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DAM-L LS: Controversy Dogs Burma's Salween Dam (fwd)
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subject: LS: Controversy Dogs Burma's Salween Dam
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CONTROVERSY DOGS BURMAS SALWEEN DAM
Mainichi Daily News,
August 3, 2000
MAINICHI DAILY NEWS Thursday, August 3, 2000
ASIA FOCUS
CONTROVERSY DOGS BURMAS SALWEEN DAM
In the First World, theyre being de-commissioned, blown up. The fact that
they do more harm than good is no longer just conjecture. Big dams are
obsolete. Theyre uncool. Theyre undemocratic. --- Indian author Arundhati
Roy.
BY RICHARD HUMPHRIES, Contributing Writer
Harn Yawnghwe was just 13 when the soldiers came to his house. It was
Rangoon, March 2, 1962, and Gen. Ne Win had just launched the coup that
would begin military rule --- which continues to this day. Harns brother
Myee was killed in cold blood but it was their father the soldiers had come
for it. That man, Sao Shwe Thaike, had been sapha (prince) of Yawnghwe, a
Shan state principality. More importantly, he had also been independent
Burmas first president. Eight months later he died in jail under
mysterious circumstances.
Harn and his surviving family members had to flee their homeland.
Nonetheless, he remains deeply committed to Burma and all its peoples.
Today, Harn Yawnghwe live s in Brussels and is program director for
Euro-Burma Office, an EU-funded prodemocracy organization.
On May 30, Harn accompanied Dr. Thaung Htum, the prodemocracy movements
U.N. representative, to Tokyo to visit Japanese government officials. Their
purpose was to express their deep concern about Japanese aid and
investment, which they felt was benefiting Burmas military clique and not
its long-suffering peoples.
At a subsequent professional dinner in Tokyo with correspondents and
embassy officials, Harn emphasized one particular project. We believe
there is a plan to dam the Salween River, he said. The Salween is one of
the last river left in its natural state. The Japanese government is
involved in the sense that the Electric Power and Development Corp., Ltd.
(EPDC), which is 67 percent owned by the Ministry of Finance, has done a
feasibility study for this dam.
The Salween is a 2,400-kilometer-lomg waterway that begins life in
Chinas Tibetan plateau, and travels through Burma before entering the Gulf
of Martaban near Moulmein. It is the last major Southeast Asian river that
is free-flowing and it drains some 320,000 square kilometers of the land.
The project dam site is at Ta Sarng, a river crossing in southern Shan
state, some 80 kilometers north from Thai border. As Burma is ruled by an
unpopular and surreally brutal dictatorship, and Shan state is, if
anything, turbulent, it would want to seem at first glance unusual that
foreign governments and companies would want to become involved in at all.
Greed is paramount but regional politics and the role of environmental
activism have played some role. In the developed world, with a few
exceptions, large dam building has declined. There has been more
transparency and debate about hypothetical projects and sometimes even
ridicule (a boondoggle visible from Mars) has been enough to stifle the
more absurd notions. Dam builders have shifted their attention to the
developing world.
Even there, resistance has flared. Attempts in the 1980s to build a dam
at Nam Choan on Thailands river Kwai were eventually defeated, despite
official sanction, by vehement public opposition. Thai authorities then
looked to that countrys neighbors where, it was thought, the rulers would
be less discerning and public opinion more easily manipulated or ignored.
Thailand wanted more electricity for its industries as well as diverted
water to fill its reservoirs and flush out its river.
INVESTORS LONG FOR SALWEEN
For years potential builders and founders have eyed the Salween the same
way hungry wolves might gaze upon a stray lamb, frolicking in a distant
meadow. Various Thai, German and Japanese concerns have carried a series of
feasibility studies since 1979. The recently completed ERDC one is only the
latest but, it is believed, the definitive one that will lead to final
design and construction. In this sense the term feasibility can be taken
to mean not whether but how.
On its English Internet site, the EPDC announced that it will give great
respect to the natural environment and regional communities and strive to
construct and operate power generation facilities in a manner that
harmonizes with the natural environment and communities. Boilerplate
statements such as those can ring hollow. When asked if the EPDC had spoken
with him or with local communities in Shan State, Harn was emphatic. No,
weve had no contact. We believe they only talk with the SPDC (Burmese
junta). Theres been no discussion with the local population. Nothing.
