The conference on Hydropower Development, Fish Protection and Fishery Resource Sustainable Utilization, 27-29 October 2015, Jinghong, Yunnan, China, was convened by Ecofish Research Institute and hosted by Asian International Rivers Center of Yunnan University.
The ecological responses of hydropower development in the Upper Mekong have been well debated internationally. For years, Chinese government, enterprises and scientists had conducted lots of researches and adopted various measures to decrease the possible negative impacts, which had achieved outstanding outcomes and accumulated rich experience. However, people of the Lower Mekong countries and some international organizations had not enough information for this case, and there were some misunderstanding between Upper and Lower Mekong countries. The conference invited scholars who are familiar with and have important effects in this area from countries located in the downstream of Mekong River and international institutions, to communicate with Chinese experts on the issue of common concern. Furthermore, participants of the conference were invited to visite the downstream of Upper Mekong to observe measures and achievements for protecting fish ecologically and reduce the impact of dams. The meeting had a great influence on the increasing of the perceptions and understanding of efforts made by Chinese government and companies in the hydropower development of Upper Mekong and introduced the latest progress in the related research, prominently showing the powerful and responsible characteristic of China in the development and protection of Upper Mekong River Basin.
The conference representatives and specialist comprised of Tsinghua University, National University of Laos, Southwest Forestry University, China Institute of Water Resource and Hydropower Research, China Huaneng Lancang River Hydropower Co., LTD, Xishuangbanna Fishery Increment Station, Cambodian Agricultural Research and Development Institute(CARDI), Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI), The Nature Conservancy’s Center for Sustainable Hydropower, Water Land and Ecosystems(WLE) Mekong, World Wide Fund (WWF) China and so on.
HE Daming, the head of AIRC, and Dr. YU Xue form Canadian Ecofish Research Institute co-chaired the academically communication workshop. Moreover, Dr. Dr. LU Ying and DING Zhicheng individually made the speech entitled “Progresses of Aquatic Monitoring on the Lancang River” and “The Effects of Dam Removal on Fish Assemblage Structure and Spatial Distributions in a Tributary of the Lancang River, China”.