Laos protests innocence as Mekong concerns snowball
Date:
July 10, 2012
The deputy energy minister of Laos denies his country has ignored agreements with neighboring countries over the building of the controversial USD3.5 billion Xayaburi hydropower dam on the Mekong River.
The project – and others planned for the Mekong and its tributaries – has come under fire from activists, people living along the river and some neighboring countries because of what they saw as an inadequate environmental impact assessment.
Late last month the NGO, International Rivers, published an investigative report saying that Thai construction firm Ch Karnchang Pcl, the main developer of the 1,260 megawatt dam, was continuing with work on the project despite a Laos agreement last December to suspend it.
The deputy minister, Viraphonh Viravong, argues the government had kept its promise, although he admits geological sub-surface surveying was being carried out in the Mekong valley.
"We plan to invite development partners and Mekong River Commission member countries to visit the project site so they can see the actual development for themselves," he told the Vientiane Times daily. "The Xayaburi project will develop one of the most transparent and modern dams in the world."
Another study published in January warned that if 78 hydropower dams scheduled for construction along tributaries of the Mekong River go ahead, they will permanently block critical fish migration routes, with "catastrophic" implications for the world's biggest inland fishery. The authors, writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, noted that their paper was the first strategic analysis of these tributary dams.
Around 60 million people in China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam live along the banks of the Mekong and tributaries and many rely on fish for their livelihoods and food.
The authors made a detailed study of 27 dams where construction is planned between 2015 and 2030, to better understand implications for fish biodiversity, food security and hydropower in the Mekong River Basin. They found that the facilities would stop fish from migrating "between the river's downstream floodplains and upstream tributaries".
Co-author Eric Baran, a scientist at the WorldFish Center in Cambodia, said the lower part of the Mekong basin produces nearly 770,000 tons of fish per year – as much as the combined freshwater catch of Europe and South America.
He said the "ambitious development agendas" of countries in the Mekong region, which include plans for rapid dam construction, could threaten the food security and livelihoods of 70 per cent of the basin's residents.
Xayaburi and other planned projects to dam the mainstream of the Mekong are subject to review by the Mekong River Commission, an advisory body founded by the four lower Mekong countries in 1995 to promote sustainable development along the river.
Plans to dam the Mekong's tributaries, however, are not currently subject to multilateral scruitiny. While most of the planned tributary dams will be built in Laos, the authors of the study say effects on fish biodiversity and availability would also be felt in Cambodia and Vietnam.
In addition, the Lower Se San 2, a controversial dam planned for a tributary in Cambodia, would have "highly detrimental" impacts on fish productivity, and could increase to 85 the number of endangered of fish species in the basin system — up from 9 during the last count in 2000 — and similarly increase the number of critically endangered species to 6, up from 1 in 2000.
Photo Credit:
Nature
No comments:
Post a Comment