Dams and other projects on rivers in Burma/Myanmar (countrywide)

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Title: *Youtube search for Burma OR Myanmar - dam* (video)
Description: About 71,200 results (August 2017)
Source/publisher: Various sources via Youtube
Date of entry/update: 2017-08-24
Grouping: Websites/Multiple Documents
Language: English, Burmese (မြန်မာဘာသာ)
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Title: Burma Rivers Network (BRN)
Description: Salween, Irrawaddy, Chindwin, Mekong, Sittaung, Kaladan, Estuaries including "Burma Dams map"... * Home * News o News Archives * Rivers o Irrawaddy o Salween o Chindwin o Mekong o Sittaung o Kaladan o Estuaries * Burma Energy o Hydropower o Oil and Gas o Bio-fuel * Dam Projects o Salween Dams + Upper Thanlwin + Tasang + Weigyi + Dagwin + Hatgyi + Downstream Impacts o Irrawaddy/N?Mai/Mali o Yeywa Dam o Paunglaung Dams o Shweli Dams o Tamanthi Dam o Dapein Dam o Kengtawng Dam o Lawpita Hydropower o Mekong Development * Concerns o Transparency o Social Impacts of Dams o Environmental Impacts of Dams o Dam Safety o Militarization o Mining o Mangrove Loss * Investors o Chinese o Thai o Burmese o Others * Resources o About Dams o Hydropower Guidelines o Burma?s River Law o China?s Dam Industry o BRN Publications * Actions o Press Releases o International Campaigns o Local Action o Tools * Photos o Salween River o Mekong River o Shweli River o Irrawaddy River o Paunglaung River o Downstream Impacts * Videos "Large dams are being constructed on all of Burma?s major rivers and tributaries by Chinese, Thai and Indian companies. The dams are causing displacement, militarization, human rights abuses, and irreversible environmental damage, threatening the livelihoods and food security of millions. The power and revenues generated are going to the military regime and neighbouring countries. There is complete military control of energy development in Burma and no processes that allow for information disclosure, public participation or implementation of proper standards for dam-building. Neighbouring countries benefit from this situation by gaining electricity without bearing the social and environmental costs. To ensure transparency and accountability, the recognition of rights, and social justice in energy development projects, a democratically-elected government is needed in Burma. All investments in large dam projects in Burma must be stopped until that time, when sustainable energy policies can be developed. The Burma Rivers Network invites you to join us to protect the health and biodiversity of river ecosystems, and to protect the rights of communities negatively impacted by large-scale river development. Please contact us at [email protected] e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or visit this website for updates on current campaigns."
Source/publisher: Burma Rivers Network (BRN)
Date of entry/update: 2009-01-30
Grouping: Websites/Multiple Documents
Language: English, Burmese
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Title: Dams in Burma
Description: "There are almost 200 large Dams in Burma. Burma (Myanmar) has a large hydroelectric power potential of 39,000 megawatts (52,000,000 hp), although the economical exploitable potential is about 37,000 megawatts (50,000,000 hp). Burma tripled its installed capacity of hydro plants, from 253 megawatts (339,000 hp) in 1990 to 745 megawatts (999,000 hp) in 2002. Total installed capacity in 2010 is at least 2,449 megawatts (3,284,000 hp) MW, 6% of potential. Several large dams are planned to increase future hydro utilization..."
Source/publisher: Wikipedia
Date of entry/update: 2014-10-15
Grouping: Websites/Multiple Documents
Language: English
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Title: Google search results for "Myitsone Dam"
Description: 92,100 results (May 2011)
Source/publisher: Google.com
Date of entry/update: 2011-05-20
Grouping: Websites/Multiple Documents
Language: English
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Title: Hydro-electricity
Description: Link to the OBL section on hydro-electricity
Source/publisher: Online Burma/Myanmar Library
Date of entry/update: 2012-07-05
Grouping: Websites/Multiple Documents
Language: English
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Title: Hydropower & Dams [Mylaff folder]
Description: Afraid to go Home: Recent Violent Conflict and Human Rights Abuses in Karen State..... An Update on the Irrawaddy Myitsone Dams Project..... Cancel the 7 Dams, Save the Irrawaddy..... China and the Changing Myanmar Chronology of the Myitsone Dam at the Conflience of Rivers above Myitkyina and Map of Kachin State Dams..... Current Status of Dam Projects on Burma?s Salween River..... Dammed by Burma?s Generals: The Karenni Experience with Hydropower Development From Lawpita to the Salween..... Damming at Gunpoint: Burma Army Atrocities Pave the Way for Salween Dams in Karen State..... Damming at Gunpoint: Burma Army Atrocities Pave the Way for Salween Dams in Karen State (Karen)..... Damming Myanmar: Australian Involvement and the Shan?s Resistance..... Damming the Irrawaddy..... Drowning the Green Ghosts in Kayanland: Impacts of the Upper Palaung Dam in Burma..... Environment Impact Study on Hydropower Development of Irrawaddy River: An Analysis..... Environmental Impact Assessment on Hydropower Development of Ayeyawady River Basin Above Myitkyina, Kachin State, Myanmar..... Forced Displacements and Destroyed Lives around Upper Paunglaung Dam in Shan State, Myanmar..... Forced Displacements and Destroyed Lives around Upper Paunglaung Dam in Shan State, Myanmar..... High and Dry: The Cross-Boundary Impacts of China?s Longjiang Dam..... High and Dry: The Cross-Boundary Impacts of China?s Longjiang Dam (Shan)..... Hydropower Development in Myanmar and its Implications on Regional Energy Cooperation..... Hydropower in Myanmar: Sector Analysis and Related Legal Reforms..... Hydropower Projects on the Salween River: An Update..... Impacts of Large-Scale Hydropower on Burma?s Salween River..... Improving Hydropower Outcomes through System Scale Planning: An example from Myanmar..... In the Balance: Salween Dams Threaten Downstream Communities in Burma..... In the Balance: Salween Dams Threaten Downstream Communities in Burma (MM)..... International Journal on Hydropower and Dams: Special Issue on Asia..... Land Lost and Future Land Problems in Karen State, Eastern Burma/Myanmar..... Making Governance Good: The Production of Scale in the Environmental Impact Assessment and Governance of the Salween River..... Myanmar Energy Master Plan..... Myanmar Integrated Water Resources Management Strategic Study: Research and Analysis, Strategies and Measures.....Myanmar Under Reform: Emerging Pressures on Water, Energy and Food Security..... Ordered Out: The Costs of Building Burma?s Upper Paunglaung Dam..... Policies Guiding Chinese Dam Building..... Resisting the Flood: Communities Taking a Stand Against the Imminent Construction of Irrawaddy Dams..... Roots and Resilience: Tasang Dam Threatens War-Torn Shan Communities..... Save the Namtu River: Impacts of the Upper Yeywa and Other Planned Dams on the Namtu in Shan State..... Save the Namtu River: Impacts of the Upper Yeywa and Other Planned Dams on the Namtu in Shan State..... Seismic Hazard Analysis for Myanmar..... Should we Build More Large Dams?: The Actual Cost of Hydropower Megaproject Development..... Small Scale Hydropower in Myanmar: facts & figures..... Stalled Hope?: The Resource Conflict Risks to Myanmar?s Political and Economic Transition..... Statement of Karen Rivers Watch: International Day of Action for Rivers and Against Dams 14.03.2016..... Stop Damming in War-zones on Burma?s Major Rivers: A Briefer on Conflicts at Dam Sites in Burma..... Stop Damming the Chindwin..... Stop the Dam Offensive Against the Karenni..... The New Great Walls: A Guide to China?s Overseas Dam Industry..... The People and their River, the World Bank and its Dam..... Under the Boot: The Burma Army Clears the Way for Chinese Dams on the Shweli River..... Undercurrents Issue 1: Monitoring Development on Burma?s Mekong..... Undercurrents Issue 2: Monitoring Development on Burma?s Mekong..... Undercurrents Issue 3: Monitoring Development on Burma?s Mekong..... Warning Signs: An Update on Plans to Dam the Salween in Burma?s Shan State..... Water Grabbing/Land Grabbing in Shared Water Basins: The Case of Salween River Hatgyi Dam..... Working Together for a Better Kachin Landscape..... ကရငျနီ လူမြိုးမြားအပေါျ ဆညျဖွင့ျ ထိုးစဈဆငျတိုကျခိုကျနမှေု..... စဈဖိနပျအောကျက ရှှလေီမွဈ..... စဈဗိုလျခြုပျမြား၏ ရကောတာ ကရငျနီတို့၏ ရအေားလြှပျစဈဖှံ့ဖွိုးရေးစီမံကိနျးအတှေ့အကွုံ..... ပေါငျးလောငျးမွဈ အထကျပိုငျးဆညျ၏ ဆိုးကြိုးသကျရောကျမှုမြား..... မှင့တြဈခွီ ခနြးတဈလှည့ြ တဈ ရုတျနိုငျငံ လောငျဂနြျးဆညျ၏ နယျခွားဖွတျကြောျ သကျရောကျရိုကျခတျမှုမြား..... ရဖေုံးလှှမျးမှုကို ခုခံတှနျးလှနျခွငျး..... သဘာဝပတျဝနျးကငြျ ရှငျသနျဖို့ နမ်မတူမွဈကိုကာကှယျစို့..... သမေငျးတမံရတေဈကား..... ဧရာဝတီမွဈကို ပိတျဆို့ ရကောတာတညျဆောကျခွငျး........ To access some files, users may have to take out a (free) subscription to MYLAFF at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mylaff
Source/publisher: MYLAFF
Date of entry/update: 2016-06-09
Grouping: Websites/Multiple Documents
Language: English, Burmese (မြန်မာဘာသာ)
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Title: Hydropower development on the Irrawaddy river basin above Myitkyina
Description: This dossier contains the full text of the environmental impact assesment (EIA) done by Chinese and Burmese experts and published in October 2009. The title is: "ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT (SPECIAL INVESTIGATION) ON HYDROPOWER DEVELOPMENT OF AYEYAWADY RIVER BASIN ABOVE MYITKYINA, KACHIN STATE, MYANMAR". The dossier also contains links to other documents on the project including the EIA commissioned by the CHINA POWER INVESTMENT CORPORATION (CPI).
Source/publisher: Biodiversity And Nature Conservation Association (BANCA) and other sources
Date of publication: 2009-10-00
Date of entry/update: 2011-08-12
Grouping: Websites/Multiple Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 109.36 KB
Local URL: PDF icon EIA-dossier.pdf
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Title: Irrawaddy Myitsone Dam
Description: "The Irrawaddy River flows from north to south through the center of Burma. Since 2005, Burma?s military junta in partnership with the China Power Investment Corporation have been preparing plans to build a 3,600 - 6,000 megawatt Irrawaddy Myitsone dam on the river. China Gezhouba is the main dam builder. Located a mile below the confluence of the Mali and N?Mai Rivers in Kachin State, the source of the Irrawaddy River, the Irrawaddy Myitsone Dam is the largest of seven dams now proposed for these three rivers. If built, the Irrawaddy Myitsone dam would create a reservoir the size of New York City and displace 10,000 people, mostly from the Kachin ethnic group. The dam will also submerge historical churches, temples, and cultural heritage sites that are central to Kachin identity and history. The dam site is located within the Mizoram-Manipur-Kachin rainforest region, which is recognized as one of the world?s top biodiversity hotspots and a global conservation priority. If built, the Irrawaddy Myitsone Dam would inundate approximately 766 square kilometers of this pristine rainforest and cause irreversible damage to its river systems. The dam would also disrupt transportation of nutrients to the Irrawaddy?s delta, which provides nearly 60 percent of Burma?s rice. Local communities oppose the dam not just because of its environmental impacts, displacement, and threats to cultural sites, but also because the dam is located less than 100 kilometers from a major fault line, posing a risk to basin inhabitants should an earthquake weaken the dam structure or cause landslides in the reservoir. If the Irrawaddy Myitsone Dam were to break during an earthquake, it would endanger the lives of hundred of thousands of people by flooding Kachin State?s largest city, Myikyina. In May 2007, twelve respected leaders from Kachin State sent a letter at the request of local communities to Senior General Than Shwe and the junta?s Ministry of Electric Power calling for the project to be cancelled. In December 2007, the Burma Rivers Network also sent a letter to the Chinese government calling on Chinese companies operating in Burma to conduct environmental and social impact assessments, publicly release information, and include affected communities in the decision-making process. Neither letter has yet received a response. In Burma, the Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG) is working to protect the Irrawaddy River and its communities in Kachin State. International Rivers is working to support local groups? efforts against the Irrawaddy Myitsone Dam and is also challenging CSG?s involvement in dams in Burma..."
Source/publisher: International Rivers
Date of entry/update: 2011-08-18
Grouping: Websites/Multiple Documents
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Title: Irrawaddy/N?Mai/Mali Dams
Description: Burma?s military government signed an agreement with China Power Investment Corporation in May 2007 for the implementation of seven large dams along the Irrawaddy, Mali, and N?Mai Rivers in Kachin State. The largest of the seven, the Myitsone Dam, is located at the confluence of the Mali and N?Mai Rivers at the creation of the Irrawaddy. The dam would destroy the confluence, one of the most significant cultural heritage sites for the Kachin people and an important landmark for all of Burma.
Source/publisher: Burma Rivers Network
Date of entry/update: 2010-09-20
Grouping: Websites/Multiple Documents
Language: English
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Title: Mekong Watch Japan
Description: "Mekong Watch is the Japanese NGO established in1993 to monitor and research social and environmental impacts of the Japanese development initiatives in the Mekong region, and to advocate more sustanable and people-centered ways..." It appears to be a consortium of NGOs, largely Japanese, which aims "...to create channels for local people in the Mekong region to participate in each decision-making process of development initiatives affecting their livelihoods, cultures and ecosystems. We will foster a deeper understanding of them and their impacts, and support local people for benefiting their own development paths based on their local resources and rules. Strategies 1.Information gathering and analysis on problematic development plans. 2.Understanding social and environmental situation in Mekong River Region. 3.Feedback of relevant information both to Mekong region and Japan. 4.Developing ideas on information disclosure, participation and civil society. Critical, in particular, of Japanese-funded dams.
