The Luang Prabang dam, a threat to world heritage?

The Lao government intends to build a dam on the Mekong River just upstream from the country’s former royal capital. Although the project was the subject of design work, environmental impact assessment and a prior consultation process managed by the Mekong River Commission (MRC), no impact assessment on the heritage site has been carried out to date – despite requests from the Unesco World Heritage Center dating back to 2012 that the Laotian government should do so. Ahead of next month’s World Heritage Committee meeting in China, Unesco requested that no construction work continue on the dam until a comprehensive heritage assessment is completed.

In fact, Luang Prabang, the ancient capital known for its rich traditional architectural heritage and peaceful surroundings, has already been hit by the next dam downstream, at Xayaburi. Luang Prabang’s riverfront has disappeared, and the former royal capital is now essentially a lakeside town at the end of the Xayaburi reservoir. It is only when the reservoir levels are two to three meters below the full supply level that the water flows through Luang Prabang in a natural way. But keeping levels this low would mean sacrificing power output and therefore profits for the dam developers – the same consortium offering to build the Luang Prabang project.

Meanwhile, the Pak Beng Dam project and the existing waterfalls of seven dams on the Nam Ou River and three on the Nam Khan River – all Chinese owned – mean the last remaining stretch of the pondless river is between the confluence of the Nam Ou above Luang Prabang and the next upstream dam at Pak Beng. The reservoir created by the Luang Prabang Dam would flood all but about 5 kilometers of this remaining stretch.

There are several key heritage risks for the city of Luang Prabang, in addition to those identified in existing studies. The heritage value of the city does not lie only in its in situ architecture. Rather, it resides in the unique and interconnected cultural and natural landscape in which it is located.

The loss of the river landscape, fisheries, riparian gardens and rural riparian communities by the passage from a stream to a pond river would leave the city dry in a cultural and visual sense as well as literally. The continued inundation of key cultural sites, such as Don Sai Mongkhon Island, where the annual New Year festivities were previously held, has already eroded cultural values. Extending these impacts tens of kilometers upstream would remove the last vestiges of the rural way of life that both supports and complements the Luang Prabang urban landscape.

Another problem raised in the studies is the risk of an earthquake induced by the rupture of the dam, which would have catastrophic effects on the whole city. Laos experienced the devastation of the Xepian Xenamnoi dam rupture in 2018 and two small dam collapses. Although it classifies the Luang Prabang dam as an “extreme risk” project, the technical review by the Mekong River Commission of proponents’ submissions to the project concludes that the modeling suggests that the seismic risks are at an acceptably low level. . Other experts are not so sure, notably the eminent Thai geologist Punya Churasiri. Following the pre-dam consultation process in 2020, Vietnam and Cambodia formally requested a further investigation into the dam safety issues. Thailand has remained silent on the issue. The Laotian response has been that the project design already meets international standards.

In fact, dam safety poses two problems. The one that receives the most attention is science-based risk assessment. But also important is the experiential nervousness imposed on the inhabitants and visitors of Luang Prabang to have the tallest structure in the lower Mekong retaining several hundred million cubic meters of water located only 25 km upstream, in an area considered to be being of moderate to high seismic activity.

With its huge reserves of electrical energy, Thailand does not need the energy generated by the Luang Prabang dam. The Lao government wants to know the nominal gross domestic product and the growth of investments generated by the project. Planning is well advanced, but it is not too late to be cautious. Without a signed power purchase agreement between the developers and the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, development cannot proceed.

The ball is squarely in Thailand’s court, with a decision to be made: to move forward with excessive haste and risk the heritage of one of Southeast Asia’s most magnificent cultural and natural sites, or wait until Unesco can carry out a heritage assessment. This last and wiser course will help determine whether the costs and risks are too high to destroy not only a river but also one of the cultural and natural gems of the region, of Buddhism and of the world.