* Laos prepares for construction, defies regional pressure
* Food security, agriculture, fisheries threatened
* Mekong countries to push for delay, detailed study
BANGKOK, April 19 (Reuters) - Plans for the first dam across the lower Mekong River are putting Laos on a collision course with its neighbours and environmentalists who fear livelihoods, fish species and farmland could be destroyed, potentially sparking a food crisis.
The impoverished, Communist nation seems determined to defy international pressure and forge ahead with construction of the $3.5 billion Xayaburi Dam, a project experts say could cause untold environmental damage.
The four countries that share the lower stretches of the 4,900 km (3,044 mile) Mekong -- Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia -- met in the Lao capital Vientiane on Tuesday to debate and possibly decide the future of the 1.285-megawatt (MW) dam, the first of 11 planned in the lower Mekong that are expected to generate 8 percent of Southeast Asia's power by 2025.
Although Mekong basin countries are bound by a treaty to hold inter-governmental consultations before building dams, none has veto powers and Laos will have the final say.
Ecologists and rivers experts say an environmental impact assessment conducted last year by the Lao government was patchy at best. They warn that the livelihoods of 60 million people in the lower Mekong region are at risk if the Xayaburi dam goes ahead without proper risk assessment.
Activists say scores of fish species face extinction, fish stocks will dwindle as migratory routes will be blocked, and swathes of rice-rich land could be deprived of fertile silt carried downstream by Southeast Asia's longest waterway.
Entire villages would be forced to relocate.
According to a study by the Mekong Rivers Commission, an inter-government agency, the proposed 11 dams would turn 55 percent of the river into reservoirs, resulting in estimated agriculture losses of more than $500 million a year and cutting the average protein intake of Thai and Lao people by 30 percent.
Laos has not responded to the warnings or to scientists' recommendations. Its government has hailed Xayaburi as a model for clean, green energy that will stimulate its tiny $6 billion economy and improve the lives of its 5.9 million people, over a quarter of whom live below the poverty line, many without electricity.
Its energy-hungry neighbour, Thailand, will buy most of the power generated by the dam. Thailand's No. 2 building contractor, CH Karnchang Pcl , has a 30 percent share in the project. The Thai government has said little about the dam.
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