Date of publication: 1993-00-00
Date of entry/update: 2003-06-03
Grouping: Websites/Multiple Documents
Language: English
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Title: TERRA (Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance)
Description: "Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance/Foundation for Ecological Recovery (TERRA/FER), believe that public debate on, and participation in, decisions concerning environment and development is a crucial first step in forging paths towards a more equitable and sustainable future for all people in the Mekong region. This means that civil society must play a strong role in shaping national and regional development policy process. In supporting the work of civil society groups in the region, we have undertaken a range of activities, including participatory research, internships, field studies and exchange. We also engage in campaign and monitoring activities to address development projects, programmes and policies that have negative implications for local people and the environment..."
Source/publisher: TERRA
Date of entry/update: 2014-09-17
Grouping: Websites/Multiple Documents
Language: English
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Title: An 'activist diaspora' as a response to authoritarianism in Myanmar
Sub-title: The role of transnational activism in promoting political reform
Description: "Introduction: On a remote stretch of the Salween River, between the proposed Dar Gwin and Wei Gyi hydropower dam sites and where it forms the border between Thailand and Myanmar (Burma), 1 sits the Ei Tu Hta camp for ethnic Karen internally displaced peoples (IDPs) in Karen National Union (KNU) controlled Myanmar. The family of Hsiplopo, the leader of this camp, live three hours walk away but he is unable to visit them because the tatmadaw, the Myanmar military with which the KNU has been engaged in the world's longest running civil war, have camps that are only two hours walk away. The camp is also built on steep hillsides, denuding the forest cover in the limited area available, and is unable to grow its own rice, relying instead on regular donations from the UN and other NGOs shipped upriver by longtail boat. 2 This type of human and environmental insecurity colours the daily existence of both the Karen people in this camp and many other ethnic minorities in Myanmar. Nevertheless, despite these conditions, Hsiplopo's commitment to a campaign against the proposed nearby dams is resolute: 'We don't want dams ... the military cannot build the dams because the KNU will not let them while the people do not want them.' 3 This stance reflects the opposition to the dams of many environmental activists and groups who inhabit the nebulous and dangerous borderlands regions of eastern Myanmar. It also represents a form of activated citizenship although the concept of citizenship for ethnic minorities in Myanmar is itself problematic as their relationship to the Myanmar state is often little more than one of oppression and conflict. Despite the civil conflict in these areas, and perhaps because of it, these activists often operate beyond the remit of the tatmadaw undertaking perilous work with the KNU to promote human and environmental security for ethnic minorities. As an activist from the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN) explains: 'KESAN's programs are in the KNU area [in Myanmar] so we have a close relationship with the KNU leaders. ' 4 It can be difficult for environmental activists in the North, for whom this precarious existence is entirely foreign, to fully comprehend the existential struggle that dictates much environmental activism in the South, particularly under authoritarian regimes such as that of Myanmar, which has been dominated by the military since 1962. As a result, many Northern environment movements, and the American environment movement in particular, have been historically apolitical with the issues of 'human health, shelter, and food security' traditionally absent from their agendas (Doyle 2005, 26). This lack of political analysis on the issues of central importance to survival in the South and the movements they spawn is also reflected within many academic writings on environmental politics. Despite an increased focus on the environment in the last two decades, most approaches to environmental politics still examine predominantly ecological issues or regulatory regimes and focus particularly on the affluent states of the North (Howes 2005; Kutting 2000; Paehlke and Torgerson 2005). Although there has been increased attention on environmental movements in recent years, much of the material also focuses primarily on movements within the North (Carter 2007; Doherty 2002; Doyle 2000; Dryzek et al. 2003; Gottlieb 2005; Hutton and Connors 1999; Rootes 2007; Sandler and Pezzullo 2007; Shabecoff 1993). There has been some analysis of environn1ent movements in the South (Doherty 2006; Doherty and Doyle 2006; Doyle 2005; Duffy 2006; Dwivedi 1997, 2001 ), and various studies of transnational activism more generally ( della P01ta et al. 2006; Eschle and Maiguashca 2005; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Reitan 2007; Routledge et al. 2006; Rupert 2000), but only limited studies on how authoritarianism in the South specifically impacts on enviromnental activism (Doyle and Simpson 2006) or policy (Fredriksson and Wollscheid 2007). There are numerous studies that examine civil society under authoritarianism more broadly but these tend to focus on more traditional and formalised civil society organisations (Jamal 2007; Liverani 2008; Sater 2007). This chapter adds to this literature by delving more deeply into enviromnental politics under the military in Myanmar and examines the transnational campaigns against several proposed hydroelectric dams on the Salween River in eastern Myanmar. As transnational projects these dams are being undertaken by governments and transnational corporations (TNCs) but, as with most large energy projects in Myamnar, they are designed to export most of their electricity to either Thailand or China. Despite national elections in November 2010 that returned Myanmar to nominally civilian rule the 2008 constitution, on which the elections were based, provides for a continuing central role for the military in the country's governance (Holliday 2008). Although the election process was flawed, fraudulent and tightly controlled, with many generals from the former military regime, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), 5 merely stepping out of their uniforms to take up senior positions in the new government, there is little doubt that incremental change towards civilian rule is occurring and the potential for political discourse in Myamnar may well in1prove over time. While many exiled or human rights groups rightly point out that civil conflict and human rights abuses, particularly in the eastern border regions, continue,6 some analysts, such as the former International Labour Organization (ILO) Liaison Officer in Myanmar, Richard Horsey, are more optimistic about the 'new level of scrutiny' (Horsey 2011, 4) that has accompanied the new parliament. The current Liaison Officer, Steve Marshall, who is possibly more intimately involved with the new government than any other W estemer likewise argues that 'there is no doubt that the political landscape has changed' . 7 This top down political change has accompanied a less visible but nonetheless significant increase in domestic civil society activism in recent years and particularly since Cyclone Nargis in 2008 (Sabandar 2010; South 2004). The main beneficiaries of this opening have been humanitarian NGOs that have focused on emergency relief to natural disasters such as Nargis and Cyclone Giri in 2010, 8 but there has also been increased activity by environmental groups and NGOs. These groups, as with all those actors who wish to avoid sanction or imprisonment in Myanmar, engage in a certain amount of self-censorship to avoid overtly political critiques of the government but there is increasing space available for pursuing third sector environmental governance. This increased domestic activism has improved the prospects of collaboration between domestic and exiled groups with prominent domestic environmentalists running trainings on the border or in Thailand for exiled groups such as KESAN. 9 Regardless of recent changes, however, after five decades of authoritarian rule the local environmental movement remains embtyonic with significant limitations in experience and expertise. It has, therefore, been the transnational environment movement occupying Myanmar's borderlands that has provided the most fertile and important outlet for environmental activism and governance of large-scale hydropower projects in Myanmar. 10 This case study therefore suggests that, whereas hybrid regimes offer domestic spaces for political competition and therefore foster domestic civil society (Diamond 2002; Jayasuriya and Rodan 2007; Levitsky and Way 2002), traditional authoritarian regimes such as that which has afflicted Myanmar are more likely to create an activist diaspora, a dynamic transnational community of expatriates who engage in environmental activism in borderland regions or neighbouring countries. As this case study demonstrates, an activist diaspora tends to transcend ethnic divisions and therefore provides a multi-ethnic cohesion which is often absent from the broader exile community. As 'divide and conquer' has been one of the tatmadaw's main strategies in neutralising opposition by ethnic minorities, Myanmar's activist diaspora may contribute to more potent domestic social movements that promote democracy, human rights and environmental security in Myanmar..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: Adam Simpson
Date of publication: 2013-00-00
Date of entry/update: 2021-07-05
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
Format : pdf
Size: 762.63 KB
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Title: Challenging hydropower development in Myanmar (Burma): cross-border activism under a regime in transition
Topic: Myanmar; hydropower; dams; environmental governance; democratisation; activism.
Topic: Myanmar; hydropower; dams; environmental governance; democratisation; activism.
Description: "Although general elections in Myanmar (Burma) in November 2010 have transformed the political landscape, many of the characters remain the same. While there is evidence of incremental domestic political openings many of the political constraints that existed during military rule remain in force. As a consequence of decades of military authoritarian governance and civil conflict, it is Myanmar’s contested ethnic borderlands that have been the important locales for the development of environmental movements, despite increased recent domestic activity. This article analyses a case study of the largely cross-border campaign against hydropower dams on the Salween River in Myanmar and finds that through the suppression of opposition and dissent at home the regime has stimulated the creation of an ‘activist diaspora’, a dynamic transnational community of expatriates who engage in environmental activism beyond the reach of the regime. Due to their relative freedom on the border and in Thailand this community has developed expertise and international networks that have proved crucial in communicating the social and environmental impacts of hydropower development in Myanmar to the international community. Through increased cooperation with an expanding domestic civil society this established activist community is stimulating improved environmental governance of hydropower development and simultaneously assisting in the creation of a more open and democratic Myanmar..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: The Pacific Review
Date of publication: 2013-02-18
Date of entry/update: 2020-02-29
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Format : pdf
Size: 374.23 KB (25 pages)
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Title: Kachin appeal to save the Irrawaddy
Description: "I am from Myitkyina, a Kachin, born and bred in the town just 43 kilometers downstream from where the Mali and N’Mai Rivers merge to form the great Irrawaddy, the lifeblood of our nation, Myanmar. Myitsone, the confluence site, also has added significance for us Kachins: It is the heartland of our cultural identity. So it would not be a stretch to say that the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) is part of my life, just as it is for all who call Myanmar their home. To have the Irrawaddy flow freely for all time is a cause very dear to my heart. And putting my money where my mouth is, I used the US$50,000 I received from the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation as seed money to establish the non-profit organization Airavati with a few like-minded friends in 2014. Airavati’s major work entails preserving the environment, culture and way of life of the diverse communities that flourish along the Irrawaddy’s path – from its watersheds in the upper reaches of Kachin state to the delta region in Myanmar’s south. The Irrawaddy is a precious national heritage. From time immemorial, the Bamar and other ethnic nationalities have lived and thrived along its riverbanks. Not only is it an amazing natural ecosystem, it is also an icon of our cultural and national identity. If we do not safeguard this treasure, we will suffer from its devastating loss, just as our neighbors to our immediate east did when the Chinese dammed the Mekong River within their borders. The impact on downstream countries – Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam – has been disastrous and irreversible..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Asia Times" (Hong Kong)
Date of publication: 2019-05-10
Date of entry/update: 2019-09-19
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Title: The rivers of Burma (posted May 22, 2019)
Description: "This History Thread is about the mighty rivers that have defined Myanmar (Burma.) North-south river valley geology shaped regional history. #Rivers, their tributaries & watersheds continue to have enormous political, agricultural & environmental importance. #dams #biodiversity From 12th C. BCE populations migrated along #Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady), #Chindwin, #Salween river valleys to settle in lands that are now known as Myanmar (Burma.) Powerful dynasties rose and fell along the Irrawaddy, including Pyu, Pagan, Ava. British made river port Rangoon (Yangon) colonial capital in 1853. Burma became “rice bowl of Asia” under their exploitation especially in fertile Irrawaddy Delta. River inundation/irrigation can augment monsoon rain for wet rice cultivation. Padi harvest transported by river..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Project Maje"
Date of publication: 2019-05-22
Date of entry/update: 2019-09-02
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Title: Save the Irrawaddy by Offering Compensation
Description: "Controversy continues over a suspended mega-dam project, backed by China, on the Irrawaddy River in Kachin State. The social and environmental consequences of the proposed project cast a shadow not only over the local Kachin population but over all the nationalities of Myanmar. Public awareness is growing why protecting the Irrawaddy is of national importance. I am from Myitkyina, a Kachin, born and bred in the town just 27 miles downstream from where the Mali and N’Mai Rivers merge to form the great Irrawaddy, the life blood of our nation. Myitsone, the confluence site, also has added significance for us Kachins: it is the heartland of our cultural identity. So it would not be a stretch to say that the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) is part of my life, just as it is for all who call Myanmar their home. To have the Irrawaddy flow freely for all time is a cause very dear to my heart. And putting my money where my mouth is, I used the US$ 50,000 I received from the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation as seed money to establish the non-profit organisation Airavati with a few like-minded friends in 2014. Airavati's major work entails preserving the environment, culture and way of life of the diverse communities that flourish along the Irrawaddy's path – from its watersheds in the upper reaches of Kachin State to the delta region in Myanmar’s south. The Irrawaddy is a precious national heritage. From time immemorial, the Bamar and other ethnic nationalities have lived and thrived along its riverbanks. Not only is it an amazing natural ecosystem, it is also an icon of our cultural and national identity. If we do not safeguard this treasure, we will suffer from its devastating loss, just as our neighbors to our immediate east did when the Chinese dammed the Mekong River within their borders. The impact on downstream countries like Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam has been disastrous and irreversible. Protecting the Irrawaddy, therefore, is of national importance as the whole country's fate and existence depend upon it. Building a dam near the confluence site, or the Myitsone Dam Project as it is called, poses irreparable cultural, ecological and economic damage to the nation. Furthermore, the existential threat posed by the Myitsone Dam on communities within the reservoir inundation areas and those downstream is enormous, given that they are in an earthquake-prone zone. In the meantime, communities in the confluence area have been forced to relocate, living in limbo in places where they cannot engage in their traditional livelihoods. Moreover, the lack of transparency and consultation with communities whose lives would be directly impacted have given rise to passionate opposition against the project, not just by the Kachin people but by all Myanmar nationals who love and cherish the Irrawaddy for practical as well as sentimental reasons. We the peoples of Myanmar, with roots in different parts of the country, may differ in ethnicity, language and faith systems, but when it comes to saving the Irrawaddy, we are of one mind. This unity of purpose will empower us as we harness it in taking steps to put a stop to a project that will do irreparable harm to our beloved Irrawaddy. If we, each and every one of us Myanmar citizens, dig deep into our pockets and collectively make one-time or multiple-time one dollar donations, we will surely reach the goal of repaying the debt incurred when the previous government signed on to an ill-conceived, Chinese-funded mega project that will bring no benefit to Myanmar nationals..."
