From Xinhua News Agency: China takes measures to protect cross-border river basin environment

(Source: Xinhua at Kunming, September 30) According to the latest survey, the quality of river water that flows out of Yunnan is acceptable.  The level of heavy metals like arsenic, mercury, chromium and lead in the river water is far below the international standard. A sailor, Zhang Yong, told the reporter that he saw the forests on both sides of Lancang-Mekong river were almost cut down in 1991.  However, they gradually recovered after the government implemented a logging ban. Each time he passes Guanlei, an important port between China, Laos and Burma, he will see a green building.  This is indeed a hydrological environmental monitoring station.  A slogan was painted outside the house, "To protect a river that is common to all is our responsibility."  The inspectors are responsible for taking samples from the river, and analyse the water quality in this so-cailled "Eastern Danube".
Recently, they have to do one more tasks, that is to work on a comprehensive EIA on Lancan-Mekong river basin.  This is also the first-ever survey on a
river which flows through six countries.
Meanwhile, Yunnan are now taking measures to clean up the cross-border river environment, including Nu-Salween, Hong (Red) and Irrawaddy.  Yunnan has the most rivers that flows out of the province. State Environmental Protection Agency has set up a monitoring network in Yunnan, including 185 water survey stations and 14 water laboratories in the major cross-border rivers.  The researchers will regularly take samples from rivers, streams, lakes and big reservoirs, and analyse the content of arsenic, mercury, fluorides, lead, phosphorus, oil substances, non-ionic ammonia and other pollutants.
To avoid the pollution in these cross-border rivers, Yunnan has been monitoring the sewage release from the riparian industries and mining activities.  So far, over 2000 factories were inspected, and a number of factories that violated the rules were shut down. Six large sewage treatment plants are being built or have been built, and three of them were supported by World Bank's 200 million USD loan.
He Bin, the president of Yunnan Institute of Environmental Science, said that Chinese government has listed all cross-border rivers as the important environmental protection sites.  All projects to be implemented on these rivers have to go through EIA process.  All domestic sewage released into
these rivers has to be treated.  And a number of holes will be reserved in the dams for the fish who will produce cells upstream.
To protect Lancang river from agrochemical pollution, Yunnan has limited the use of the fertilizers.  And the researchers will introduce the biological
fertilizers to replace the chemical ones. Every year, landslide, soil erosion and flooding happen in a number of cross-border rivers.  Since 1999, Chinese government started afforestation in Lancang, Pearl River and Hong river.  They plan to increase the forest cover rate in these river basins from less than 40% at this moment to over 50% in 10 years.

Translated by Kevin Li

Mekong is not only a source of energy

What will be left of the wild spirit of the upper Mekong river after it is bottled up in a series of dams in the highlands of China's Yunnan province? Two dams have already been completed and the construction of another was begun in January this year. China plans eight dams in all in Yunnan. Many more are in the works for the lower stretches of the river as it flows between Burma and Laos, Laos and Thailand, and across Cambodia and Vietnam.
More than 100 large dams have been proposed for the Mekong basin by international development institutions over the past 10 years. Some have already been built. Most of the dams have been planned without the participation of the people who will be most affected by them, who will have their homes flooded or their means of survival threatened. There has also been almost no public debate in any of these countries on the fate of one of their greatest sources of natural wonder and recreation, or on whether individual dams are really necessary.
Public participation in major infrastructure projects is a basic and internationally recognised right. In the case of large dams, this right should be extended to people in countries downstream of the proposed projects. There is probably very little that the people or the government of Thailand can do to influence the outcome in China, but it is quite a different story along the lower Mekong basin.
Thailand is learning the hard way about the value of public participation in the planning of energy generation schemes. After all the controversy that has dogged the Pak Moon dam, it is doubtful another large dam will be built in Thailand without full public participation. Two studies conducted after the government ordered dam gates opened for a year concluded that the dam has had a major ecological impact on the river. Many species of fish which
had disappeared returned to the river after the gates were opened. One of the studies, by Ubon Ratchathani University, found that decommissioning the
dam would have no effect on power supplies due to a surplus of energy reserves in the system. The Electricity Generating Authority (Egat) disputes this finding.
Thailand may have learned some lessons on how to proceed on mega-projects at home, but it is involved in projects outside its borders which may bring the same kinds of problems to its neighbours. A case in point is the proposed Nam Thuen 2 dam on a tributary of the Mekong, the Xe Bang Fai river in Laos, which is being developed in part by Egat to export power to Thailand. Aviva Imhof of the International Rivers Network reports that the project does not comply with six of the seven priorities outlined by the World Commission on Dams, an independent body sponsored by the World Bank and World Conservation Union. These priorities include ``gaining public acceptance'' and ``sustaining rivers and livelihoods''. Studies also have indicated that, when the dam is completed somewhere around 2008, Thailand will be paying a high rate for power it doesn't need.
It is often joked that the people who complain about energy projects will scream as loudly as everyone else if nothing happens when a light is switched on, but this misses the point. Hydropower no doubt is important in supplying the energy needs of the future, but is every one of those 100 dams really necessary, and what are the alternatives? The current energy surplus may not last forever but it does give enough time to think out a clear energy strategy, with public and hopefully transboundary participation, that revolves around the principles of sustainable development that all the world's governments claim to support.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/07Oct2002_news23.html

Bangkok Post. October 7, 2002.