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."