Creator/author: Lahpai Seng Raw
Source/publisher: Transnational Institute (TNI)
Date of publication: 2019-05-09
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-13
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Myanmar: Objections to Myitsone Dam project - (video)
Description: "The controversial Myitsone Dam project in Myanmar's Kachin state has been suspended for over two years now and stop-work costs, amounting to millions of US dollars, are mounting. But no resolution seems to be in sight for this China-contracted project. The company, China Power Investment, may be facing losses, but local Myanmar citizens want the government to scrap the development entirely. In this exclusive report, Channel NewsAsia's May Wong, had the rare opportunity to visit the project site and speak with those involved..."
Source/publisher: Channel News Asia (CNA)
Date of publication: 2013-08-29
Date of entry/update: 2019-05-07
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: The Standoff Over the Myitsone Dam Project in Myanmar: Advantage China
Description: "On January 12th, the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Myanmar issued a statement warning Myanmar that if it failed to resolve the dispute over the stalled Myitsone Hydropower Dam project in Myanmar’s northern state of Kachin, “confidence of Chinese entrepreneurs in investing in Myanmar” would be “seriously hurt” (Global Times, February 21). A fortnight prior to this statement, the PRC Ambassador to Myanmar, Hong Liang, visited the Kachin capital of Myitkyina, where he met local Kachin groups and religious leaders to win their support for revival of the controversial Chinese-backed dam project. Hong reportedly warned them against opposing Chinese projects, including the Myitsone project, in the Kachin state (The Irrawaddy, January 9). PRC officials have reportedly been visiting the homes of Kachin villagers to canvass support for the project (The Irrawaddy, September 13, 2018). The $3.6 billion Myitsone dam project is a Sino-Myanmar joint venture: Myanmar’s Ministry of Electric Power and a domestic conglomerate, Asia World, as well as the PRC’s state-run China Power Investment Corporation, signed a memorandum of understanding in 2006; work on the project began subsequently in December 2009. In September 2011, amid protests over the Myitsone Dam’s social and environmental costs, Myanmar’s then-President Thein Sein announced the suspension of the project, citing the “will of the people” (Mizzima, September 30, 2011). Since coming to power in January 2016, Myanmar’s ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) has avoided making a decision on the project’s future. But with State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi due to meet Chinese leaders on the sidelines of the upcoming Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, where the Myitsone project is bound to come up for discussion, the NLD government will need to decide the fate of the project before Suu Kyi leaves for Beijing (The Irrawaddy, April 5). This will not be an easy decision, as the government is caught between mounting pressure from the PRC and calls from the people of Myanmar to cancel the project..."
Creator/author: Sudha Ramachandran
Source/publisher: The Jamestown Foundation
Date of publication: 2019-04-24
Date of entry/update: 2019-04-25
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 1.59 MB
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Title: CSOs in Hsipaw township strongly oppose dams on Namtu river
Description: "11 civil society organizations (CSOs) and 37 villages representatives gathered today in Hsipaw township, northern Shan State, to call for a stop to all dams on the Namtu or Myitnge river, due to destructive environmental and social impacts. One of the leading CSO members, Nang Leng Leng said, ?Our environment is under threat. There has been increased flooding during the past three years in northern Shan State, due to loss of natural resources. Building dams on the Namtu river will further endanger our environment and our communities. All dam plans must be halted.” There is already one dam on the Namtu/Myitnge ? the Yeywa dam, completed in 2010, at Kyaukse, Mandalay region - and another four dams are planned: one in Mandalay, and three in Kyaukme district of northern Shan State..."
Source/publisher: Shan Human Rights Foundation
Date of publication: 2018-08-08
Date of entry/update: 2018-10-24
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
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Title: ASSR FULLY SUPPORTS DEMANDS OF TA LONG VILLAGERS TO HALT UPPER YEYWA DAM
Description: "Following the visit by eleven MPs to Ta Long village, Hsipaw township, on August 11, 2018, the Ta Long villagers are today sending a letter to 23 parliamentary committees of the Amyotha Hlutdaw (Upper House) and Pyithu Hluttaw (Lower House) in Naypyidaw, urging a halt to the Upper Yeywa dam project on the Namtu/Myitnge river, which will flood their village of over 600 residents, as well as farmlands, schools, temples and stupas. The letter states that the project has lacked transparency from the outset. Ta Long villagers were never consulted before dam construction began in 2008. They were only informed in 2014 that they would have to be resettled, and strongly opposed this. Since then, the Ta Long villagers have repeatedly submitted appeals against the dam to MPs of the State and National Parliaments, both under the previous government of President Thein Sein and the current NLD government. However, their appeals have gone unheeded..."
Source/publisher: Action for Shan State Rivers via "Progressive Voice"
Date of publication: 2018-08-23
Date of entry/update: 2018-08-31
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
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Title: High and Dry: The Cross-Boundary Impacts of China?s Longjiang Dam (Burmese မြန်မာဘာသာ)
Description: Summary: "A recently built dam on the Longjiang (Nam Mao or Shweli) river in Yunnan Province of China has severely disrupted the livelihoods of about 16,000 villagers living in the Mao Valley along the northern Shan State border in Burma. The Ruili-Muse border crossing, in the Mao Valley, is the main border trade point between China and Burma, and local communiti es rely principally on income from ferrying goods across the river on either side of the crossing. However, in early 2010, when the reservoir in the Longjiang Dam started to be fi lled, the river dried up, falling to unprecedented low levels and bringing boats to a standsti ll. Since the start of the rains in May 2010, there have been huge daily fl uctuati ons in the river levels, causing not only grounding of boats, but also fl ooding of goods, cutti ng ferry workers? incomes by up to two-thirds. The numerous ferry operators have thus had to drasti cally reduce the numbers of their trips. The resulti ng drop in trade is not only cutti ng the income of the riverside communiti es, but also that of many of the 30,000 people living in the town of Muse, who rely on the border trade. These communiti es were never informed by either Chinese or Burmese authoriti es about the dam and its impacts. They are urgently requesti ng the Chinese authoriti es to modify the dam?s operati on so that the river?s environmental fl ow can be restored, and the disrupti on to their livelihoods minimized. This case study provides evidence that builders of hydropower dams on transnati onal rivers in China have neglected to consider the trans-boundary environmental and social impacts of these projects. There is an urgent need for transparent, comprehensive and parti cipatory assessments of the environmental and social impacts of these projects on the enti re length of the rivers."
Source/publisher: Shan Women?s Action Network (SWAN)
Date of publication: 2010-00-00
Date of entry/update: 2016-01-31
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: Burmese (မြန်မာဘာသာ)
Format : pdf
Size: 2.51 MB
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Title: High and Dry: The Cross-Boundary Impacts of China?s Longjiang Dam (English)
Description: Summary: "A recently built dam on the Longjiang (Nam Mao or Shweli) river in Yunnan Province of China has severely disrupted the livelihoods of about 16,000 villagers living in the Mao Valley along the northern Shan State border in Burma. The Ruili-Muse border crossing, in the Mao Valley, is the main border trade point between China and Burma, and local communiti es rely principally on income from ferrying goods across the river on either side of the crossing. However, in early 2010, when the reservoir in the Longjiang Dam started to be fi lled, the river dried up, falling to unprecedented low levels and bringing boats to a standsti ll. Since the start of the rains in May 2010, there have been huge daily fl uctuati ons in the river levels, causing not only grounding of boats, but also fl ooding of goods, cutti ng ferry workers? incomes by up to two-thirds. The numerous ferry operators have thus had to drasti cally reduce the numbers of their trips. The resulti ng drop in trade is not only cutti ng the income of the riverside communiti es, but also that of many of the 30,000 people living in the town of Muse, who rely on the border trade. These communiti es were never informed by either Chinese or Burmese authoriti es about the dam and its impacts. They are urgently requesti ng the Chinese authoriti es to modify the dam?s operati on so that the river?s environmental fl ow can be restored, and the disrupti on to their livelihoods minimized. This case study provides evidence that builders of hydropower dams on transnati onal rivers in China have neglected to consider the trans-boundary environmental and social impacts of these projects. There is an urgent need for transparent, comprehensive and parti cipatory assessments of the environmental and social impacts of these projects on the enti re length of the rivers."
Source/publisher: Shan Women?s Action Network (SWAN)
Date of publication: 2010-00-00
Date of entry/update: 2016-01-31
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 3.62 MB
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Title: High and Dry: The Cross-Boundary Impacts of China?s Longjiang Dam (Shan)
Description: Summary: "A recently built dam on the Longjiang (Nam Mao or Shweli) river in Yunnan Province of China has severely disrupted the livelihoods of about 16,000 villagers living in the Mao Valley along the northern Shan State border in Burma. The Ruili-Muse border crossing, in the Mao Valley, is the main border trade point between China and Burma, and local communiti es rely principally on income from ferrying goods across the river on either side of the crossing. However, in early 2010, when the reservoir in the Longjiang Dam started to be fi lled, the river dried up, falling to unprecedented low levels and bringing boats to a standsti ll. Since the start of the rains in May 2010, there have been huge daily fl uctuati ons in the river levels, causing not only grounding of boats, but also fl ooding of goods, cutti ng ferry workers? incomes by up to two-thirds. The numerous ferry operators have thus had to drasti cally reduce the numbers of their trips. The resulti ng drop in trade is not only cutti ng the income of the riverside communiti es, but also that of many of the 30,000 people living in the town of Muse, who rely on the border trade. These communiti es were never informed by either Chinese or Burmese authoriti es about the dam and its impacts. They are urgently requesti ng the Chinese authoriti es to modify the dam?s operati on so that the river?s environmental fl ow can be restored, and the disrupti on to their livelihoods minimized. This case study provides evidence that builders of hydropower dams on transnati onal rivers in China have neglected to consider the trans-boundary environmental and social impacts of these projects. There is an urgent need for transparent, comprehensive and parti cipatory assessments of the environmental and social impacts of these projects on the enti re length of the rivers."
Source/publisher: Shan Women?s Action Network (SWAN)
Date of publication: 2010-00-00
Date of entry/update: 2016-01-31
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: Shan (ရှမ်းဘာသာ)
Format : pdf pdf
Size: 2.9 MB 3.6 MB
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Title: Myanmar?s dams may be no show
Description: "Myanmar urgently needs to increase its electricity generating capacity to meet ambitious economic development targets and accommodate rising power demands from new foreign and local investment projects. Yet harnessing Myanmar?s hydropower potential will be a perilous process, as seen in the controversies surrounding current planned dams along the Salween River as well as the geopolitically fraught and suspended Myitsone dam. Many of Myanmar?s rivers are suitable for hydroelectric dams, which currently contribute the base load to the country?s energy supply. At the same time, dam construction alters the natural environment and usually requires the controversial relocation of local populations. Moreover, with the country in the midst of a tentative national ceasefire process, dam sites have the potential to stir latent or resurrect suspended conflicts..."
Creator/author: Elliot Brennan, Stefan Doring
Date of publication: 2014-03-14
Date of entry/update: 2014-05-26
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Mergui-Tavoy Photo Set: Dam, logging and mining operations negatively impact communities in K?Ser Doh Township, January to April 2012
Description: "This photo set includes 49 still photographs selected from images taken by a KHRG community member between January and April 2012. They were taken in K?Ser Doh Township, Mergui-Tavoy District, and show images of a dam project in A?Nyah Pyah, logging in A?Nya Pyah, U Yay Kyee and Htee Ler Klay villages and mining operations in Hkay Ta Hpoo that have caused a variety of problems for the villagers in the in the areas, such as loss of land from flooding and water pollution. The mining company prevented villagers from protecting themselves from further damage from the chemical flows when they sought to drain a contaminated stream. This photo set was originally published in the appendix of KHRG?s thematic report, Losing Ground: Land confiscation and collective action in eastern Myanmar..."
Source/publisher: Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG)
Date of publication: 2013-07-16
Date of entry/update: 2013-08-10
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: KAREN MESSAGE: NO BIG DAMS (video)
Description: "On March 14, 2013, about 2,000 internally displaced people and villagers from the Wei Gyi area gathered at Ei Htu Hta Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp on the Salween riverbank to mark the International Day of Action for Rivers and Against Dams in an event organized by Karen Rivers Watch (KRW) and its local member Salween Eyes (SEE). The event, organized to raise local voices about current and future impacts, was joined by environmental activists from other areas. The ceremony was also attended by community leaders from Dawei, who are resisting massive development projects in their area, including dams. As part of the ceremonies, Christian, Buddhist, and Animist religious rituals were conducted. Afterwards, participants shouted the following slogans: -Our priority need is: Peace, Peace, Peace! -What we want is: No dams on the Salween River! -Why we are calling for this: our Salween River must flow free -All planned dams on the Salween River must be stopped!..."
Source/publisher: KESAN via Youtube
Date of publication: 2013-03-23
Date of entry/update: 2013-03-26
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: Karen, Burmese (English subtitles)
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Title: Current Status of Dam Projects on Burma?s Salween River
Description: "In late February 2013, Burma?s Deputy Minister of Electric Power informed Parliament that six dam projects on the Salween River in Shan State, Kayah State (Karenni) and Karen State had gained approval. With a combined installed capacity of 15,000 MW, the projects will include the Upper Salween or Kunlong Dam, Mai Tong or Tasang Dam, Nong Pha Dam, Mantawng Dam (on a tributary), Ywathit Dam, and Hatgyi Dam. The investment will come from five Chinese corporations, Thailand?s Electricity Generation Authority of Thailand (EGAT) International Co. Ltd and three Burmese corporations. Originating in the Tibetan Himalayas, the Salween River fl ows for 2,800 kilometers through China?s Yunnan province, into Burma and Thailand, and down to the Andaman Sea. One of the last largely Current Status of Dam Projects on Burma?s Salween River free- fl owing rivers in the world, the Salween River boasts one of the richest ecological hubs in the region and is home to at least 13 indigenous groups including the Nu, Lisu, Shan, Karen, Pa-o, Karenni and Mon. Over the past decade, numerous dam projects have been planned on the Salween River: thirteen in the upper reaches of the Salween in China, and six along the lower reaches in Burma and along the Thailand-Burma border. The projects in Burma are proceeding in areas where conflict is continuing between ethnic resistance forces and the Burmese Army, and are shrouded in secrecy. Salween Watch has compiled available information about these projects in this brief update..."
