Reducing Conflicts Between Hydropower And Fish Can Lower Investment Risk

Jeff Opperman

Fish harvested from Indawgyi Lake in northern Myanmar.

Fish commute, just like many of us do.

And when the route of commuting fish — migrating sometimes hundreds of miles up a river to spawn — runs into a hydropower project, that can spell trouble. For people, not just fish.

Especially if the fish provide the greatest source of protein for your country’s population, while hydropower is one of your country’s primary options for electricity expansion.

Such is the case in Myanmar, whose energy choices risk colliding with how its people have always provided food for themselves.

Like here In Lonton, a town on Indawgyi Lake in the country’s far north.  Framed by lush mountains, Indawgyi is Myanmar’s largest lake. Morning and evening rush hours here aren’t on the single-lane road (with its lounging cows and dogs and sparse traffic) but on the lake itself, where hundreds of boats putter out from six villages in the evening to set long drift nets or deploy boxlike bamboo shrimp traps and then head out again in the morning to pick up their catch.

I’m here as part of a multi-week trip traveling around the basin of Myanmar’s massive Irrawaddy River, where more than 30 large hydropower dams are in various stages of planning or preparation. In interviewing about 60 fishermen around Indawgyi, I’ve learned that nearly all of the lake’s major fish populations migrate—up its small tributary streams or moving back and forth between the lake and the Irrawaddy River.

The hydropower-fish conflict in Myanmar attracts attention due to its considerable environmental and social risks — a conflict well known in U.S. and Canadian salmon country.  But it’s the improved management of investment risk that may point a way out of the conflict here and around the world.

The Mekong’s lessons on hydropower and fish

Scientific data on Irrawaddy fish populations are relatively sparse beyond studies on their aggregate value as sources of food and livelihoods. But that value is huge.

Fish provide 60 percent of Myanmar’s animal protein, with fish harvested from lakes and rivers providing one-third of the total.  Further, 12-15 million people (out of a total population of 55 million) in Myanmar earn money from fisheries, which are a primary source of cash for low-income people.

With hydropower projects on the horizon, scientists are ramping up their studies of the Irrawaddy’s fish populations.  In the meantime, the Irrawaddy’s neighbor in Southeast Asia, the Mekong, has been studied for decades — and provides insights into the likely impacts of conflicts between hydropower and fish in a large, tropical river basin.

For the Mekong, scientists forecast that construction of the proposed dams on the river’s main stem would cut the basin’s fish harvest by 40 percent — a loss of a million tons, valued at USD $500 million, per year.  Offsetting this loss would require a huge increase in land dedicated to other sources of protein — this in a region where arable land is already limited.

Meanwhile, even at full development, Mekong hydropower would only provide 6 percent to 8 percent of the region’s electricity supply by 2030.  Scientists have begun to demonstrate that more strategic approaches to planning dams — particularly avoiding those that have the greatest impact on fish — could identify more balanced development pathways.  Several studies, for example, show that foregoing developing one-third of proposed hydropower capacity could significantly minimize fish losses.

One-third of hydropower capacity sounds substantial, but it represents just a few percentage points of the region’s future electricity demand. Together, the rapidly dropping cost of other renewables and the significant fisheries benefits from a shift in hydropower’s trajectory suggest that the Mekong region’s energy future still merits vigorous debate.

The Irrawaddy basin is at a far earlier development stage than the Mekong. So in theory, there is much more time for scientific analyses to identify balanced pathways for Myanmar’s energy future.

Jeff Opperman

Fish harvested from Indawgyi Lake in northern Myanmar.

Fish commute, just like many of us do.

And when the route of commuting fish — migrating sometimes hundreds of miles up a river to spawn — runs into a hydropower project, that can spell trouble. For people, not just fish.

Especially if the fish provide the greatest source of protein for your country’s population, while hydropower is one of your country’s primary options for electricity expansion.

Such is the case in Myanmar, whose energy choices risk colliding with how its people have always provided food for themselves.

Like here In Lonton, a town on Indawgyi Lake in the country’s far north. Framed by lush mountains, Indawgyi is Myanmar’s largest lake. Morning and evening rush hours here aren’t on the single-lane road (with its lounging cows and dogs and sparse traffic) but on the lake itself, where hundreds of boats putter out from six villages in the evening to set long drift nets or deploy boxlike bamboo shrimp traps and then head out again in the morning to pick up their catch.

The hydropower-fish conflict in Myanmar attracts attention due to its considerable environmental and social risks — a conflict well known in U.S. and Canadian salmon country. But it’s the improved management of investment risk that may point a way out of the conflict here and around the world.

The Mekong’s lessons on hydropower and fish

Scientific data on Irrawaddy fish populations are relatively sparse beyond studies on their aggregate value as sources of food and livelihoods. But that value is huge.

Fish provide 60 percent of Myanmar’s animal protein, with fish harvested from lakes and rivers providing one-third of the total. Further, 12-15 million people (out of a total population of 55 million) in Myanmar earn money from fisheries, which are a primary source of cash for low-income people.

With hydropower projects on the horizon, scientists are ramping up their studies of the Irrawaddy’s fish populations. In the meantime, the Irrawaddy’s neighbor in Southeast Asia, the Mekong, has been studied for decades — and provides insights into the likely impacts of conflicts between hydropower and fish in a large, tropical river basin.

For the Mekong, scientists forecast that construction of the proposed dams on the river’s main stem would cut the basin’s fish harvest by 40 percent — a loss of a million tons, valued at USD $500 million, per year. Offsetting this loss would require a huge increase in land dedicated to other sources of protein — this in a region where arable land is already limited.

Meanwhile, even at full development, Mekong hydropower would only provide 6 percent to 8 percent of the region’s electricity supply by 2030. Scientists have begun to demonstrate that more strategic approaches to planning dams — particularly avoiding those that have the greatest impact on fish — could identify more balanced development pathways. Several studies, for example, show that foregoing developing one-third of proposed hydropower capacity could significantly minimize fish losses.

The Irrawaddy basin is at a far earlier development stage than the Mekong. So in theory, there is much more time for scientific analyses to identify balanced pathways for Myanmar’s energy future.

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