Yangon ( AsiaNews / Agencies) - Environmentalists
are launching a new alarm for the Mekong River, from its forests to fish and fauna,
increasingly endangered by development projects for energy that do not take
into account the delicate eco- system. Fears
caused by the Xayaburi mega- plant (for years the center of fierce controversy
) have failed to stop the a new power plant which received the go-ahead from
the government of Laos. It will be built
at Don Sahong , along the border with Cambodia . According
to NGO International Rivers experts, it constitutes a serious threat to
fisheries and the environment throughout the region. These projects are developed thanks to the
support and funding of multinational companies and foreign governments, the
first to benefit from the electricity produced by the plant .
Now
the danger also directly affects the people of Burma , who are likely to see a
huge drop in the quantity of fish that until now have populated the rivers of
Myanmar. The
dam of Don Sahong could lock "the only access channel" open to fish
for migration, in that stretch of the Mekong. The
project also would put at risk one of the few remaining "natural pools"
for Irrawaddy dolphins , an endangered and protected species.
The
Mekong River for a stretch along more than 200 km forms the natural boundary
between the Shan State in Myanmar and Laos, an area locally known as the Golden
Triangle region . For
the experts of International Rivers "more than 22 thousand indigenous
people" live in the area and fishing is the basis of their diet. In
fact, about 80% of the protein consumed by people living along the Mekong,
Salween and Irrawaddy comes from fish that originated in these rivers .
For
Ame Trandem , program director for the Southeast Asian American NGO , "the
project of Don Sahong , cloaked in so much secrecy that we do not even know who
is really funding it, it is reckless and irresponsible." And there
is also evidence a "lack of transparency" . The
Mekong is in a "very precarious" state and the true extent of the
impact caused by these dams and power plants " has yet to be fully understood."
Clearly
, the experts conclude, "personal interests" are prevailing at the
expense of " in-depth studies ."
The
Mekong rises on the Tibetan plateau and flows along the Yunnan Province of
China, then in Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. About 65 million
people live along its course, obtaining support from fishing (estimated to be
worth $ 3 billion a year) and fish farmers. But now the river, 4,880 km long
and considered the 2nd richest biodiversity in the world, is threatened by many
projects of hydroelectric dams. The Mekong River Commission (MRC) has called
for a 10-year moratorium on the construction, showing heavy impact on
fisheries, with a decrease amounted to 300 thousand tons per year.