Our guest today is Dr. Anoulak Kittikhoun, who served as the CEO of the Mekong River Commission Secretariat from 2022 to 2024 after a decade of working in the organization that is central to the subregional architecture around one of the world’s longest and largest rivers confronting a series of major geopolitical, geoeconomic and security risks. Prior to that, he held several roles, including working at the United Nations Secretariat in New York and as an advisor at the Permanent Mission of Laos to the United Nations. We'll start our conversation assessing the current state of the Mekong River and architecture. Make sure you tune into the full episode as we dive into key topics, including the impact of intensifying geopolitical competition and major power dynamics.

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RISK ASSESSMENT CHECK

ASEAN Wonk: Welcome to the podcast Anoulak. And I wanted to get started with our conversation here talking about the river that gets a lot of attention today relative to perhaps ten or fifteen years ago, but arguably still not enough given the challenges that we're seeing. It's one of the world's longest and largest rivers running through mainland Southeast Asia. I was, in fact, just by the Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia's greatest freshwater lake in Cambodia during my trip a few weeks back. The risks from hydropower and climate change and the like have been well-documented. As a practitioner in the space, you've looked at these issues for a long time. How would you grade the state of the Mekong River today? And you can use kind of any metric you'd like, whether it's a scale of one to ten or a sort of letter grade.

Dr. Anoulak Kittikhoun: Well, first of all, thank you very much, Prashanth, for having me and this opportunity to talk to your audience about the Mekong and broader issues in the region. Well, like you said, the Mekong River, it's classified as one of the great rivers, along with the Amazon, the Nile, Mississippi, etcetera. So it is the largest, longest in Southeast Asia. It actually has the most fisheries in the world, even more than the Amazon. It’s the second most biodiverse only after the Amazon. I think top ten – it depends on how you count – in terms of basin size, flows, etcetera. Seventy million people, so sizable population. Six important countries, one superpower who is also upstream, and two regional important countries Vietnam and Thailand. And then you have Laos in the middle and Cambodia in the south, and a bit of Myanmar sort of on the side.

The Mekong Basin has caught attention in the water space, a lot in the environmental space, and sometimes in the geopolitical space, because of the fact that it is situated in mainland Southeast Asia, which is a geopolitical hotspot. But also because of its status as one of the great rivers of the world. It is very important for the economies of the basin countries. You know that Vietnam and Thailand are the two rice baskets of the world, so most of the rice come from the Mekong, and the delta of Vietnam is very important for the Vietnamese economy. It's also important for tourism. I think thirty percent of mainland Southeast Asia tourism comes from the Mekong, and it is increasingly important for energy. Laos has this ambition increasingly of being the battery of Asia – of Southeast Asia, maybe not Asia, it's too big. And Mekong energy – not just hydropower, but increasingly solar wind – are contributing to this. So it's very important for the economies of the region. And it's important for livelihoods, important for culture, history as well as for the people’s ties to the river.

But it's undergoing fundamental changes. Let me talk about the fiscal changes first. We used to have a more or less natural regime. In the wet season, you have very large flows. During the dry season, you have a very low flows, and people are used to that. But now because of, like you mentioned earlier, the building of dams – especially storage dams in China and in Laos – this has changed, and it has brought challenges as well as opportunities. Challenges, for example, during the wet season when you needed the water to flood some forest or wetlands, now you have a bit less. And in cases of drought, especially during the wet season, the storage by dams can also add or exacerbate drought. But there are some opportunities. Because during the dry season, you have a very low flow. But because dams release water during the dry season to generate electricity, then you can have possibly more water. That's good for irrigation. That's good for navigation, and that's sometimes good for drought relief during the dry season. So there are some challenges and some possible benefits.

But geopolitically is also challenging. Because it's an international river – six countries, different sizes, different stages of development. You have Thailand and Vietnam who developed parts of their base in a bit earlier, and now you have China developed in the 1990s, and now Laos and Cambodia are developing. So when you have national plans, whether they are dam projects or water irrigation projects or big canal projects, you tend to run into each other. And throughout the past decade or so, you have this contestation in the Mekong about a certain dam raising tensions with neighbors, and the possibility to have spillover effects into broader contestations and conflicts. It has not happened. I think part of the reason is we have a good institutional framework in the basin, one of which is the Mekong River Commission that I can talk a lot about, but also associated institutions. ASEAN, other Mekong frameworks, the relations between the countries, etcetera.

“And throughout the past decade or so, you have this contestation in the Mekong about a certain dam raising tensions with neighbors, and the possibility to have spillover effects into broader contestations and conflicts.”

GRADING REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE

ASEAN Wonk: You mentioned there a couple of points that I want to touch on. One is the Mekong River Commission itself and the MRC, which you helped lead. You really had a bird's eye view about how the organization works. It's an organization that, not unlike other subregional organizations, often comes under a lot of criticism for some of its limitations. It only has four of the countries as full members, and the other two are partner countries. There are some inherent limitations there. But like any regional, subregional or global organization, it is only as powerful as its members allow it to be as an intergovernmental grouping. And so, it's also a question of where the responsibility lies in terms of where the organization is headed. In your assessment, how do you see the Mekong River Commission faring – both its successes and then also its limitations – having seen its evolution throughout the years?

Dr. Anoulak Kittikhoun: Yeah. The Mekong River Commission was given a mandate in 1995 that is actually a broad mandate. It's to coordinate and promote the sustainable development of water and related resources of the Mekong Basin. So it's quite a broad mandate. It was not given a regulatory mandate like, say, some other river organizations in Europe or the European Commission. But it's given this mandate to be the coordinator, the promoter of good development. And it does that simply because the countries want to develop. The countries want to develop still, because we don't have a fully developed river yet. And it has four members. There's a whole history about why China is not a member, which I may not be able to talk about much, but it has four members – Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand. And, in my assessment – unbiased – it has functioned to the best that it could be. So let's delve into the two key roles. One is to be some sort of water diplomacy platform of the basin. It's the only treaty-based organization in the Mekong. And second is to provide services to the country, such as river monitoring, studies, flood forecasting etcetera.

But let's delve into the water diplomacy angle. You know, as I mentioned in the beginning, we have had contestations over projects of the countries. For example, in 2010, Laos submitted to build the first mainstream then on the lower part of the Mekong – China has already built several in the upper part. Now that created a lot of tensions, including between Laos and Vietnam, who are usually friends on all sorts o