Source/publisher: Salween Watch
Date of publication: 2013-03-13
Date of entry/update: 2013-03-24
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English, Thai
Format : pdf pdf
Size: 609.38 KB 718.72 KB
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Title: Ban lifted on controversial Nu River dam projects
Description: "Beijing has decided to reopen controversial plans to dam the Nu River in Yunnan province - eight years after Premier Wen Jiabao suspended the plans out of environmental concerns..."
Creator/author: Li Jing jing
Source/publisher: "South China Morning Post" (SCMP)
Date of publication: 2013-01-29
Date of entry/update: 2013-01-31
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: China Moves to Dam the Nu, Ignoring Seismic, Ecological, and Social Risks
Description: "In a blueprint for the energy sector in 2011-15, China?s State Council on Wednesday lifted an eightyear ban on five megadams for the largely free-flowing Nu River [Salween], ignoring concerns about geologic risks, global biodiversity, resettlement, and impacts on downstream communities. ?China?s plans to go ahead with dams on the Nu, as well as similar projects on the Upper Yangtze and Mekong, shows a complete disregard of well-documented seismic hazards, ecological and social risks? stated Katy Yan, China Program Coordinator for the environmental organization International Rivers. Also included in the plan is the controversial Xiaonanhai Dam on the Upper Yangtze. A total of 13 dams was first proposed for the Nu River (also known as the Salween) in 2003, but Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao suspended these plans in 2004 in a stunning decision. Since then, Huadian Corporation has continued to explore five dams – Songta (4200 MW), Maji (4200 MW), Yabiluo (1800 MW), Liuku (180 MW), and Saige (1000 MW) – and has successfully lobbied the State Council to include them in the 12th Five Year Plan..."
Source/publisher: International Rivers
Date of publication: 2013-01-25
Date of entry/update: 2013-01-26
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 71.33 KB
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Title: The New Great Walls: A Guide to China?s Overseas Dam Industry
Description: "Chinese dam builders have come to dominate the world market. Civil society groups have expressed concerns about the social and environmental impacts of numerous Chinese dams in Africa, Asia and Latin America. This NGO guide published by International Rivers presents the lessons of past experience and informs interested NGOs how they can best influence the projects and policies of Chinese dam builders and advocate for social and environmental interests. This guide provides useful information for groups concerned about dam projects in which Chinese companies and financiers are involved, including: *A "who?s who" among Chinese companies and financiers; *Laws and standards in the Chinese dam building sector; *A map of China?s major overseas dam projects; *The new environmental policy of Sinohydro, the world?s largest dam-builder; *An action guide for how to address problematic dams built by Chinese companies and financiers, and who to reach out to for help; *Case studies of how NGOs have influenced Chinese overseas projects; and *A sample letter to a Chinese dam building company... Translations into Chinese and Spanish are planned for early 2013. Please contact us if you would like to organize a civil society training with the new guide, or suggest translations into other languages.
Source/publisher: International Rivers
Date of publication: 2012-11-26
Date of entry/update: 2013-01-10
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 4.27 MB
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Title: Situation Update | Moo, Ler Doh and Hsaw Htee townships, Nyaunglebin District (January to June 2012)
Description: This report includes a situation update submitted to KHRG in July 2012 by a community member describing events occurring in Nyaunglebin District between January and June 2012. Specifically discussed are Tatmadaw demands, including new gold mining taxes imposed by Light Infantry Battalion #264 and their demands for sentries, and the construction of a bridge inside Na Tha Kway village, which has displaced many villagers without providing compensation. This report also includes information about 400 villagers who gathered together on March 12th to protest the construction of Kyauk N?Ga Dam on the Shwegyin River in Hsaw Htee and Ler Doh townships; the opening of a Karen Nation Union (KNU) liaison office in Ler Doh town on April 9th, during which over 10,000 villagers awaited government officials; the arrival of representatives from the Norwegian government to the internally displaced persons (IDP) area in Mu The; and a visit by a United States Senator on May 29th in Ler Doh town and subsequently in Nay Pyi Daw. The report also describes work and food security problems in Nyaunglebin, where some villagers have migrated to neighbouring Thailand and Malaysia for employment, or to work in Yangon?s growing entertainment industry. The community member spoke with villagers in the area who expressed overall satisfaction with the peace and ceasefire process, and they hope that it will continue to be stable.
Source/publisher: Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG)
Date of publication: 2012-10-17
Date of entry/update: 2012-11-08
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 437.85 KB
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Title: Toungoo Interview: Saw H---, April 2011
Description: This report contains the full transcript of an interview conducted during April 2011 in Tantabin Township, Toungoo District by a community member trained by KHRG to monitor human rights conditions. The community member interviewed a 37 year-old township secretary, Saw H---, who described abuses committed by several Tatmadaw battalions, including forced relocation, land confiscation, forced labour, restrictions on freedom of movement, denial of humanitarian access, targeting civilians, and arbitrary taxes and demands. Saw H--- provided a detailed description of three development projects that the Tatmadaw has planned in the area. Most notable is Toh Boh[1] hydroelectric dam on the Day Loh River, which is expected to destroy 3,143 acres of surrounding farmland. Asia World Company began building the dam in Toh Boh, Day Loh village tract during 2005. The other two projects involved the confiscation of 2,400 acres, against which the villagers formed a committee to petition for compensation and were met with threats of imprisonment. Saw H--- also described how 30 people working on the dam die each year. Also mentioned is the Tatmadaw?s burning of villagers? cardamom plantations, and the villagers? attempts to limit the fire damage using fire lines. It is also described by Saw H--- how some villagers have chosen to remain in KNLA/KNU-controlled areas and produce commodities for sale, despite the attendant increase in the price of goods purchased from Tatmadaw-controlled villages, while others have fled to refugee camps in other countries. For photos of the Toh Boh Dam taken by a different community member in March 2012, see "Photo Set: More than 100 households displaced from Toh Boh Dam construction site in Toungoo," published by KHRG on August 23rd
Source/publisher: Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG)
Date of publication: 2012-09-05
Date of entry/update: 2012-11-05
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 224.34 KB
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Title: Photo Set: Villagers register concerns about proposed Hatgyi Dam
Description: "This Photo Set includes 28 photos taken in two villages in the southern area of Bu Tho Township in Papun District, and in three villages in the northern area of Lu Pleh Township in Pa?an District, all of which are located in the Salween river valley near the site where the Hatgyi dam will be constructed. These photographs depict villagers throughout these townships pursuing their livelihoods and children attending school. According to the community member who spoke with villagers in the area and took these photos, as well as local media,[1] the villagers will be displaced by flooding near the dam site if construction at Hatgyi goes ahead as planned. This Photo Set also includes evidence of an earlier meeting in Myaing Gyi Ngu regarding intended forced relocation of villages in the proposed Hatgyi dam site prior to flooding. The photos depict a pamphlet on the dam, as well as solar panels, LED lights and batteries that were given to villagers in the areas that will be affected. In order to pre-empt forcible relocation or flooding, some villagers in the area have chosen to close schools in preparation for moving."
Source/publisher: Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG)
Date of publication: 2012-06-26
Date of entry/update: 2012-07-13
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 444.07 KB
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Title: Fatally flawed - The Tasang Dam on the Salween River
Description: "Far from the public spotlight in northeast Burma lies Shan State, home to indigenous groups, diverse forests and animals, and Southeast Asia?s longest undammed river, the Salween. In this remote zone of civil war and conflict over resources, the Burmese military and an energy company from Thailand are developing the Tasang Dam, slated to be the tallest dam in Southeast Asia. Given the Burmese regime?s predilection for violence and disregard for human rights and environmental standards, the Tasang Dam, if built, would provoke forced labor, forced relocations, environmental destruction, and suppression of dissent. To date, public participation has been absent surrounding the project, and forced labor and portering have already been linked to the project and its security. The Tasang Dam project would be not only destructive but entirely unnecessary, a boondoggle that would benefit the Burmese generals and a few private companies while doing nothing to provide for the needs and aspirations of the people of Burma or Thailand. An inspiring resistance to the Tasang Dam in Burma is active, if underground, despite the notorious repression of the Burmese military regime. It is not too late to stop the Tasang Dam. It is not to late to save the Salween..."
Source/publisher: EarthRights International
Date of publication: 2003-05-07
Date of entry/update: 2012-07-11
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Leaked document says CPI ?planning to restart” Myitsone dam project
Description: Environmental activists concerned that the controversial Myitsone dam project was never in fact halted say that a recently leaked document proves that construction is indeed moving ahead as previously planned.
Source/publisher: Kachin News Group
Date of publication: 2012-04-04
Date of entry/update: 2012-04-05
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English, Burmese
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Title: Behind Myanmar?s suspended dam 1/3
Description: After the decision to shelve a China-funded hydropower plant on the Irrawaddy River caused uproar in Beijing, Qin Hui set off south to learn about the project and its opponents. He opens a three-part article.
Creator/author: Qin Hui March 28, 2012
Source/publisher: Chinadialogue
Date of publication: 2012-03-28
Date of entry/update: 2012-04-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Behind Myanmar?s suspended dam 2/3
Description: China?s resolve not to interfere in its neighbour?s ?internal affairs" rings hollow: the country has played a formative role in Burmese history, writes Qin Hui.
Creator/author: Qin Hui
Source/publisher: Chinadialogue
Date of publication: 2012-03-28
Date of entry/update: 2012-04-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Behind Myanmar?s suspended dam 3/3
Description: In a region scarred by violent conflict and rife with distrust of China, the investment risks are plain. Qin Hui concludes his three-part analysis of the fate of the Myitsone dam.
Creator/author: Qin Hui
Source/publisher: Chinadialogue
Date of publication: 2012-03-28
Date of entry/update: 2012-04-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Damming at Gunpoint (Burmese)
Description: BURMA ARMY ATROCITIES PAVE THE WAY FOR SALWEEN DAMS IN KAREN STATE... "As Thailand proceeds with plans to join Burma?s military regime in building a series of dams on the Salween River to gain ?cheap? electricity, this report reveals the atrocities being inflicted on the people of Northern Karen State to pave the way for two of the planned dams. The Upper Salween (Wei Gyi) Dam and Lower Salween (Dar Gwin) Dam are planned to be built on the river where it forms the border between Thailand?s Mae Hong Son province and Burma?s Karen State. Together they will produce about 5,300 MW of electricity. It is estimated that the reservoir for the Upper Dam will stretch for 380 kilometers inside Karen and Karenni States of Burma. Both dams are located at the eastern edge of Papun district in Karen State. Once a Karen liberated area, during the last decade Papun has been the site of repeated military offensives and anti-insurgency campaigns by the regime?s troops to crush the Karen resistance. Before 1992, there were only ten Burma Army garrisons in Papun district. Today there are fifty-four garrisons, including twelve along the Salween river bank, fortified with heavy artillery. The military campaigns have decimated the local population. 210 villages have been destroyed, and villagers forcibly relocated to 31 relocation sites, where movement has been strictly controlled, and villagers are subject to forced labour and other human rights abuses. Tens of thousands of villagers have fled to Thailand as refugees; others live in hiding in the jungle, where they live in constant fear of being found and tortured or killed. In 1992, there were estimated to be about 107,000 people in Papun district. Now this has been halved to about 54,000, of whom about 35,000, or 60%, are internally displaced in the jungles. The rest have fled to Thailand or other parts of Burma. Out of 85 original villages in the mountainous area of Eastern Papun directly adjoining the planned dam sites, only a quarter remain. Most of the communities who had farmed and traded along the Salween River have fled to Thailand, and many farms in the fertile tributary valleys have been lying fallow for over a decade. Over 5,000 villagers remain hiding in the jungle, facing severe food shortages and health problems. Roads to the planned dam sites have been built using forced labour, and landmines have been planted alongside the roads. There has been no consultation with local communities about the dam plans. If the dams are built, the floodwaters will permanently displace many of the communities currently in hiding or living as refugees in Thailand. The increased military security for the dam sites will also inevitably mean further abuses against local populations. The Salween dams fit into the ongoing strategy of the Burmese military regime to use ?development? projects to gain funding and collusion from neighbouring countries to subjugate ethnic resistance movements, and exploit the natural resources in the ethnic areas. Karen Rivers Watch makes the following recommendations:..."
Source/publisher: Karen Rivers Watch
Date of publication: 2004-11-00
Date of entry/update: 2012-02-23
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: Burmese
Format : pdf
Size: 1.43 MB
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Title: Damming at Gunpoint (English)
Description: BURMA ARMY ATROCITIES PAVE THE WAY FOR SALWEEN DAMS IN KAREN STATE... "As Thailand proceeds with plans to join Burma?s military regime in building a series of dams on the Salween River to gain ?cheap” electricity, this report reveals the atrocities being inflicted on the people of Northern Karen State to pave the way for two of the planned dams. The Upper Salween (Wei Gyi) Dam and Lower Salween (Dar Gwin) Dam are planned to be built on the river where it forms the border between Thailand?s Mae Hong Son province and Burma?s Karen State. Together they will produce about 5,300 MW of electricity. It is estimated that the reservoir for the Upper Dam will stretch for 380 kilometers inside Karen and Karenni States of Burma. Both dams are located at the eastern edge of Papun district in Karen State. Once a Karen liberated area, during the last decade Papun has been the site of repeated military offensives and anti-insurgency campaigns by the regime?s troops to crush the Karen resistance. Before 1992, there were only ten Burma Army garrisons in Papun district. Today there are fifty-four garrisons, including twelve along the Salween river bank, fortified with heavy artillery. The military campaigns have decimated the local population. 210 villages have been destroyed, and villagers forcibly relocated to 31 relocation sites, where movement has been strictly controlled, and villagers are subject to forced labour and other human rights abuses. Tens of thousands of villagers have fled to Thailand as refugees; others live in hiding in the jungle, where they live in constant fear of being found and tortured or killed. In 1992, there were estimated to be about 107,000 people in Papun district. Now this has been halved to about 54,000, of whom about 35,000, or 60%, are internally displaced in the jungles. The rest have fled to Thailand or other parts of Burma. Out of 85 original villages in the mountainous area of Eastern Papun directly adjoining the planned dam sites, only a quarter remain. Most of the communities who had farmed and traded along the Salween River have fled to Thailand, and many farms in the fertile tributary valleys have been lying fallow for over a decade. Over 5,000 villagers remain hiding in the jungle, facing severe food shortages and health problems. Roads to the planned dam sites have been built using forced labour, and landmines have been planted alongside the roads. There has been no consultation with local communities about the dam plans. If the dams are built, the floodwaters will permanently displace many of the communities currently in hiding or living as refugees in Thailand. The increased military security for the dam sites will also inevitably mean further abuses against local populations. The Salween dams fit into the ongoing strategy of the Burmese military regime to use ?development” projects to gain funding and collusion from neighbouring countries to subjugate ethnic resistance movements, and exploit the natural resources in the ethnic areas. Karen Rivers Watch makes the following recommendations:..."