A response was sought from the EPDC but it was not able to provide a
comment as of the time of the story going to print.
As for the companys communications with the people at the dam site, not
just the EPDC but of all companies involved there seem to avoid the locals.
According to monitoring groups such as Salween Watch, the Shan Herald
Agency for News, and TERRA (Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional
Alliance), a Thai environmental nongovernmental organization, some 400 to
500 Burmese troops are along the Salween protect those companies involved
in preparatory work on the dam.
The main company involved is Thai, the GMS public Power Co. Ltd. It hopes
to sell the electricity to EGAT, the Electricity Generating Authority of
Thailand. GMS is part of Thailands MDX group of companies and has been
involved in dam projects in Laos, Cambodia, and in Chinas Yunnan province.
The plan for the Salween is thought to call for a concrete-faced rockfill
dam, 188 meters in height. That would make it mainland Southeast Asias
highest dam. A 230-kilometer long reservoir would flood an area of at least
640 square kilometers. It would store about one-third of the Salweens
annual flow.
The logistics of such a project would be immense, as would the cost, at
least 3 billion dollars by one estimate. By no means does GMS have the
financial wherewithal to undertake the project. It is effectively bankrupt,
but no without influential friends on its board and abroad. Rumors abound
of funding interests from Japanese sources, perhaps via a third country,
but they are as yet unconfirmed.
Proponents of big dams will of course point to their benefits. It cant
be denied that dams supply a significant amount of the worlds present
energy needs --- 20 percent by some accounts. Large dams typically generate
far more electricity than nuclear or coal-fired plants. Dams can also be
used to regulate river flow, divert that flow elsewhere, manage water
demand, and by dampening rapids they can assist navigation.
But, like the pawn taken without sufficient forethought in a chess match,
disadvantages have proved overwhelming with the passage of time. Frequent
cost overruns detract from energy savings and sedimentation can ruin
efficiency. Worse, tens of millions of people worldwide, very often
helpless indigenous minorities, have been forced off their lands.
The Salween project would be no different. Ethnic conflict still ranges
in Shan state and an estimated 300,000 Shan have been forcibly displacement
is also occurring in the dam site/ projected reservoir area. What
typically happens is that youre given three days notice to leave and if
you are found in that area after three days, you are shot, explained Harn.
Ironically, some members of those regional communities have managed to
escape the terror by rafting down the Salween to exile. One Shan man
reported to human rights monitors that, I saw drilling machines on both
sides of the bank and some were sucking water and drilling. Three machines
on each bank. Should the reservoir be built he, and thousands others,
would likely have no homes to dream of returning to.
DISEASE THREAT
In tropical area, dams can increase the outbreak of deadly disease. Shan
state already lies within an endemic malarial zone. Areas of stagnant water
along the edges of the reservoir would be an ideal breeding ground. And,
according to TERRA, other ecological disasters would ensue.
The fishes of the Salween River Basin have evolved in a riverine system.
If the river were transformed into a reservoir, most of these fish species
would be extirpated by the reservoir, as will many of the fish species
living downstream of the dam due to the ecological impacts of altered water
flow and the poor quality of water released from the reservoir.
Building the dam itself would probably add to Burmas appalling human
rights record. Large infrastructure
projects have typically involved the massive use of forced labor.
Complicity does not end with the junta though, and prodemocracy groups are
well aware of this. We would caution the Japanese government for its
involvement here, Harn says. If the dam is ever built, you can be very
sure forced labor would be used.
When Arundhati Roy made her quote on big dam, she was speaking about the
furor surrounding Indias Sardar Sarovar dam project. Public displeasure
over that project was so vehement that even the Japanese government got
cold feet, withdrawing from funding part of it in 1900. Opponents of the
Salween project hope that Japan will again see the light and not play any
further role in helping to build the dam.
There may be a further incentive for companies and governments to rethink
investing Burma, as Dr. Thaung Htun has pointed out. Yes, we clearly say
the Burmese regime is illegitimate. They have no authority to manage the
resources of the country. Based on this we clearly mention that all
contracts which have been done with the military government will be
reviewed by the next democratic government.
(Richard Humphries is a free-lance journalist living in Japan and regular
Asia Focus contributor)
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