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Un comité de défense du tonlé sap doit être créé, à moins qu'il en exsite déjà.
ET j'appelle les non-égoïstes( DR et ses amis de bouger leurs petits doigts)
pour une bonne et simplement raison "Actif".

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Non, non, et non à ce projet, cela détruira notre grenier de réserve des poissons.On ne détruit pas l'héritage des peuples khmers, le lac Tonlé Sap est précieur, il est comme le sang qui coule dans les veines des cambodgiens afin d'alimenter leur coeur, sans ce dernier leur coeur s'arrêtera. Et ça trouve il n'y a même pas beaucoup de réserve de pétrole en dessous.

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Chinese dams blamed for Mekong's bizarre flow
16:35 25 March 2004
NewScientist.com news service
Fred Pearce


Fishing is a way of life on the the Tonle Sap, a tributary of the Mekong (Image: Fred Pearce)


Giant Chinese dams on the headwaters of the mighty Mekong River in southeast Asia are being blamed for sudden bizarre fluctuations in the flow of the river in recent weeks. The river is the region's largest and many millions of people rely on its flow.

The Mekong River Commission (MRC), an inter-governmental body that China has refused to join, called an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss the crisis on the river. Afterwards it sent an official letter to China demanding information about the operation of its dams, which blockade the main stream of the river.

The 4500-kilometre-long river has seen record low flows since January and strange and unprecedented fluctuations in levels. China has built two large hydroelectric dams on the river: the Manwan and Dachaoshan.

"There is an assumption that the two dams are the cause of the situation," said Surachai Sasisuwan, director of the MRC's water resources department.

Rapid blasting

The last time the Mekong saw exceptionally low flows was in 1993, during the filling of the Manwan dam. The even larger Dachaosan dam completed in 2003 could be the cause of the new low levels.

Two more dams are currently under construction, while at least another four are at the planning stage. China is also blasting rapids along the river.

"Since the dams began operating, river levels have gone up and down much faster," the MRC's Hans Guttman told New Scientist in a recent interview. While only a fifth of the river's annual flow comes from China, the proportion normally reaches between 50 and 70 per cent in the dry season, he said.

The recent low flows come after a poor monsoon flood season in 2003. The annual monsoon flood is vital to one of the world's biggest freshwater fisheries. Cambodians alone catch two million tonnes of fish a year from the Mekong.

Engineers say the river has huge potential for developing hydroelectric power. But biologists argue it is the absence of dams that until now has preserved the floods and hence the fisheries.

Reversed river

Most of the fish reproduce in forests in central Cambodia. These flood every year when the Tonle Sap, a tributary of the Mekong, is swamped by the main channel, reverses direction and backs up into the forests. A nightmare scenario for fisheries would see the Tonle Sap ceasing to reverse its flow.

"The fish catch is miserable - this has been a bad year," Eric Baran at the Phnom Penh office of Worldfish, an international research centre, told New Scientist.

Researchers admit that Chinese dams are not alone in altering the flow of the Mekong. Downstream countries including Laos and Thailand take significant amounts of water for irrigating their rice crops.

But Guttman says: "The Chinese dams are so large, they are changing everything."

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Faudrait peut etre alors se préocupper des projets (chinois) de "domestication" mekong associés a l'hydroelectricité (cf. les crus du nil et hassouan - les pbs d'eau en syrie dus aux retenues turques).... sans la crue dun mekong, pas de lac du tonlé sap...

Et ca, c'est qd même une plus gde menace que les qqs machins fait en collaboration avec le VN....

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Et ca, c'est qd même une plus gde menace que les qqs machins fait en collaboration avec le VN....

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Et ca, c'est qd même une plus gde menace que les qqs machins fait en collaboration avec le VN....

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Plusieurs petits machins donnent gros machin.

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