Source/publisher: Karen Rivers Watch
Date of publication: 2004-11-00
Date of entry/update: 2012-02-23
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Stop Damming the Chindwin (Burmese, English, Kuki)
Description: "The Burmese military government, together with the government of India, is planning to build a giant hydroelectric dam near Tamanthi on the Chindwin River in northwest Burma?s Sagaing Division. The dam?s fl ood reservoir will be almost 1,400 sq km, the size of Delhi, and will permanently displace over 45,000 people, including the entire town of Khamti. Already over 2,400 people have been relocated at gunpoint from the dam site, without fair compensation. The Tamanthi dam will adversely affect the biodiversity and ecological balance of the entire Chindwin River, which, as the largest tributary of the Irrawaddy, acts as a major watershed for the whole country. Although the dam will bring about massive changes to the Chindwin, the entire dam building process has been shrouded in secrecy, and there has been a complete lack of public participation in decision making. Local indigenous Kuki people have been nourished by the Chindwin for generations, and are determined to protect the river from this destructive project. We therefore urge the Burmese regime and Indian government to immediately cancel the Tamanthi dam."
Source/publisher: The Kuki Women?s Human Rights Organization (KWHRO)
Date of publication: 2011-12-00
Date of entry/update: 2012-01-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: Kuki, Burmese and English
Format : pdf pdf pdf
Size: 1.54 MB 1.73 MB 798.13 KB
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Title: BRN responds to interview on Myitsone dam by CPI president
Description: "The following quotations come from an interview with the president of the China Power Investment Corporation (CPI) Lu Qizhou about Burma?s Myitsone dam project. The interview appeared in the Chinese media on October 3. The umbrella activist group Burma Rivers Network (BRN) here releases its response to key points made by the CPI president. Burma?s president Thein Sein announced a halt to the controversial Myitsone Dam project on September 30. Thein Sein also said that discussions would follow with China. LU-Qizhou-cpi CPI chairman Lu Qizhou. Photo: eng.cpicorp.com.cn Lu Qizhou: ?I also learnt about this through the media, and I was totally astonished. Before this, the Myanmar side never communicated with us in any way about the ?suspension?.” BRN: The villagers at the dam site, numerous political and community organizations, and international human rights organizations have attempted to contact CPI and discuss the concerns about the impacts and process of the project. Even though CPI never responded to these attempts at a dialogue, they cannot claim to be unaware of the feeling about this project by the people of Burma. It is impossible that CPI could not have been aware that Burma is in the midst of civil war and that the Irrwaddy-Myitsone dams project is in an active conflict zone. The armed ethnic group in this area, the Kachin Independence Organisation, had directly warned the Chinese government that local people were against the project earlier this year and that proceeding with the dams could fuel further fighting. Without national reconciliation and peace, all investments in Burma face these types of risks. Lu Qizhou: ?Ever since CPI and Myanmar Ministry of Electric Power No. 1 MOEP (1) signed the MOU in December 2006, CPI has always followed the principle of mutual respect, mutual benefit and win-win result” BRN: Up to now all major investment projects in Burma are negotiated by Burma?s military government and the main benefits have gone to the military. Any win-win result has only been for the military and this is resented by the people of Burma. The lack of transparency by the military and foreign investors increases this resentment. The role and share of the Burmese companies should also be disclosed, including the benefits to Asia World Company and whether military holding companies, the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd. (UMEHL) and the Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) are involved. Lu Qizhou: ?We hired topnotch hydropower design institutes, research institutes, consultancies and authoritative experts in China to carry out planning, design, specific study, consultation and supervision for the upstream-Ayeyawady hydropower project.” BRN: The impact assessment jointly carried out by the Chinese Changjiang Institute and the Burmese BANCA stated very clearly that the Myitsone dam should be scrapped and that the majority of the local people were against this project. Why did CPI hire ?topnotch” institutes and then not follow their advice? The original EIA was completed in October 2009, which was only leaked earlier this year. CPI has just released an edited version of the EIA and dated it March 2010, which has deleted the key findings and recommendations. Although it was recommended, the original assessment did not include a social impact assessment or an assessment of the impacts on the entire river, particularly downstream. In the current political context, where there is civil war and where communities fear retribution by Burma?s military government, assessors are unable to genuinely access affected communities or collect reliable data. Lu Qizhou: ?In February this year, Myanmar?s Prime Minister (Thein Sein) urged us to accelerate the construction when he inspected the project site, so the sudden proposal of suspension now is very bewildering.” BRN: Thein Sein should explain his actions if he indeed wanted to accelerate the project. In addition, the Burmese military government must disclose all agreements signed with CPI so that this is a transparent process for everyone to see. Lu Qizhou: ?The upstream-Ayeyawady hydropower project is located near the China-Myanmar border, developing hydropower resources here not only can meet Myanmar?s power demand for industrialization, but also can provide clean energy for China. It is based on this consideration that we decided to invest in this mutually beneficial and double winning hydropower project.” BRN: We understand that this is a double winning project for China as it can receive 90 per cent of the energy from the dam while Burma has to bear all the social and economic costs. Lu Qizhou: ?The Myanmar government will gain economic benefits of USD $54 billion via taxation, free electricity and share dividends, far more than CPI?s return on investment during our operation period.” BRN: Over the past several years, Burma?s military government has received billions in revenues from the sale of natural gas to Thailand, yet the country remains impoverished with some of the worst social and economic indicators in the world. The ?economic benefits” therefore do not reach the broader public and do not contribute to the genuine development of the country. Lu Qizhou: ?As far as I know, in the more than 100-year history of hydropower development, no flood or destructive earthquake has ever been caused by dam construction. We are able to ensure the safety of dam construction.” BRN: Given the increasing frequency and severity of earthquakes, there cannot be a guarantee of safety. No studies about the safety of the dam or about disaster preparation have been disclosed to the public. The world?s worst dam disaster occurred in Henan Province in central China in 1975. Twenty years after the disaster, details started emerging that as many as 230,000 people may have died. Lu Qizhou: ?It has become a common consensus that hydropower is the only renewable energy suitable for large-scale development now.” BRN: Rural communities in Burma and Kachin State are utilizing the appropriate technology of small hydropower to realize their electricity needs on their own. The Kachin capital of Myitkyina is one of the few cities in Burma that currently receives 24-hour electricity due to an existing small hydropower project. Decentralized management and the right of local people to manage and utilize the electricity generated by small hydro needs to be promoted in Burma, not large scale projects that are environmentally destructive and export electricity rather than using it domestically. Lu Qizhou: ?The Myanmar government attaches significant importance to resettlement for the upstream-Ayeyawady hydropower project, and has effectively led and organized the planning, design and implementation of resettlement? According to the agreement, we assisted in the resettlement work and proactively fulfilled our social responsibilities and obligations, while fully respecting local religion, ethnic customs and the wish of migrants.” BRN: Villagers fear for their lives if they complain or resist relocation at the hands of armed military personnel and have thus been forced to give up their farmlands, accept inadequate compensation, and be herded into a relocation camp where there is not enough farmland and water for livelihoods. People now either have no jobs or low-wage temporary jobs and they cannot continue cultural practices linked to their original homelands. Villagers living in the relocation camp are restricted in movement and are constantly under military surveillance. Over 60 villages, approximately 15,000 people, will eventually be permanently displaced from their homelands due to the Irrawaddy Myitsone project. This dislocation will cause many secondary social problems including conflicts over jobs and land, and an increase in migration and trafficking to neighboring count
Source/publisher: Mizzima News
Date of publication: 2011-10-05
Date of entry/update: 2011-10-06
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 64.34 KB
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Title: Karen Villagers Against Dam (video)
Description: Protests against a proposed dam on the Salween
Source/publisher: Burma Issues
Date of publication: 2011-00-00
Date of entry/update: 2011-10-04
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: Karen, English
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Title: "The government is elected by the people, and it has to respect people?s will" (speech by President Thein Sein to the Hluttaws 30 September 2011)
Description: Deals mainly with energy policy and announces the suspension of the Myitsone dam..."...As our government is elected by the people, it is to respect the people?s will. We have the responsibility to address public concerns in all seriousness. So construction of Myitsone Dam will be suspended in the time of our government. Other hydropower projects that pose no threat will be implemented through thorough survey for availability of electricity needed for the nation..."
Source/publisher: "The New Light of Myanmar" 1 October 2011
Date of publication: 2011-10-01
Date of entry/update: 2011-10-01
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 184.65 KB
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Title: DEADLY ENERGY (Mya Yadana Report)
Description: This report by Green November 32 in 1993 was the first ever NGO perspective report written on the Yadana gas pipeline and on the border dams as they were first discussed by Thai and Burmese governments around that time. It was actually one of the first detailed reports on any of the post 1988 environmental issues by any Burmese- or border- based organisation, and is of particular interest in the light of the current opposition to the Irrawaddy dam projects... "Officials of the Thai government and the SLORC military regime have for some years now been planning a series of huge energy joint ventures to be undertaken in some of the most fought over territory in Burma. The energy projects, if they are endorsed by the Thai Government - and implemented with the participation of Japanese and Western corporations - will have extremely serious, possibly even terminal repercussions for the Burmese pro-democracy movement which is based in these same areas of the Burma -Thai border. Indeed, this seems to be what a number of the proponents of the development projects intend to achieve, particularly the generals in Rangoon. The SLORC, as well as politicians, military men and businessmen in Thailand and abroad would garner great benefit from the destruction of the Burmese opposition groups along the border, and the opening of the way to even more unrestrained natural resource exploitation than is currently taking place. There are ten planned energy development joint ventures, comprising two offshore natural gasfield developments and eight hydro-electric dams. These are: •The Martaban Gasfield developments led by Total CFP of France •The Yetagun Gasfield exploratory program led by Texaco of the US •The Upper Salween Dam, •The Lower Salween Dam •The Nam Kok Project •The Nam Moei 3 Project •The Nam Moei 2 Project •The Klong Kra Project •The Nam Moei 1 Project, and •The Nam Mae Sai Project... The energy projects will lead to environmental and social havoc on a scale comparable to the largest development projects in the world. Indeed, the Upper Salween Dam will be among the largest in the world. Altogether the projects will directly result in the flooding and deforesting of thousands of square kilometers of the forests bordering Burma and Thailand. The projects will displace many thousands of indigenous peoples, some of them already refugees from the forty-five years of bloody civil war in Burma. Many have already been affected by military operations of the SLORC and Thai armies, operations which can easily be seen in the context of clearing the way for the development of the 820-1,000 kilometre gas pipeline or the construction of the eight dams... The energy projects will put billions of dollars into the control of an ultra-nationalist military regime that is one of the world?s worst human rights violators and that is rapidly building up a large and extraordinarily aggressive army which poses a significant threat to the stability of the region. The massive input of funds from the Western and Japanese multinational oil and energy development companies, combined with the cheap sale and presents of Chinese weaponry, and the profits from the heroin traffic that the SLORC is alleged to control, has funded this huge expansion of the SLORC armed forces... The energy joint ventures will, if signed, mark the second and higher level of engagement in the much criticised ASEAN policy of "constructive engagement" towards the SLORC regime, which through the activities of the logging, oil and fishing companies have already caused untold damage to Burma?s environment. The multinational corporations, the Keidanrens and the Thai state oil and electricity institutes PTT and EGAT are therefore amongst the most powerful influences supporting the SLORC in its brutal and undemocratic suppression of the peoples of Burma."
Source/publisher: Green November 32
Date of publication: 1993-09-00
Date of entry/update: 2011-09-24
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 1.3 MB
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Title: Irrawaddy Appeal
Description: "...To conserve the Irrawaddy is to protect our economy and our environment as well as to safeguard our cultural heritage. Most important of all, uniting in conservation efforts would carry dividends in the way of better understanding and practical cooperation. Many individuals and organizations have done valuable research on the Irrawaddy and there will surely be no lack of information and practical suggestions that could serve as a basis for a conservation scheme. Much can be achieved simply by the strict application of already existing laws and regulations pertaining to the conservation of forests and rivers. We therefore appeal to environmental experts, to conservationists and to lovers of nature, peace and harmony everywhere to join us in a campaign to create a worldwide awareness of the dangers threatening one of the most important rivers of Asia. Together we can find solutions to problems, ecological, economic, technical, and political, related to the Irrawaddy."
Creator/author: Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
Source/publisher: 54-56 University Avenue, Rangoon
Date of publication: 2011-08-11
Date of entry/update: 2011-08-18
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 59.05 KB
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Title: Perpetual natural heritage relayed with good volition
Description: "...All the hydropower projects the government has been implementing across the nation including the ones on the confluence of the Ayeyawady River, upstream the Maykha River and the Malikha River in Kachin State are prudent ones for all-round development of the regions, and creating job opportunities. So, they are the facilities of national heritage. To sum up, the government has been investing heavily in generation of electric power and building national grids and power houses to supply electricity to the people. It indicates that the government is taking measures in all sectors, utilizing natural resources and aquatic and terrestrial resources across the Union most effectively, in the long-term interests of the democratic nation and the generations to follow. In its drive for improving the infrastructures with benevolent attitude, the government aims to narrow the gab of the rich and the poor and accelerating the development momentum of respective regions in order to hand down the perpetual natural heritage."
Creator/author: A Staff Member, MEPE (Ministry for Electric Power?)
Source/publisher: "The New Light of Myanmar"
Date of publication: 2011-08-09
Date of entry/update: 2011-08-18
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 191.86 KB
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Title: Pragmatic comments by EMG and Ludu U Sein Win on Hydropower Project
Description: The Eleven Media Group and veteran journalist Ludu U Sein Win have explicitly made realistic comments on the article written in the state-owned newspapers issued on 9 August 2011 by ?A Service Personnel of Electric Power? about the Hydropower Project being implemented in Myanmar... Now, experts from home and abroad, observers, journalists are writing and airing on Myitsone dam hydropower project based on reliable facts and figures that is sure to bring negative impacts likely to trigger from the project.
