’s behavior on the upper Mekong. He added that the U.S. will continue to focus on the Mekong River Basin water issue regardless of who is in the White House because it is a matter of U.S. interest.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin was asked at a regular press conference Monday about the official launch of the Mekong dam monitoring website, which is partially funded by the U.S. government. He said China welcomes constructive comments from extraterritorial countries on the development and use of water resources in the Lancang-Mekong basin countries, but firmly opposes malicious provocations. He also mentioned that China has been providing the Mekong Basin countries with year-round hydrological information on the Lancang River since last month, and that the website of the Lancang-Mekong Water Resources Cooperation Information Sharing Platform is up and running today.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs Stalwell said that while China is now promising to provide more information than ever before, the quality of its information needs to be improved and it still does not provide information on the operation of upstream dams that affect the production and livelihood of people in downstream countries.
Two weeks ago, on Nov. 30, China’s official media widely reported the official launch of the “Lan Mekong Water Resources Cooperation Information Sharing Platform website,” saying it would proactively share information, but did not provide the website’s URL. Search results for “Mekong Water Resources Cooperation Information Sharing Platform Website” on Google, a site used worldwide, and Baidu, a site commonly used by Chinese, show several reports in Chinese official media about the authorities’ announcement of the launch of the information-sharing weekday website, but no website address for the site itself.
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