Planned power plants in Laso upset green activists

Planned power plants in Laso upset green activists

Landlocked Laos wants to develop its vast hydropower potential, but experts say this is not the only way for it to get rich quick. Leah Makabenta of Inter Press Service reports.

BANGKOK (IPS): In its 4,200 km journey from the Tibetan Plateau to the South China Sea, the mighty River Mekong lingers to feed the streams along the highlands and mountains that make up most of landlocked Laos.

This accident of geography is why the sleepy, gentle country, that is one of Asia's poorest has become the innocent prize in a tug-of-love between green groups, development experts, international funding agencies investors and plain do-gooders.

Laos possesses fully half -- 18,000 megawatts -- of the hydro- power potential of the Lower Mekong, the 2,400 km stretch of Southeast Asia's longest river that drains the entire country and parts of Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The promised windfall in electricity exports has induced Laos's planners to place their faith in planned course of hydro- electric power development.

Now, the rush of foreign investor interest threatens to overwhelm the country's decision-makers who at last count listed 56 proposed power projects with an estimated total output of more than 10,000 megawatts, most of it for sale to Thailand.

The prospect of dams blocking Laos's part of the Mekong is horrifying to green activists anxious that Laos does not go the way of Thailand's environmentally damaging development.

Thai academic Chirapol Sintunawa says Laos is already suffering severe environmental problems from deforestation and illegal logging, without having to face threat of damage to watershed areas from dam-building.

Another cause for concern is the effect on local communities that depend on the river for their livelihood and sustenance. Laos depends on the Mekong for trade, communications and fishery, all of which would be lost if the river is dammed. Farmland along the river and tributary valleys would be drowned to make way for reservoirs.

"As an environmentalist I should be happy that now we are no longer building dams in Thailand, but we are causing problems to neighboring countries, not just in Laos but also in Myanmar," says Chiraphol, chairman of the faculty of environment and resource studies at Thailand's Mahidol University.

After squandering its forests and water resources, Thailand is facing water and energy shortages and dam failures. Bangkok has been wooing Laos with large-scale investments and contracts for huge electricity purchases.

In July, Bangkok and Vientiane concluded a power purchase pact for 1,500 megawatts (mgw) of electricity for a 10-year period.

The US$300 million 210 megawatt Nam Theun Hiboun dam, the only project now in the implementation stage, is a joint venture between a Thai firm, the Swedish and Norwegian Nordic Hydropower Group and the Lao government.

Thailand's Electricity Generating Authority has pledged to purchase 95 percent of its output. The plant is scheduled for completion in 1997.

Critics like Chiraphol do not blame Laos, which is regarded almost with affection in environment and development circles for the special sensitivity it has shown in its economic growth plans.

"While we can achieve eight percent annual economic growth by the year 2000, we don't see the need to do so," says Lao ambassador to Thailand Sangsomsak. "Instead we ponder on how we can improve our society by strengthening our culture and improving education and health."

The way critics see it, Laos is being led unsuspectingly down the path of ruinous development by profligate power user Thailand and the highly developed dam technology expertise of the West, particularly the Scandinavian countries.

Chiruphol says far too many experts and investors are coming to Laos looking to develop projects when the country has not even developed the institutional capacity to evaluate such projects.

For instance, Laos lacks the people with the training to read English, much less to evaluate an environment impact assessment report. They should not take advantage of Laos from knowing too little about development projects, he says.

There are as yet no proper guidelines for environmental and impact assessments, no rules, no monitoring capacity and no regulations in the country.

There are questions whether hydroelectric development is the only way for Laos to make money. He says Laos is like a patient walking into a hospital and getting the kind of treatment according to the expertise of the first doctor he sees.

"If he consults a surgeon first, there is a strong likelihood he will be operated on," says Chirapol. "If you consult an expert on power generation, you tend to overlook other possibilities and sources of income."

Witoon Permponsacharoen, director of the Toward Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance (Terra) environmental group says there is crucial link between bilateral aid and the whole process of development, especially dam projects, in Indochina.

"The highly sophisticated dam industry in Scandinavia can no longer construct dams in their countries and is lobbying their governments to fund Mekong dam construction projects through export subsidies and aid," he says.

Scandinavian countries are the most active in Mekong countries, with Finland, Denmark and Sweden the biggest contributor to the Mekong Committee set up by the United Nations to promote development projects in the Mekong basin.

The Theun Hinboun project, for instance, combines Scandinavian technology with Thai power company management expertise. It is jointly financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad). Nordic Hydropower is responsible for the planning, operation and training.

Carl-Eric Norlander, project director of Nordic Hydropower -- admits that the move to Laos was partly because the expansion and development of energy production in Europe had reached capacity. He says: "You can't be in the forefront of a technology staying in the backyard of your own country, you must go international."

Green groups say Laotian officials are confident that the strong environmental concern in the Nordic countries would guarantee that the project would not be harmful to the environment.

Indeed, Norwegian authorities turned down an initial feasibility study done by the Norcunsult firm and recommended an independent review and further study of the dam's environmental effects before implementing the project.

Norlander now says the dam is a small run of the river type and would have very limited impact to the environment and with less sedimentation. An environmental management program would be a permanent feature in the operation and maintenance of the plant, he adds.

"This will be the first and a very good opportunity for Laotians to learn how to manage and operate a project of this size and complexity. This is very important because they have very few possibilities to get management training," says Norlander.

Income from the dam would enable the government to provide health care, education, electricity services, not to mention the many industries that would be spawned by the dam which could make a difference to many people, he said.

Unlike its existing Nam Ngum dam that was fully financed by the Mekong Committee, Theun Hiboun will be operated by the foreign joint venture partners for 25 years before reverting to the state-owned Electricite du Lao.

"We are not sure if the money from these projects will even have an impact on the problems they already have. The money will be taken out of the country by investors and the local people will be left with the environmental problems," says Chiraphol.

But Norlander comments: "We can't find a remedy for development in Laos without use of their resources... Laos is an independent nation, They must be given the right to handle their resources, we are not their parents."