Creator/author: Win Htut
Date of publication: 2011-08-17
Date of entry/update: 2011-08-18
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 64.95 KB
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Title: KIO Open Letter to the People?s Republic of China
Description: Text of the open letter sent to Chinese President Hu Jintao, in which the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) asks China to stop the planned Mali Nmai Concluence (Myitsone) Dam Project to be built in Burma?s northern Kachin state, warning that the controversial project could lead to civil war
Source/publisher: Kachin Independence Organization (KIO)
Date of publication: 2011-03-16
Date of entry/update: 2011-05-21
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 877.53 KB
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Title: Concern over Myanmar?s Irrawaddy dam China investing billions into hydroelectric scheme, which is set to displace many. (video)
Description: "Chinese companies are funding a multi-billion dollar project to dam the Irrawaddy river in Myanmar. The river, the longest one left undammed in southeast Asia, is important to the Kachin people, and millions of people up and down its length would be affected by the changes, experts say. When it is dammed, it will leave an area the size of New York City submerged. There are now concerns over who is to benefit from the river?s riches. Our special correspondent in Myanmar, who we cannot name for security reasons, filed this report."
Source/publisher: Al Jazeera
Date of publication: 2011-04-22
Date of entry/update: 2011-05-16
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: High and Dry - The cross-boundary impacts of China?s Longjiang dam
Description: Summary: "A recently built dam on the Longjiang (Nam Mao or Shweli) river in Yunnan Province of China has severely disrupted the livelihoods of about 16,000 villagers living in the Mao Valley along the northern Shan State border in Burma. The Ruili-Muse border crossing, in the Mao Valley, is the main border trade point between China and Burma, and local communiti es rely principally on income from ferrying goods across the river on either side of the crossing. However, in early 2010, when the reservoir in the Longjiang Dam started to be fi lled, the river dried up, falling to unprecedented low levels and bringing boats to a standsti ll. Since the start of the rains in May 2010, there have been huge daily fl uctuati ons in the river levels, causing not only grounding of boats, but also fl ooding of goods, cutti ng ferry workers? incomes by up to two-thirds. The numerous ferry operators have thus had to drasti cally reduce the numbers of their trips. The resulti ng drop in trade is not only cutti ng the income of the riverside communiti es, but also that of many of the 30,000 people living in the town of Muse, who rely on the border trade. These communiti es were never informed by either Chinese or Burmese authoriti es about the dam and its impacts. They are urgently requesti ng the Chinese authoriti es to modify the dam?s operati on so that the river?s environmental fl ow can be restored, and the disrupti on to their livelihoods minimized. This case study provides evidence that builders of hydropower dams on transnati onal rivers in China have neglected to consider the trans-boundary environmental and social impacts of these projects. There is an urgent need for transparent, comprehensive and parti cipatory assessments of the environmental and social impacts of these projects on the enti re length of the rivers."
Source/publisher: Shan Women?s Action Network, Shan Sapawa Environmental Organisation
Date of publication: 2010-12-14
Date of entry/update: 2010-12-15
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 3.62 MB
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Title: Bangladesh in Deal to buy Burma Hydro Dam Electricity
Description: Energy starved Burma has reportedly agreed to build two hydroelectric dams in southwestern Arakan State to supply Bangladesh with electricity. The projects at Michuang and Lemro will have power generating capacities of 575 megawatts, according to the Financial Express newspaper in Dhaka quoting Bangladeshi energy ministry officials.
Source/publisher: The Irrawaddy Weekly Business Roundup
Date of publication: 2010-09-04
Date of entry/update: 2010-09-20
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Karenni people oppose new Salween dam plans by SPDC and Chinese investors
Description: Statement by the Karenni Development Research Group (KDRG) Karenni people oppose new Salween dam plans by SPDC and Chinese investors
Source/publisher: Burma Rivers Network
Date of publication: 2010-08-09
Date of entry/update: 2010-09-20
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: Burmese, English
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Title: The Threat to Burma?s Environment
Description: More than 20 mega-dams are being constructed or planned on Burma?s major rivers, including the Salween and Irrawaddy, by multinationals without consulting local communities, a wide range of NGOs charged in a statement Friday. In addition, the group charged, mining, oil and gas projects are creating severe environmental and social problems. Several papers are to be delivered on Sept. 18 in an all-day seminar in Bangkok on the impact and consequences of overseas investment in large-scale projects in Burma that say as many as 30 companies from China alone are investing in dam projects on the two rivers.
Source/publisher: Asia Sentinel
Date of publication: 2010-09-17
Date of entry/update: 2010-09-20
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Before the Deluge
Description: Kachin villagers and exiles hope they can stop plans to build a dam that will flood an area they consider their ancestral homeland
Creator/author: David Paquette
Source/publisher: "The Irrawaddy" Vol. 18, No. 4
Date of publication: 2010-04-00
Date of entry/update: 2010-04-19
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Dam Nation
Description: "Burma and China prepare to build seven hydroelectric dams in Kachin State that will not provide the people of Burma with jobs, security or even electricity Large-scale hydroelectric dams have long been decried for the immense damage they do to the environment and rural communities. Not everyone agrees, however, that the problems associated with mega-dams outweigh their benefits. After all, say pragmatists, dams are a reliable supply of electricity, without which no country can hope to survive in the modern world. (Illustration: Harn lay / The irrawaddy) But in Burma, such arguments fall flat. Not only do massive dam-building projects take an especially high toll on people?s lives—besides destroying villages and the environment, they result in intensifying human rights abuses and make diseases such as malaria more prevalent—they also come without a payoff for the general population. At the end of the day, the electricity they generate—the only benefit the Burmese people can expect to get from them—remains as scarce as ever..."
Creator/author: David Paquette
Source/publisher: "The Irrawaddy" Vol. 18, No. 4
Date of publication: 2010-04-00
Date of entry/update: 2010-04-19
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: When Rivers Cease to Flow
Description: The environmental impact of mega-dams is increasing the potential for disaster in Burma... "The complexity of hydropower development in Burma might be smothered by state propaganda, but hard science-based questions remain about the safety and economic viability of the country?s mega-dam projects. Floodwaters overrunning the Washawng Dam in Burma in may 2006 shortly before it broke. (Photo: KDNG) How badly will the flooding and construction of the dams affect the watershed? How vulnerable is the area to earthquakes? How would rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers or radical fluctuations in rainfall, as a result of climate change, affect reservoir recharge and electricity generation? Are the dam builders in Burma asking any of these questions?..."
Creator/author: Rudy Thomas
Source/publisher: "The Irrawaddy" Vol. 18, No. 4
Date of publication: 2010-04-00
Date of entry/update: 2010-04-19
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Resisting the Flood: Communities taking a stand against the imminent construction of Irrawaddy dams
Description: Message from KDNG: "As a network of residents of Kachin State, we, the Kachin Development Networking Group, have been monitoring plans by the stateowned China Power Investment Corporation and Burma?s military regime to build seven dams on the Irrawaddy River and its two main tributaries. In 2007 we published the report, "Damming the Irrawaddy" which surveyed the environment and peoples in the affected area and analyzed the negative impacts of these dams. Today construction of the 2,000-megawatt Chibwe Dam on the N?Mai River is already underway. The forced relocation of 15,000 people to clear out the flood zone of the Irrawaddy Myitsone Dam has also begun. In August 2009 villagers were informed that they must begin to move out within two months. There have been no public assessments of the projects, no consultation with affected people within the flood zone or downstream, and no consent from local residents or the larger population of Burma. As a result, public resistance to the dams is growing. Despite the risks of arrest, torture or death for dissent in military-ruled Burma, brave people are demanding a halt to the dams. Mass prayer ceremonies calling for the protection of the rivers have been held along the river banks and in churches up and downstream. Posters, open letters, and graffi ti from students, elders and prominent leaders have objected to the dams. In a face-to-face meeting with the Burma Army?s Northern Commander, local residents made it clear that no amount of compensation will make up for the losses these dams will bring to their community and future generations. We stand with the people of Kachin State and throughout Burma who oppose these dams. The demand to stop this project has been made clear to our military rulers and now we specifically appeal to China Power Investment Corporation and the government of China to stop these dams..."
Source/publisher: Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG) via Burma Rivers Network (BRN)
Date of publication: 2009-10-00
Date of entry/update: 2009-11-21
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 1.05 MB
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Title: Roots and Resilience - Tasang dam threatens war-torn Shan communities
Description: ?The report ?Roots and Resilience” by the Shan Sapawa Environment Organization focuses on the ecologically unique area of Keng Kham, a community of 15,000 that was forcibly relocated over ten years ago; the majority have fled to Thailand. Today the estimated 3,000 that remain are managing to maintain their livelihoods and culture despite the constant threats of the Burma Army and the impending Tasang dam. Indigenous Shan cultural practices, river-fed farms, sacred cave temples and pristine waterfalls are depicted in photos from this isolated war-zone, together with updated information about the dam project, which has been shrouded in secrecy. The 7,110 MW Tasang Dam is the biggest of five dams planned on the Salween River; the majority of the power from the dam will be sold to Thailand. Project investors include the Thai MDX Company and China?s Gezhouba Group Company. Thailand?s support for the controversial dam was recently reiterated when the project was included in its national Power Development Plan. Military tension has escalated in recent months in Shan State as the Burmese regime has been putting pressure on the United Wa State Army to transform into a ?Border Guard Force.” Abuses linked to anti-insurgency campaigns are also on the rise.?
Source/publisher: Shan Sapawa Environmental Organization
Date of publication: 2009-07-00
Date of entry/update: 2009-10-05
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English, Thai
Format : pdf pdf
Size: 1.79 MB 4.67 MB
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Title: Drowning the Green Ghosts of Kayanland - Impacts of the Upper Paunglaung Dam in Burma
Description: Executive Summary: "Twenty six miles east of Burma?s new capital Naypyidaw, a fertile valley with a population of over 3,500 is soon to be flooded to boost power to Burma?s military leaders. The Upper Paunglaung dam, being built with Chinese investment in the Pyinmana Hills of southern Shan State, will produce 140 MW of electricity and store water to increase the generating capacity of the Lower Paunglaung Dam, completed in March 2005, which currently powers Naypyidaw. The reservoir of the 99-meter-tall dam will flood twelve villages and submerge over 5,000 acres of fertile farming land. The villagers, comprising some of the few remaining indigenous Kayan Lahta people, were never consulted about the dam plans, and have been offered no compensation. Instead, since 2004, when the dam construction began, they have faced an encroachment of Burma? Army troops, and accompanying forcec labour and other abuses. The deployment of Burma Army troops along the Paunglaung River is in direct contravention of the ceasefire agreement reached between the main Kayan resistance army, the Kayan New Land Party (KNLP), and the Burmese military regime in 1994, which had granted the KNLP control of this area. The regime has now seized most of the former KNLP territories in the Pyinmana Hills. Ironically, the KNLP was first set up ir 1964 in protest at the building of Burma?s first major hydropower project, the Mobye Dam, which flooded 114 villages, and the electricity from which was mostly sent to the capital Rangoon. Over forty years later, the Kayan people?s rights are being abused in the same way, as they find themselves dispossessed of their? lands and their resources being siphoned off at gunpoint, this time to the military regime?s new capital Naypyidaw. The Kayan Women?s Union calls on the Burmese military regime and Chinese investors to immediately stop construction of the Upper Paunglaung Dam. There has been no transparency in the planning and implementation th project, and no informed consent by affected villagers. We also demand an end to the Burma Army invasion of Kayan territories and the grave human rights abuses being inflicted on our people."
Source/publisher: Kayan Women?s Union
Date of publication: 2008-00-00
Date of entry/update: 2009-02-07
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English, Burmese
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Title: Unterdr?ckung durch die Milit?rjunta
Description: Mindestens 82 000 Angeh?rige von Minderheiten flohen in 2005 vor den schrecklichen Menschen-rechtsverletzungen in Burma. In Thailand sind mehr als 150 000 burmesische Fl?chtlinge registriert, wobei sich dort Sch?tzungen zufolge mindestens 1,5 Millionen illegal aufhalten. Allein die Zahl Hilfe suchender Karen-Fl?chtlinge ist um fast 60 Prozent auf 900 Neuank?mmlinge pro Monat gestiegen. Zwei Drittel dieser Fl?chtlinge sind Kinder. In Burma selbst leben nach offiziellen Angaben 500 000 Binnenfl?chtlinge; die tats?chliche Zahl d?rfte in Millionenh?he liegen. Salween; Staud?mme; Salween-River; dams
Creator/author: Anna Bucur
Date of publication: 2007-01-00
Date of entry/update: 2008-05-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: German, Deutsch
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Title: Under The Boot - A Village?s Story of Burmese Army Occupation to Build a Dam on the Shweli River
Description: "At night the Shweli has always sung sweet songs for us. But now the nights are silent and the singing has stopped. We are lonely and wondering what has happened to our Shweli?" ... "Exclusive photos and testimonies from a remote village near the China-Burma border uncover how Chinese dam builders are using Burma Army troops to secure Chinese investments. Under the Boot, a new report by Palaung researchers, details the implementation of the Shweli Dam project, China?s first Build-Operate-Transfer hydropower deal with Burma?s junta. Since 2000, the Palaung village of Man Tat, the site of the 600 megawatt dam project, has been overrun by hundreds of Burmese troops and Chinese construction workers. Villagers have been suffering land confiscation, forced labour, and restriction on movement ever since, and a five kilometer diversion tunnel has been blasted through the hill on which the village is situated. Photos in the report show soldiers carrying out parade drills, weapons assembly, and target practice in the village. "This Chinese project has been like a sudden military invasion. The villagers had no idea the dam would be built until the soldiers arrived," said Mai Aung Ko from the Palaung Youth Network Group (Ta?ang), which produced the report. Burma?s Ministry of Electric Power formed a joint venture with Yunnan Joint Power Development Company, a consortium of Chinese companies, to build and operate the project. Electricity generated will be sent to China and several military-run mining operations in Burma. As the project nears completion, plans are underway for two more dams on the Shweli River, a tributary of the Irrawaddy..."
