1567 



GEOGRAPHY AS THE BINDING FORCE 



But the binding force which may be the indispensable condition of 

 the success of a regional enterprise is not man-made; it is the unity 

 supplied by nature, a matter of geography: 



The ramifications of the Mekong project are beginning to appear almost Hmit- 

 Icss — encompassing river navigation and channel marking; flood warning and 

 control; weather stations; hydroelectric power production-distriV)ution-use; 

 irrigation; mineral resource exploitation; primary manufacturing; fertilizer 

 I)roduction and use; power market surveys; agricultural experiment and demon- 

 stration; ]iublic health, education, and training; bridges; roads; resettlement 

 problems; and even archcological considerations. Were it not for the coherence 

 inherent in the i)!an for a river basin in its entirety, the diffusion of effort would 

 almost certainly be unmanageable. ^^ 



Regionalism — or more precisely, regional development — introduces 

 the iclea of a system within which technology is applied more co- 

 herently to a geographic unit than to a political unit. The technological 

 system requires, first of all, an intensive application of science: 



The scientific base of a regional development "scheme, of which the Mekong 

 Lower Ba^in project is here the prototype, involves an enormous range of research 

 disciplines: meteorology, soil chemistry, biomedicine, forestry, plant genetics, 

 sociology, anthropology, marine biology, entomology, and geology, to mention 

 only a few. The technology and engineering base of .such a regional development 

 scheme is similarly broad. It encompasses hydraulics, electric power, flood con- 

 trol, electronic communications, computer modeling, electrical industries, large 

 demonstration farms, highway and bridge construction, fish and agricultural food 

 processing, and many more fields of technological applications.^^ 



ADVANTAGES OF MULTILATERAL REGIONALISM 



One of the advantages of the multinational and multilateral regional 

 approach is that it provides better guarantee? than a unilateral or 

 bilateral approach is likely to do that the social and environmental 

 impacts of development v.ill be fairly addressed and effectively dealt 

 with. The long-range gains of this approach in assuring the purposeful- 

 ness and benefits, in human and environmental ternis, of a develop- 

 ment enterprise, and also the stability of the enterprise, may greatly 

 outweigh the short-term costs in inconvenience and (as the principal 

 donor nations might see it) lack of control. Patience is required, among 

 other things: 



What makes plausible the management of so large a program Cas the Mekong 

 project) with so miscellaneous an array of resources and authorities is that the 

 project has shown an adaptive capability for 1.5 years, has not committed itself 

 to an unmanageably large effort, has concentrated on lajing a solid data base for 

 each effort, and appears willing to accept a deliberate pace for the future.*^ 



The question of adverse ecological consequences received little 

 attention during the first decade of planning and development in the 

 Lower Mekong Basin. Then rising anxieties in the United States over 

 environmental consequences of applied technology spilled over into the 

 Mekong project and compelled similar consideration of consequences 

 for the inhabitants of the Mekong Basin. For example, the report of a 

 field study of the Pa Mong Dam, financed by U.S. AID, predicted ex- 

 tensive disadvantages along with the benefits of the dam: bilharzia 

 and malaria from the penned-up slack water, the negative conse- 

 cjuences of heavy but seemingly necessary reliance on chemical 



82 Ibid., p. 418. 



83 Ibid., p. 36.i. 

 81 Ibid., p. 381. 



