ENVIRONMENT: World Scientific Body Questioned over Laos Dam

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

MONTREAL, Oct 21 1996 (IPS) - Two international environmental organisations have questioned the motive behind a high-level agreement between the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the government of Laos.

David McDowell, the director-general of IUCN — the world’s largest research organisation working on conservation matters — signed a “memorandum of understanding” in this city last week with the government of Laos to set up an office in the Southeast Asian country.

The agreement comes on the heels of a draft report that gives the Laotian government the green light to build a major dam that will destroy the rain forests of the Nakay plateau in central Laos, damage the watershed of two rivers, and affect subsistence fishing of several thousand people.

Laotian government officials say that the Nam Theun II dam will allow the country to earn foreign exchange necessary to protect other forests and to help local people find alternative employment.

A draft IUCN report written in May, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, says that “this particular dam in these particular circumstances should be supported.”

Toronto-based Probe International and California-based International Rivers Network (IRN) argue that this report flies in the face of economic, social and environmental wisdom and indeed previous resolutions adopted by IUCN, which currently is holding its World Conservation Congress here.

“IUCN is playing a very dangerous game for the chance to influence policy in Laos. This dam is a Trojan horse that will allow many other dams to be built on the Mekong River. If this happens it will cause massive environmental and social destruction,’ ‘ IRN campaigns director Patrick McCully said.

Stuart Chape, director of IUCN’s work in Laos, said his organisation has taken no position on dams. “We were asked by the World Bank to prepare a conservation and development programme for Laos,” he said.

But McCully pointed out that the IUCN adopted a resolution at the last annual general meeting in Buenos Aires that calls on governments and international agencies to stop funding dams unless a series of strict environmental safeguards were ßdopted.

“This report shows that IUCN in Laos is lagging some 10 or 20 years behind the rest of the organisation,” said Grainne Ryder from Probe International, who spent more than a year in Laos studying dams including those proposed for the Nam Theun.

Achim Steiner, an IUCN official who worked on the draft report, told IPS that the report was prepared by a consultant and would be reviewed to ensure that it met IUCN policies before the final version was published.

S. Soukhaseum, the director-general of international organisations for Laotian foreign ministry, told IPS that the major reason for building the dam is to earn foreign exchange.

“In the Nakay plateau we have nomadic peoples who practice hunting and slash-and-burn activities. They have destroyed their forest and killed animals to sell to tourists and neighbouring countries for meat and aphrodisiacs,” she said.

“We have two choices: increase agricultural production that will destroy forests or build a dam. If we build a dam we can get the money to teach these people the skills to make handicrafts or replant the forests and earn a living,” she added. “IUCN will study this area and how to create more protected areas in our country.”

Soukhaseum said Laos is considering increasing the planned size of the dam and adding new turbines in order to generate a profit in the wake of the falling price of electricity offered by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand.

In the meantime, she acknowledged that the Laotian military is logging the cypress forests in the Nakay plateau airlifting felled trees from the forests that protect the headwaters of the Nam Xot River.

Conservation officials who have visited the area report that local nomads are selling wildlife to Vietnamese hunters. These hunters are also shooting elephants and hunting rare birds, including the crested argus and siamese fireback pheasant, once hunted only by royalty on the 1600-square-kilometre plateau.

“Twice a day, a wildlife market in the nearby town of Ban Lak Sao sells all manner of animals. Vietnamese hunters have been rumoured to offer up to 150 dollars a kilogramme for threatened species like the golden turtle,” one conservation official said.

The discovery of three unknown animal species in the last three years — the saolo, a large mammal, and new types of deer and goats — has brought new pressures to the area as foreign buyers are eager to pay high prices for them.

Vietnamese loggers are also illegally chopping down the 100- year-old pine trees at the eastern edge of the plateau and hauling them out of the area. These forests, which cover a quarter of the plateau, are possibly the only such forests left in tropical Southeast Asia.

Trucks carry the booty over the Annamite mountains that form a natural border to the 600-metre-high plateau with neighbouring Vietnam to the coastal town of Vinh, where it is shipped to Japan. In the process, loggers have severely damaged the salt-licks that sustain the some 200 elephants that live on the plateau.