A honcho of Ramsar Convention Secretariat declares Lao as a country member of this body
(KPL) Just after 5.00 pm last Tuesday, Deputy Head of WREA or Water Resources and Environmental Assessment of the Prime Minister’s Office, Sisavath Vitaxay, declared Laos a member of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and called the celebratory meeting, held in ICTC or International Conference and Training Centre to a close.
At this moment, waitresses carrying trays loaded with wine in drinking glasses glided and waltzed into the meeting room to distribute drinks to the participants. They clinked the wine laden glasses, drank and celebrated, not only the accession of Laos as a country member of this body but also the inclusion of two places in the country as Ramsar sites, Xe Champhone Wetlands, Savannakhet province and Beung Kiat Ngong Wetlands, Champassak province.
The KPL News reporter interviewed the senior advisor to Asia – Oceanis of Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, Lew Young, who came all the way from Switzerland just to be present at this meeting and asked him for confirmation of membership. He said that Laos had sent in an application in April this year and normally it would take four to five months for a decision to be made and that it would be conveyed to the applicant, but he added that at this stage it was as good as a done deal
The reporter queried Lew further and he said that this had been the custom and practice and the confirmation letter to be sent in September, would only be a formality.
According to a speaker at this meeting the Lao government had been mulling on the nomination of pristine, beautiful and naturalistic Siphandone, Champasak province as a Ramsar site since 2006 and a proposal was submitted to the Prime Minister. Though this matter went into recess, he added, but was revived in 2007. What the speaker did not mention was that a Malaysian company, Mega First and Electricite du Laos went into a partnership to apply to the Lao government for permission to build a dam on one of the channels of the Mekong River, near the location of the heart of Siphandone.
This would prevent the migration of fish and so threaten the food security of millions of Mekong River peasants and it would also kill the Irrawaddy dolphins, the mammals that had attracted thousands and thousands of tourists to this province.
While Mega First, listed in the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange, touted by a stock analyst as an “undiscovered gem,” it had been working hard on feasibility studies to race against time to be the first dam builder to notify the Mekong River Commission or MRC and hopefully to get the green light from the Joint Committee, made up of heads of water resources from the four riparian countries, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Given such conditions, it would not make sense for the Lao government to nominate Siphandone to the Ramsar Convention to be designated as a Ramsar site.
back
