Source : Inter Press Service News Agency, 17 Dec '05
By : Marwaan Macan-Markar
  

The Hat Gyi hydroelectricity dam will be built in five to six years, Kraisi Kanasuta, president of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT), said this month, with hardly a hint of the many problems that may lie ahead.

The planned dam will be the first of five that EGAT and the Burmese junta hope to build across the Salween river and is expected to generate 1,200 mw of power.

But even before the ink dries on the memorandum of understanding that EGAT signed with the State Peace a Development Council (SPDC), as the Burmese military regime is officially known, environmentalists and human rights groups have fired a salvo questions.

What plans, for example, do EGAT and its Burmese partner have to conduct the mandatory environment impact assessment (EIA) to gauge the extent of damage that the dam could cause in Burma's Karen State, which lies along Thailand's western border?

One group of environmental activists, ‘Salween Watch' has expressed its concern, in a statement, about the - secretive process involved in the planning and implementation of these mega-projects."

Others said that the volatile nature of the area --where the Burmese army is locked in a decades-old conflict with the Karen National Union (KNU), a rebel group of that South-east Asian country's Karen ethnic Community -- will make it impossible for a proper EIA to be conducted.

"There is fighting still going on there. I don't think the SPDC will be in a position to conduct a proper EIA before building the dam," Lau Eh Roland, deputy director of Karen River Watch, a coalition of Karen environmental and human rights groups, told IPS.

Already, there are signs of protest along the banks of the Salween River that Rangoon's junta and EGAT will find difficult to ignore. Notices have been put up, supposedly by the KNU at regular intervals, declaring their opposition to the damming of the Salween in the Karen State.

Adding to this is the Burmese regime's lack of credibility. ôYou will not be able to get an honest assessment of the damage to the environment and the community from the villagers living in the area," Sai Sai, coordinator for Salween Watch, said in an IPS interview. ôThe military will be involved in any open attempt to collect information for an EIA."

The Burmese military has earned for itself a human rights record in the region bad enough to force thousands of Karen villagers to flee for safety to Thailand over the past years.

Already global environmental lobbies, like Earthrights International, have expressed fears that the Hat Gyi dam would result in forced relocation of local communities, forced labour and other human rights violations besides greater militarisation of the area.

The 2,800 km -long Salween River is South-east Asia's last untouched body of water and rivals the mighty Mekong River, which is 4,880 km long, in terms of its relevance to people in this region. Like the Mekong, it begins its journey in the mountains of Tibet and flows through China's southern Yunnan province before snaking across Burma and along the Thai-Burmese border, before flowing out into the Andaman Sea.

In fact, the Chinese government has already set its sights on exploiting the upper reaches of the Salween, like it has done with the Mekong, to feed its own voracious appetite for electricity. Beijing's plans will result in a cascade of 13 dams being built across the Salween.

But the construction of these dams to exploit the Nu River, as the Salween is called in China, have yet to commence due to protests from environmentalists in downstream countries and green groups in China. The dam developers have worsened their case by the manner in which they conducted the EIA for this projectùin secrecy and without a public hearing about its findings.

Damming the Salween downstream will result in a loss of the area's abundant forests, wildlife, fisheries and its spectacular rocky landscape. ôThe flooding that will result after the dam is built will also affect the Thai-Burmese border," says Luntharimar Longcharoen of Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance (TERRA), an independent green group committed to protecting the environment in the Burmese and Indo-China region.

But little of that appears to be of concern to Thailand's state-run power utility, as revealed in the deal with the SPDC. What matters to EGAT executives is the cheap electricity that Thailand will be able to buy from Burma to feed its high demand for power.

Currently, Thailand consumes 1,448 kilowatt-hours (kwh)of electricity per capita, a number far higher than some of its neighbours like China, where power consumption is 827 kwh per capita, or Vietnam, where it is 286 kwh per capita, or Burma, at 68 kwh per capita.

EGAT may not be able to get away as easily as it has done so far, at least in Thailand, says Luntharimar, since the Hat Gyi dam has already become an issue that has angered Thai environmentalists. Among the rallying cries is the secrecy of EGAT and the lack of interest in conducting an honest, legally valid EIA.