418 



Apart from civil works construction, one of the most important ac- 

 tivities under the Mekong Project is the network of experimental and 

 demonstration farms and "Pioneer Agricultural Projects." The farms 

 have been under development for some years, and include : Vientiane 

 Plain Farm (Laos), Kalasin Farm (Thailand), Prek Thnot Farm 

 (Khmer Republic), Battambang Farm (Khmer Republic), and Eak 

 Mat Farm (Republic of Vietnam). The Pioneer Agricultural Projects 

 are a more recent development, dating from 1971. They are larger in 

 area than the farms, roughly 5,000 to 10,000 hectares, to enable detailed 

 study of economic, social, and institutional problems, as well as mat- 

 ters of credit, marketing, and processing. The plan of the Coordination 

 Committee calls for pioneer projects to be instituted in each of the four 

 Riparian States. According to the draft report of the Coordination 

 Committee for 1971 : "In September-October a plan of operation was 

 signed by the Mekong Committee, the UNDP (United Nations De- 

 velopment Program), and the IBRD (World Bank) for the execution 

 of this program by the World Bank on behalf of the Mekong Commit- 

 tee and for the UNDP and the contributing countries. Subsequently, 

 arrangements were made for the collaboration of the FAO (Food and 

 Agriculture Organization) and the Asian Development Bank with the 

 IBRD in this undertaking." 



Difficulties with field surveys under the conditions of war instability 

 have led to an interesting development : the proposed use of Earth Re- 

 sources Satellites to perform agricultural land use surveys, reservoir 

 resettlement studies, and surveys of floods and flood damage. 



The ramifications of the Mekong Project are beginning to appear al- 

 most limitless — encompassing river navigation and channel marking, 

 flood warning and control, weather stations, hydroelectric power pro- 

 duction-distribution-use, irrigation, mineral resource exploitation, pri- 

 mary manufacturing, fertilizer production and use, power market 

 surveys, agricultural experiment and demonstration, public health, 

 education and training, bridges, roads, resettlement problems, and even 

 archeological considerations. Were it not for the coherence inherent in 

 the plan for a river basin in its entirety, the diffusion of effort would 

 almost certainly be unmanageable. 



An effort to heighten this coherence is the preparation by the Co- 

 ordination Committee of an "Indicative Basin Plan Report." This 

 comprehensive document Avas made public in Bangkok on March 10. 

 1972. The 700-page report outlined a $12 billion 30-year program of 

 "integrated" regional development. 



Environmental Quality and Regional Development of the Mekong 



For more than a decade of planning and development in the Lower 

 Mekong Basin the question of adverse ecological consequences re- 

 ceived little attention. Mostly it was dismissed as of minor significance 

 relative to the great economic opportunities in prospect, especially in 

 view of the depressed condition of those about to be benefited. How- 

 ever, the rising anxieties in the United States over environmental 

 consequences of applied technology compelled increasing attention to 

 these same consequences for the inhabitants of the Mekong Basin. 



One evidence of this trend was presented in the renort of a field 

 study of the Pa Mong dam, financed by U.S.A.I.D., which predicted 

 extensive disadvantages along with the merits: bilharzia and malaria 