Source/publisher: Palaung Youth Network Group
Date of publication: 2007-12-03
Date of entry/update: 2007-12-04
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English, Burmese, Chinese
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Title: Damming the Irrawaddy
Description: Executive Summary: "The Irrawaddy, one of Asia?s great river systems which flows through Burma?s heartlands, is about to be dammed. Burma?s military junta is allowing Chinese companies to build a giant 152-meter-tall hydropower dam and transmit the electricity back to China. The dam is one in a series that the junta has planned involving the export of power to neighboring countries. While the regime will gain new revenues, Burma?s ordinary citizens, who have no say in the process, will bear the costs. A project-launching ceremony for the dam at the confluence (or Myitsone in Burmese), where the Irrawaddy begins, was held in May 2007 in Burma?s northernmost Kachin State. The dam will generate 3,600 MW of electricity, most of which will be transmitted to China, fitting into the Chinese Central Government?s ?West to East Power Transmission Policy? The power will be worth an estimated US$500 million per year. The Irrawaddy Myitsone dam is the first in a series of seven large Chinese dams to be built along this waterway. Deeply concerned about the dam?s potential impacts, elders, community leaders and villagers from across Kachin State have sent protest letters directly to Senior General Than Shwe and the military?s Northern Commander to stop the project, but the objections have so far fallen on deaf ears. An estimated 47 villages will be inundated in a region recognized as one of the world?seight "hottest hotspots of biodiversity." Approximately 10,000 people will be displaced, losing their livelihoods, and exacerbating the existing problems of unemployment, drug addiction and HIV/AIDS in the area. Roads that are the link betweenmajor towns in theremote state will be cutoffby the floods impacting communication, transportation, and trade. Recent dam breaks in nearby rivers in 2006 have swept away houses and bridges, causing fatalities and destroying power stations and dam structures beyond repair. Northern Burma is earthquake-prone, and the Irrawaddy Myitsone dam site is less than 100 km from the major Sagaing fault line. Dam breakage or unnatural flood surges would be disastrous for Myitkyina, the capital city of Kachin State that lies only 40 kilometers downstream of the dam. The well-documented negative impacts of large dams on fisheries, flood plain farming and river bank cultivation will impact the millions that rely on the Irrawaddy. Health concerns that include an increase in malaria and the release of toxic methyl-mercury from the dam?s reservoir will endanger Burma?s people, further burdening a healthcare system that is ranked as one of the worst in the world. The critically endangered Irrawaddy dolphin may become extinct in its namesake river. Human rights abuses by the military have been extensively reported, including the junta?s use of troops and landmines to secure large development projects, resulting in forced labor, land confiscation and threats to life. There is no reason to expect that the communities living at the Irrawaddy Myitsone dam site will not suffer the same consequences. Women are particularly susceptible to sexual violence by troops. In addition to these risks, women face pressures to participate in the sex trade once construction sites are set up and livelihoods are lost, and are increasingly vulnerable to human trafficking. For centuries, the Myitsone has been the source of songs, poems and legends which are not only the heritage of the Kachin but all the people of Burma. If this dam were to go ahead, a national cultural landmark would be permanently submerged and lost to future generations. The Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG) joins those who have already spoken out to call for an end to the Irrawaddy Myitsone dam project. The ruling military junta is promoting mega-development that places all the costs and risks on disenfranchised peoples while fortifying military control. Small-scale alternatives that recognize the rights of local communities and empower them to participate and manage resources are possible. China is an important neighbor that can be a positive influence in the region. KDNG calls on China to abide at least by its own standards when operating in Burma and to heed the voices of affected peoples."
Source/publisher: Kachin Development Networking Group
Date of publication: 2007-10-22
Date of entry/update: 2007-10-22
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English, Burmese
Format : pdf pdf
Size: 2.69 MB 1.55 MB
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Title: In the Balance: Salween dams threaten downstream communities in Burma
Description: Summary: " The Salween is Southeast Asia?s longest free flowing river and one of Burma?s most important waterways. For the half a million people living where the river meets the Andaman Sea, the Salween is a way of life interlinked with its seasonal flows and daily tides. However, Burma?s military dictatorship, together with Thai and Chinese investors, is moving ahead with plans to dam the Salween. The communities living downstream have not been informed or consulted about the dam plans or their potential impacts, even though their lives stand to be permanently altered. This report describes the unique geography and ecology of the downstream estuary, where salt water meets fresh and the mainstream Salween and its two main tributaries are tidal for up to 75 kilometers inland. Numerous islands, some of them seasonal and some of them culturally sacred, are rich with fertile sediment that flows down the Salween each year. The delicate mix of salt and fresh water created by the seasonal flow of the river and the rise and fall of the tides determines daily life. Local people collect fresh water at high tide and store it in community pools for drinking and household use, and manage a system of canals to irrigate fields with fresh water and protect crops from salt water. In this way, villages subsist and provide farm produce to the capital city of Mon State and the five townships at the mouth of the Salween. Natural seasonal floods irrigate and replenish fields, and support the migration of fish species that use flooded habitats as spawning grounds before returning to the sea. Fisher folk carefully follow the migration patterns of countless species to make their catch and provide fish paste, one of the essential ingredients of Mon food. Wild plants that grow in the unique mix of salt and fresh water of the estuary are used as medicines and food. If the dams are built, the downstream effects, as studied elsewhere in the world, stand to alter the lives of over half a million people. These effects include altered river flows that cause higher concentrations of salt water to travel further inland. Changes in water quality, salinity, or seasonal flows are likely to make community water pools undrinkable and affect agricultural crops. Sudden and unnatural water surges increase erosion, destroy islands, and make the river dangerous to local communities. In addition, the decreased amount of sediment reaching downstream damages agriculture. A decline in fish catches due to interrupted migrations will impact the protein source of the local diet. Any one of these changes to the river would tip the balance fine-tuned over generations between self-reliant communities and their environment. Lastly, the proposed dams lie on active earthquake fault lines; dam breaks would be a disaster. Yet, despite all these concerns and potential problems, those living downstream have not even been informed of the project and unknown to them, their future is left hanging in the balance. The suppression of free media and arrests, beatings, and extra-judicial killings of anyone that challenges the regime in Burma make it impossible to access adequate information or to question the projects. Any dam project needs to take into consideration the social and environmental impacts on those living downstream and, most importantly, allow for their informed consent. This is impossible under the military dictatorship in Burma. The Mon Youth Progressive Organization therefore calls on all parties to halt their investments and stop the Salween dam projects."
Source/publisher: Mon Youth Progressive Organization
Date of publication: 2007-05-00
Date of entry/update: 2007-05-07
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English, Burmese, Thai, Chinese.
Format : pdf pdf pdf pdf pdf pdf pdf
Size: 622.89 KB 743.36 KB 1.02 MB 1.14 MB 920 KB 974.75 KB 81.74 KB
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Title: A Damming Indictment
Description: "More than 30 dams planned across mainland Southeast Asia will bring electricity, population upheaval, food shortages and ecological destruction... Strange things are happening along the mighty Mekong, Southeast Asia?s longest river, which sustains 60 million people on its 2,610-mile (4,200-km) journey from Tibet to the Vietnamese coast. The river?s flow has begun fluctuating wildly as it courses through the borderlands of Thailand and Laos, washing away fertile farming land and scores of homes. The cause is not global warming-induced weather change, nor glaciers melting in the Himalayas, but China?s steamrollering economic growth, say environment protection campaigners. Chinese engineers are building eight hydroelectric dams along the Mekong in China, where it is called the Lancang, blasting away rocky rapids in order to tap the river?s energy for electricity generation and transport..." These alarming developments are just a small segment of a multibillion dollar region-wide effort to harness rivers, threatening to unleash enormous human and ecological problems which will far outweigh the benefits, say environmentalists. Tens of thousands of people—mostly ethnic minorities living in isolation—face forced displacement, and the ecological damage could be unprecedented, undermining food supplies..."
Creator/author: William Boot
Source/publisher: "The Irrawaddy" Vol. 14, No.8
Date of publication: 2006-08-00
Date of entry/update: 2007-05-01
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Salween - Extracts from WWF Rivers report, 2007
Description: "The Salween river basin is more than twice the size of England, the second largest river basin in southeast Asia and one of the last free-flowing international rivers in Asia..."
Source/publisher: WWF
Date of publication: 2007-03-22
Date of entry/update: 2007-03-22
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 37.57 KB
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Title: Warning Signs - An update on plans to dam the Salween in Burmas Shan State
Description: A new report ?Warning Signs: An update on plans to dam the Salween in Burmas Shan State” by the Shan Sapawa Organization launched today details how preparations for a giant hydropower dam at Tasang on the Salween River in southern Shan State have been continuing. Among the four dams being planned on the Salween River, preparations for the Tasang Dam, 130 kms north of Chiang Mai, are the most advanced. The report, reveals how, despite a dearth of public information about the dam plans, the Thai contracting company MDX has been building roads, staff buildings and local power generating facilities near the site of the 228-meter-high dam, which will have the largest installed capacity as well as being the tallest in Southeast Asia. The dam site is located in the main area of conflict in Shan State. In the past ten years, the Burma Army has tripled the number of battalions around Tasang, and over 60,000 villagers have been forcibly relocated from areas adjoining the dam site and the projected flood zone. Villagers found in hiding have been tortured, raped and killed. The majority have fled to Thailand. In lieu of consultation with the remaining villagers in the flood zone, MDX have simply been hiring doctors to provide health services to villagers south of the dam-site along the proposed route of the electricity transmission lines to Thailand. MDX signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the Burmese Department of Hydroelectric Power in April 2006 for joint development of a 7,110 megawatt dam at Tasang at an estimated cost of US$6 billion. Sapawa is urging an immediate end to the Tasang dam project. ?We want the Thai government and Thai investors to stop supporting a project which will permanently displace thousands of our people, including Shan refugees in Thailand who will have no home to return to,” said Sapawa spokesperson Sai Sai.
Source/publisher: Shan Sapawa Environmental organisation (Sapawa) via Burma Rivers Network
Date of publication: 2006-09-15
Date of entry/update: 2006-09-21
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf pdf
Size: 731.04 KB 871.1 KB
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Title: Eine kostbare Ressource mit Konfliktpotential
Description: Wasser in S?dostasien, Konflikte um Wassernutzung, Pak Mun Staudamm, Nam Theun II Damm, Salween Staudammprojekt; Water in Southeast Asia, Salween Dam
Creator/author: Yvonne Klöpper
Source/publisher: S?dostasien Informationsstelle Asienhaus
Date of publication: 2006-01-01
Date of entry/update: 2006-08-10
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: Deutsch, German
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Title: "Undercurrents" -- Monitoring development on Burma?s Mekong - issue 2
Description: Articles on mining (including gold, manganese, coal), logging, opium, rape... Unhindered Prospects - Remote areas of Shan State a convenient place to mine for neighboring countries... Bigger, not Better - Despite its expansion, the Burma Army rests on shaky foundations... Deadly Changes - Unpredictable water surges and unprecedented low water levels on the Mekong have human costs... An Order is an Order - The junta?s zeal for castor oil causes hardship for villagers... The En people... Still no signs of outlawing license to rape - Burma Army expansion impacts women... Gun-toting monks - Militarization leaves nothing sacred in Burma... Even the Last Tree - Unrestricted logging leaves the hills of eastern Shan State bare... What Opium Ban? - Despite UN claims of reductions, poppy cultivation and trade continue in territories under the control of ceasefire groups and the SPDC... Anything for Gold - Desperate gold mining continues even after deadly accident... Chameleon Moves his Capital - Leader of NDAA survives political shake-up and continues to develop his new center of action.
Source/publisher: Lahu National Development Organization (LNDO)
Date of publication: 2006-07-00
Date of entry/update: 2006-07-05
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf pdf
Size: 1.07 MB 1.22 MB
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Title: Dammed by Burma?s Generals -- The Karenni Experience with Hydropower Development, from Lawpita to the Salween
Description: " Threatened with plans by Burma?s generals to dam the Salween River and submerge vast tracts of their homelands, the Karenni are releasing a new report today which exposes the parallels between the devastating impacts of Burma?s first large scale hydropower project, built in their state, and those of the planned Salween dams. The report highlights the destructive mix of development and military rule in Burma. The report by the Karenni Development Research Group (KDRG), Dammed by Burma?s Generals, chronicles the impacts of the Lawpita hydropower project since the early 1960s. Promised abundant electricity and irrigation, the local population instead suffered from forced displacement, water shortages, increased militarization, human rights abuses, and thousands of landmines planted to secure the project. Most of the power was sent directly to Rangoon; still today 80% of the Karenni are without electricity. One of four dams planned for the Salween, the Weigyi Dam, will flood over 640 square kilometers in Karenni State, submerging an area three times the size of the Lawpita reservoir. The report details how twenty-eight towns and villages, including a historical capital of the Karenni, will be inundated, impacting approximately 30,000 people. An entire tribe ? the Yintalai, who now number a mere 1,000 ? will permanently lose all their homelands. Irreversible environmental damage will be caused by inundation of forests internationally recognized for their outstanding biodiversity. Under an agreement signed in December 2005 between Thailand and Burma?s regime, construction on the Salween dams is slated to begin in 2007. With likely investment from China, the dams will provide electricity for Thailand and revenue for the ruling military regime. As Pascal Khoo Thwe, the Karenni author of From the Land of Green Ghosts says in his foreword to the report: ?There is no better way to destroy a country than by the combined power of bulldozers and guns.” Civil war continues in Karenni State, leaving an estimated one third of the population internally displaced and over 22,000 Karenni refugees registered in camps in Thailand. If the Salween dams go ahead, many of these people will never be able to return home. The report urges that the Salween dam projects be scrapped. As KDRG researcher Aung Ngeh states: ?We know from bitter experience what hydropower development means under a military dictatorship. It is not about electricity or irrigation for the people. It is about subjugation and control. The Salween dams will mean more soldiers, more landmines, and the gradual annihilation of our people.”"
