The Mekong River: trading off hydropower, fish, and food

Abstract

Hydropower dam construction is currently focused in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to increase electricity supplies, yet the negative environmental and social impacts are extensive. The planned development of 88 hydropower dams in the Mekong River Basin by 2030 is used to explore how to quantify the energy versus food supply trade-offs. We estimate the land and water resources needed to replace the protein and lysine from the lost wild fish supply in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Using FAO data, we (1) examine the supply of protein and also lysine, as an example of an essential micronutrients, (2) consider three options for managing loss of wild fish supplies, namely replace with livestock, other fish or crops, and (3) quantify the land use change required in the crop and livestock replacement scenarios. We provide a new index for assessing lysine in food and find that replacing lysine from wild fish requires considerable reallocation of land or of fish exports. The options for replacing protein and lysine through domestic production involve significant resource trade-offs and have social impacts. This method of quantifying the links between hydropower (energy) and food policies at regional and other scales can be used to better inform decisions on sustainable developments across sectors.