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DAM-L LS: new Chinese dam to affect millions... <fwd>
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Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 19:31:39 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: LS: Chinese dam to affect millions
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Chinese dam to affect millions
John Gittings investigates the effects that the vast project will have upon
the people of south-east Asia
John Gittings
Tuesday May 15, 2001
The Guardian
The world's tallest dam is about to begin construction in a project that
will affect millions of Asian farmers over four neighbouring countries, as
well as transforming one of China's most precious ecological zones.
After decades of discussion, the government of Yunnan province announced
last month - with undiluted pride - that the Xiaowan project on the Lancang
river will start this year.
The major feature of the new hydroelectric power station, it said, will be
"a concrete hyperbolic arch dam that stands 292 metres high ... the
equivalent to the height of a 100-storey skyscraper".
Xiaowan is one of eight dams (two are already built) known to
environmentalists as the "Langcang river cascade" designed to exploit the
rapid fall in level of the Mekong's main tributary as it flows through Yunnan.
At last week's Asian Development Bank summit in Honolulu, the scheme
received little attention from protesters who focused instead on ADB-funded
projects in the Mekong region outside China.
But a new report commissioned by the ADB warns that the Lancang cascade
will seriously affect the Mekong's complex ecosystems on which millions of
farmers in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand rely.
According to an article in the South China Morning Post last week, the
report predicts increased flooding and a decline in fish stocks in the
river which is described as "the life-source for millions of people".
Earlier studies have already raised doubts about the project which was
first conceived in the 1970s without, the Chinese themselves admit, taking
into account its effects downstream.
Fears that less water will reach the Mekong countries, as a result of
diversion and evaporation in China, have been countered by the statistic
that only 16% of the Mekong's flow at its mouth originates in the Lancang.
Critics point out, however, that as much as 50% of the river sediment,
which is vital for crop production along the Mekong, comes from China and
that a large proportion will be trapped by the dams.
As so often, the argument turns on predictions which cannot be easily
weighed. Will the project improve the lives of riparian communities by
maintaining a more even flow through the dry season? Or will this flood the
lands which are cultivated seasonally when the waters recede and reduce
their crops?
Such questions come a long way down the list in a project which continues
to be justified by China, mainly on grounds of power generation. When it is
completed in 2013, half the annual output of 18.9bn kWh from Xiaowan will
be transmitted to Guangdong, and other booming coastal provinces.
The benefits to China's rapidly expanding and power-hungry cities have
already been demonstrated since the completion of the Manwan dam - the
first stage of the Lancang cascade - which ended the acute power shortages
suffered by Yunnan's provincial capital, Kunming.
This year the project has been boosted by China's new policy of "opening up
the west" which will pour huge sums of capital investment into Yunnan and
other traditionally "backward" provinces.
The cost of Xiaowan alone is estimated at 32 billion yuan (about four
billion US dollars) and will generate jobs for tens of thousands of
workers. Chinese sources claim that the indigenous, mainly minority,
peoples of the region will benefit from new roads and labour opportunities.
The experience of the Three Gorges dam in central China suggests that most
jobs are taken by migrant workers, often at the expense of settled local
communities. The project also runs counter to a separate plan, also
announced last month, to preserve ethnic culture and biodiversity in the
upper reaches of the Mekong.
While Chinese officials say they are determined to pursue sustainable
strategies of development, there is little open debate or awareness of the
negative implications of big-dam construction.
The current approach, writes Professor Gavan McCormack in Critical Asian
Studies (Routledge Journals, March 2001), combines the centralised
tradition of Chinese imperial water-management with the "nature-dominating"
strategy of the modern West, transmitted to China through the Soviet example.
However complex the argument may be, it is vital to get it right, and not
only for the sake of Yunnan's rare monkeys and porcupines, or the
drum-beating Wa ethnic minority and the turban-wearing Lahu.
Hundreds of millions of Asians depend on the rivers originating in the
Tibetan plateau, including the Jinsha/Yangtzi and Lancang/Mekong, for their
fresh water. Even this flow may already be threatened by the shrinking
glaciers of the Himalayas.
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