Mekong Subsistance Peoples of Laos
Over 95% of the 5.5 million people who live in the Lao.P.D.R do so within the Mekong basin with over 40% of these people living below the poverty line. Poverty in Laos often includes extreme hardship such as food shortages lasting for several months per year, malnourishment, lack of education opportunities, higher mortality rates and shorter life expectancy among a myriad of other problems. A large percentage of all households in Laos live either slightly above or on the poverty line therefore events or resource management decisions that affect household production levels and or disposable income levels can swing large numbers of people into or out of what is officially recognized as poverty.
The vast majority of all those people living on or below the poverty line in Laos are subsistence farmers who generally use a mixture of farming, fishing, hunting, gathering, trading of non timber forest products and labor work in order to subsist. The Mekong River system fulfills a vital and time honored role in the food security for millions of Lao.P.D.R’s most vulnerable subsistence peoples.
Over 70% of all rural households in Laos depend on fishing as a source of nutrition and hunted aquatic protein is particularly important during times of poor harvest when few nutritional alternatives exist, even the Lao Sung (Highlanders) regularly trek down to the base of the river valleys to make use of this valuable resource. Another major nutritional source for hundreds of rural villages along the Mekong mainstream and tributaries in Laos are the organic riverbank vegetable gardens that spring up on the riverbank every year as the Mekong recedes to expose the fertile riverbank that has been naturally rejuvenated with silt. Once the water flows out of China are fully regulated the fisheries of the Lao Mekong and the vitality of riverbank vegetable gardens are expected to be seriously compromised.
Although it is not possible to precisely predict impacts of the Mekong cascade until after the dams are fully commissioned, events on the Mun River, a major tributary of the Mekong could help provide some insights of what to expect. When the Thai government dammed the Mun, despite installing a ‘fish ladder’ to help migratory fish species bypass the dams, dozens of species of fish disappeared from the river completely and fish stocks declined by between 40-70%. If the 8 larger dams of the Mekong cascade, none of which possess fish ladders cause a similar decline in fisheries the result for hundred of thousands of impoverished Mekong dependent Lao fishermen would be catastrophic.
