Two Decades On, a Look Back at Laos
Proposed hydroelectric dams threaten tradition ways of life along the Mekong River
These images were taken during visits to Laos in 1996 and 2002 visits, not long after the country’s door was eased open for travelers in the early 1990s. I was fortunate to document moments in the rural reaches of the country in which many Laotians still live and work as subsistence farmers, fishermen, market traders and merchants.
Today, a thriving tourist industry, gold and copper mines and the construction of several large hydroelectric dams are encroaching upon lives in regions that, for decades, were sleepy backwaters.
With the number of foreign tourists increasing, this Southeast Asian nation is opening up to the world. Lacking access to the sea, Laos remains hamstrung by its geography and the vitality of its neighbors, especially China and Vietnam, is spilling across its borders.
Mekong River, Wild and Mighty
All three capital cities in Laos is situated alongside the river and it has long served as the country’s lifeline — for landlocked Laos, the Mekong and its tributaries are the all-important source of fish. In mountain streams, in rivers small and large, in flooded rice fields, people cast their nets and set their traps.
Many also rely on the river for its role as trade and communication route. Carving a 900 km border between Laos and northern Thailand, the river is the main highway for many where paved roads are virtually non-existent.
Given current development trends in the region, Thai, Malaysian, Chinese, and Vietnamese developers and investors in the private sectors have set out to build 11 dams on the Mekong’s main stem in Laos, storing up trouble for millions of people, the world’s largest inland fishery and critically endangered species.
Already serious concerns have been raised by river experts and scientists over plans to build a series of dams along the Mekong. If the dam-building boom advances as planned, it could decrease essential flood pulses and decimate fisheries and riverside gardens that are dependent on variable flows and sediment. That in turn, would affect the diets and livelihoods of 40 million people dependent on the Mekong.
The Mekong swells during the monsoon, bringing silt deposit and nutrients, thus allowing the area to thrive — fertile soil for agriculture and fish multiply in great numbers. The richest soils of the country are on the river banks and inland as far as the river silt is carried.
In Luang Prabang, nearly 80 percent of the population are engaged in farming — primarily rice. Cut off from major markets by a lack of reliable surface transport (the Mekong not all that navigable year-round) the province has developed a small, fragile and largely isolated economy of local production and services resting on a traditional subsistence foundation.
All images by Alan Dejecacion.
Alan Dejecacion is a photographer based in southern California. Follow him on Flickr, Twitter and Instagram. Dejecacion has written about street photography and Peshawar previously on Vantage.
