DPA
Bangkok - A leading US senator has added his voice to a growing chorus of international opposition to a proposed dam on the Mekong River in Laos.
Democrat Senator Jim Webb, chair of the Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Thursday issued a statement raising concerns over the Xayaburi dam project, which could get the go-ahead next week.
Officials from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, through which the lower Mekong flows, are to decide on April 22 whether the project is to proceed.
The Xayaburi hydropower dam is the first of 11 planned on the lower Mekong mainstream.
'This is a dangerously harmful precedent as it relates to the environmental health of South-East Asia,' Webb warned.
'Numerous scientific studies have concluded that construction of the Xayaburi dam and other proposed mainstream dams will have devastating environmental, economic, and social consequences for the entire Mekong sub-region,' he said.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) on Thursday warned that the dam's environmental impact assessment study was 'woefully inadequate and fell well below international standards for such studies.'
The WWF and 263 international non-governmental organizations have called for a 10-year moratorium on all lower Mekong dams, until full assessments are made on their impact.
'To avoid irreversible damage to the region, I believe it would be prudent to delay the construction of any mainstream dam along the river, including those along the upper Mekong River, until adequate planning and multilateral coordination can be guaranteed,' Webb said.
Sustainable development of the Mekong, South-East Asia's longest waterway that starts in China and runs through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam has become key in US efforts to re-engage with the region.
Environmentalists fear that the construction of the Xayaburi dam will disrupt fish migrations in the lower Mekong with devastating impact on food supplies for millions of people.
China has already built four hydropower dams in Yunnan province on the upper mainstream of the Mekong.
3 comments:
IS HUN SEN DEAD FROM LUNG CANCER YET??
Started along Mekong river from China
Lao border to Vietnam and in Great Lake,the Tonle Sap,Vietnamese are polluting water,destroying fishes.
Go and see by yourself.
Everywhere Vietnamese went and lived,
they destroyed and polluted water and killed fishes.
Lao and Cambodia are under Vietnam control,they let Vietnamese and
Vietnam govt do every things in Lao and in Cambodia.
Let Vietnam back to Vietnam,but not in Lao and in Cambodia.
Hun sen’s family will be like Kim jong uns but in Cambodia
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