Source/publisher: Karenni Development Research Group
Date of publication: 2006-03-14
Date of entry/update: 2006-03-14
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Toungoo district: Civilians displaced by dams, roads, and military control
Description: "...Burma?s State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) military junta claims to be implementing peace and development in Karen regions, but civilians in Toungoo District of northern Karen State say they are facing instead brutal treatment aimed at asserting military control. An example of SPDC-led ‘development? is a new dam project on the Thauk Yay Ka (Day Loh) river in western Toungoo District. Villagers in the area of this proposed dam say that it has brought a new military access road to their area and that large SPDC military columns now patrol their villages, looting their belongings and forcing them into labour. Security checkpoints along all roads in the area have proliferated, restricting the movements of villagers and extorting heavy ‘taxes? on all goods they try to take to market. Increased military presence along the roads has occurred throughout the district, from the Than Daung Gyi ? Leit Tho road in the north to the Kler Lah ? Bu Sah Kee road in the southeast, and close to 300 acres of villagers? farmland has been confiscated for the establishment of a large military base at Leit Tho in the north. This continues the campaign of control already exposed in KHRG?s March 2005 report from the district (see ‘Peace?, or Control?, KHRG Report from the Field #2005-F3). SPDC troops burn farmfields and plantations adjacent to vehicle roads for military security, while destroying the villagers? food security. People who have been forced from the hills into SPDC-controlled villages struggle against disease, food scarcity and restrictions on their movement, while those who have chosen to evade SPDC control in the hills must remain mobile to evade SPDC patrols who destroy their rice fields and landmine the pathways. In the relocation villages and in the forests, people are facing a difficult struggle against food scarcity, deteriorating health conditions, and SPDC human rights abuses..."...Dam security; Road security; New Army base at Leit Tho; Destruction of villages and livelihoods; Relocation sites and roadsides; Villagers in hiding; Health; Children and education
Source/publisher: Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG #2005-F7)
Date of publication: 2005-08-19
Date of entry/update: 2005-08-20
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Flooding the Future: Hydropower and Cultural Survival in the Salween River Basin
Description: "...After years of speculation, the Royal Thai Government and the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the military regime ruling Burma, appear poised to begin major construction on a series of large hydro-powered dams in the Salween River basin. In April 2004, Thailand?s Energy Ministry and Burma?s Ministry of Electric Power agreed to develop four of the proposed projects. Joint feasibility studies began this past fall, prompting representatives from several different Burmese ethnic groups to urge Thailand to reconsider. Their concerns emphasized the environmental costs of these dams and the fact that electricity produced from them would be exported abroad instead of supplying local populations who endure serious energy shortages.Their pleas appear to have fallen on deaf ears. Fortunately, the arrest of Khin Nyunt in October 2004 has fomented rather than ended the power struggle between different factions within the SPDC. As a result, the ongoing political turmoil inside the country has created a brief window of opportunity. But constructive action is needed quickly...While hydropower projects have brought economic benefits, they have also adversely affected millions of people worldwide who depend upon rivers for their survival. These projects have irreversibly damaged ecosystems and led to the loss of livelihoods, cultures, and the rights of populations displaced by dams. All of the dam projects proposed for the Salween River basin in Burma fail to meet the standards established by the World Commission in Dams, particularly those related to open and transparent decision-making.27 In every instance, advocates for the dams have failed to include the affected communities in the decision-making process, which raises concerns that profits are again being put before local interests and needs. The projects also fail to meet the basic principle of distributive justice, which is embedded in the notion of sustainable development and other rights-based approaches. Sustainability, according to the 1980 World Commission on Environment and Development, cannot be achieved if policies do not consider the ramifications of resource accessibility and the equitable distribution of benefits and burdens across all affected stakeholders, including non-human ones.28 Current conditions inside Burma do not permit any of the above principles to be honored. For these reasons, further construction should be halted until other, less destructive options, can be explored, discussed, and agreed upon by all the stakeholders..."
Source/publisher: EarthRights International
Date of publication: 2005-05-02
Date of entry/update: 2005-05-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: "Undercurrents" -- Monitoring development on Burma?s Mekong [Issue No. 1]
Description: Contents: Letter from LNDO; Blasting the Mekong - The navigation scheme is making trade easier - but for whom? Sold down the river - one Lahu girl?s story; Lord of Burma?s Mekong - A profile of the shadowy drug kingpin who controls the eastern reaches of Shan State; Sop Lwe � the next Mong La? Drug lord Lin Ming Xian stakes Sop Lwe as his next casino resort - with uncertain consequences for the local population; Road Construction in Shan State: A Lucrative Way to Turn Illegal Drug Profits into Legal Revenues; Eastern Shan State Erupts Again - Movements by the SSA-S prompt increased persecution of civilians by the regime; New bridge planned across the Mekong - Big changes come to Keng Larb as a new bridge linking Burma and Laos is considered; No Place Left for the Spirits of the Yellow Leaves - Intensive logging leaves few options for the Mabri people; Living in a War Zone; 20 Lack of Education � Is Development Really Coming?
Source/publisher: Lahu National Development Organization (LNDO)
Date of publication: 2005-01-00
Date of entry/update: 2004-12-17
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 2.53 MB
Local URL:
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Title: The Salween Under Threat: Damming the Longest Free River in Southeast Asia
Description: CHAPTER 1: Livelihoods and Ecosystems along the Salween; CHAPTER 2: Politics and Power Behind Dam Building; CHAPTER 3: Conditions in Burma; CHAPTER 4: Tasang Dam: CHAPTER 5: Wei Gyi and Dagwin Dams: CHAPTER 6: Salween Water Diversion Projects; CHAPTER 7: Avoiding Tragedy..."...This book calls for efforts to prevent destructive large scale hydro-power development on the Salween, and also to find low-impact models of development that can ensure a rising standard of living for the communities it supports. Our hope is that the international community will support the campaign to protect the Salween and its peoples in both Thailand and Burma...Among the major river systems in mainland Southeast Asia, the dam-building industry has successfully promoted construction of numerous dams on the Mekong River and its tributaries, causing the destruction of the environment and loss of livelihoods for millions of people. By contrast, the Salween River, which like the Mekong originates in the Himalayas and runs parallel to the Mekong for several hundred miles, remains the longest river in mainland Southeast Asia that flows freely, uninterrupted by dams. 3 This does not mean that the Salween River has been free from efforts to construct dams in its basin. In fact, hydro-power developers and dam builders from countries such as Japan, China, Australia, and Thailand have long been attracted to the Salween River basin, along with public institutions that have a history of financing hydro-power development and dam construction such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC). Feasibility studies already have been conducted at many sites, and the promoters of the dams are geared to start construction at any moment without either consulting the local peoples or considering the social and environmental impacts the dams will have. If current trends continue, it is only a matter of time before the Salween will forever cease to flow freely. As with dam building in any other part of the world, the drive behind the plans to build dams on the Salween River does not necessarily stem from the quest for social or public welfare. While hydro-power may generate needed electricity, much of the push to dam comes from the ambitions of dam builders who stand to benefit from the consultancies, provision of equipment and building contracts. Chapter 2 examines the political and economic motives behind the plans to dam the Salween River. Dams? Harmful Impacts Construction of large dams in any part of the world is known to inflict severe, negative effects on the environment and the livelihoods of the local people, and the planned dam and diversion projects in the Salween River system are no exception. Moreover, the current situation in Burma will certainly further aggravate such impacts for those communities living in the project areas in Burma. Chapters 1 and 3 describe the situation along the Salween where the dams are proposed. Given the negative impacts that are certain to occur, alternative energy and water management options should be considered before final decisions are made to dam the Salween River. Chapter 7 examines the alternative options that are available, and presents recommendations to the international community..."
Source/publisher: Salween Watch, Southeast Asia Rivers Network, Center for Social Development Studies, Chulalongkorn University
Date of publication: 2004-10-00
Date of entry/update: 2004-12-16
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Hydro-powering the Regime
Description: "Burma?s government has initiated a massive dam-building program. Yuki Akimoto details the projects and examines the possible ramifications. [also see table for complete details] The military junta that rules Burma, the State Peace and Development Council, or SPDC, has a strong predilection for hydro-power plants. Council chairman, Sr-Gen Than Shwe, who hails from Kyaukse, through which the Zawgyi River flows, is widely rumored to believe himself a reincarnation of King Anawrahta (r. 1044-1077). The long-dead Pagan-era monarch was a prolific dam- and canal-builder, particularly along the Zawgyi, where he supervised the building of a series of weirs and canals to atone for killing his foster-brother Sokka-te..."
Creator/author: Yuki Akimoto
Source/publisher: "The Irrawaddy" Vol. 12, No. 6
Date of publication: 2004-06-00
Date of entry/update: 2004-10-07
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Hydropower Projects in Burma (Map)
Description: Map on Hydropower Projects in Burma
Creator/author: Yuki Akimoto, Tetz Hakoda (Burma Information Network -Japan)
Source/publisher: Burma Information Network -Japan
Date of publication: 2004-04-00
Date of entry/update: 2004-03-31
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Zwangsumsiedlung f?r Staudammbau in Burma
Description: F?r den Energieexport nach Thailand will Burmas Milit?rregierung einen Gro?staudamm bauen, f?r den Tausende Angeh?rige der Shan umgesiedelt werden sollen. Der Tasang Staudamm soll am Fluss Salween im zentralen Shan Bundesstaat entstehen. Teile des Gebietes sind bereits entv?lkert. ?berblick der Geselschaft f?r bedrohte V?lker ?ber die Pl?ne zum Bau des Tasang-Staudamms und die Konsequenzen f?r die einheimische Bev?lkerung und die Umwelt. key words: Tasang-dam, forced relocation, consequences for local population, environment
Source/publisher: Gesellschaft f?r bedrohte V?lker
Date of publication: 2001-12-00
Date of entry/update: 2004-01-08
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: Deutsch, German
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Title: Verbrannte Erde und ?berflutungen: Staudammprojekte am Salween in Burma
Description: Ein Artikel ?ber die Aktivit?ten der ADB in Burma, Staudammprojekte am Salween, Umweltkatastrophen, ?lkologische Folgen der Staudammprojekte. activities of the ADB concerning Burma; environmental, ecological and sicial consequences of dam-projects
Creator/author: Daniel Apolinarski
Source/publisher: Burma Initiative Asienhaus
Date of publication: 2003-10-00
Date of entry/update: 2003-12-05
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: Deutsch, German
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Title: Swimming Against the Tide: Asian Development Bank Considers Supporting Burmese Dam Despite Unrest
Description: "At a time when the Burmese military regime has come under increasing international pressure following a violent attack on pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters, the Asian Development Bank is promoting a massive power grid fueled by hydropower dams in Burma, China and Laos - all places where public opposition is stifled. The power grid plan was unveiled just weeks after at least 70 people, mostly youth activists, were killed in the May 30 attack on Suu Kyi??s motorcade, according to eyewitness accounts. While the attack has drawn sharp criticism from around the world and threats of additional economic sanctions, the Asian Development Bank?s grid plan would support one of Burma?s most controversial dams..."
Creator/author: Susanne Wong
Source/publisher: International Rivers Network (World Rivers Review, Volume 18, Number 4, August 2003)
Date of publication: 2003-08-00
Date of entry/update: 2003-07-15
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: Trading Away the Future: The Mekong Power Grid
Description: September 25, 2006 International River?s briefing paper outlines threats arising from the Mekong Power Grid scheme, proposed by the ADB, that would facilitate the construction of numerous hydropower schemes in Laos, Burma, and China?s Yunnan province to feed the power?hungry cities of Thailand and Vietnam. The briefing paper identifies alternative sustainable solutions that would satisfy the region?s energy needs, including the promotion of renewable energy technologies and the adoption of energy efficiency measures...."A quiet threat is brewing in the Mekong region. The Asian Development Bank and the World Bank are planning a regional power grid and electricity trading system that would undermine the fragile Mekong River ecosystem that millions depend on for their livelihoods and survival. Over 60 million people depend on the Mekong?s muddy waters for fish, irrigation, drinking water and many other critical human needs. The river is a symbol of life and fertility, considered the lifeblood of mainland Southeast Asia. But for institutions like the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank, the river is a tempting resource that must be exploited. Their plans to create a regional power grid would lay the groundwork for an ambitious program of hydropower development. Power from some of the most controversial dam projects in China, Burma and Laos would be transmitted through the grid to the energy-hungry cities of Thailand and Vietnam. The ADB, World Bank and other institutions are eagerly promoting the regional power grid despite mounting evidence against hydropower. Internationally, hydropower projects have caused tremendous social and environmental problems and have often failed to produce as much power as predicted. In the Mekong region, many projects built during the last decade have left a legacy of damaged livelihoods, cultures and ecosystems in their wake. This devastation will increase if the Mekong power grid goes forward. This paper outlines the threats posed by the regional power grid, the poor experience with hydropower in the basin, and opportunities for sustainably and equitably meeting the region?s energy needs..."
Source/publisher: International Rivers
Date of publication: 2003-06-20
Date of entry/update: 2003-07-15
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Title: MDX plans dam on Salween
Description: "MDX Plc, a local major construction group, is set to sign a memorandum of understanding with Rangoon for the construction of a 3,600-megawatt hydro-power dam on the Salween River..."
Creator/author: Yuthana Praiwan. Translator Tetz Hakoda (BurmaInfo)
Source/publisher: Bangkok Post (Business News)
Date of publication: 2002-12-13
Date of entry/update: 2003-06-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: Japanese, English
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Title: Tasang Dam Update #1
Description: Current updates of hydroelectric power projects on the Salween River. Mainly based on wire reports in English.
Creator/author: Yuki Akimoto
Source/publisher: BurmaInfo
Date of publication: 2002-12-23
Date of entry/update: 2003-06-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: Japanese
Format : php
Size: 201 bytes
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Title: Tasang Dam Update #2
Description: Current updates of hydroelectric power projects on the Salween River. Mainly based on wired reports in English.
Creator/author: Yuki Akimoto
Source/publisher: BurmaInfo
Date of publication: 2003-01-29
Date of entry/update: 2003-06-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: Japanese
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Title: Tasang Dam Update (World Water Forum version)
Description: Current updates of hydroelectric power projects on the Salween River. Mainly based on wired reports in English.
Creator/author: Yuki Akimoto
Source/publisher: BurmaInfo
Date of publication: 2003-03-00
Date of entry/update: 2003-06-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: Japanese
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