Huge dam projects threatens the Mekong river (Xayaburi Dam)

[AuroraGlacialis]

This is via http://www.alternet.org/story/150611...27?page=entire

Next week, the governments of Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam will meet to decide whether to approve the first-ever dam planned for the lower Mekong mainstream, the Xayaburi Dam.
...
The Mekong River - known locally as the "Mother of all Rivers" - is the world's largest inland fishery
...
To harm the fishery is to harm the food security of the region's poor.
...
a series of 11 dams on the Mekong mainstream. These impenetrable walls would block the migration of fish and profoundly disrupt the river ecology, sounding a death knell for the Mekong's productive fisheries.
...
...
The scientific consensus is against building Xayaburi Dam. Fisheries scientists unanimously agree that the dam's impacts on fisheries cannot be mitigated. Even though the dam builders have promised to install a fish ladder to allow for fish migration, the Mekong River Commission's own experts agree that this ladder will be ineffective and that there is no technology in existence to sufficiently mitigate the dam's impacts.

To say it in local engrish: "same same!" - It is the same story over and over again. blocking rivers, killing the fish, cutting off the nutrients to lowland farmers and the livelyhood of fishermen along the river. The dams then produce electricity for factories like aluminum smelters or sawmills or other mining operations (I do not know what the plan is in this case) and the people who cannot feed themselves because there are no fish and the farmlands go bad then have to make a living by providing cheap labor for these factories.

The same **** is happening again and again. Assuan, Belomonte and now Xayaburi...

There is a "take action" button in the article, maybe it helps, but maybe someone can refer to some more promising action than emailing the officials. Are there any groups that fight against this and need some momentum?

Also, spread the word...

Greetings,
Aurora

[AuroraGlacialis]

Sigh - and while we're at it:

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o...ction_KEY=6550
http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/6054

In the next days, the Chilean government will decide the fate of HidroAysén and Patagonia.

Majestic snow-capped mountains overlook the Baker River in Patagonia, Chile.

This US$7 billion project would include five dams on the Baker and Pascua rivers and a 2,300-km-long transmission line with the world's longest clearcut through national parks and protected areas.

For the third time, HidroAysén has submitted their Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for approval. The Chilean government must now decide whether or not to approve the project. This decision will be the culmination of a two and a half year process in which the company has repeatedly failed to assess the project’s real environmental impacts and all versions of the EIA have contained serious flaws and omissions.

An international coalition of citizens and NGOs has been at the forefront of the effort to uncover the truth about this destructive and unnecessary project, and the tide has turned. Chileans don't want HidroAysén.

Peak oil is coming closer and people start to drop their superficial environmentalism, it seems :(

This is so ****ing sad! They are damming and damning the last big rivers, the last places where fish can swim freely, where water runs as it comes and where migratiory fish species hatch. They block the sediment from downstream lands, blocking the upwards AND the downwards movement of nutrients. Rivers are lifelines, veins and arteries of the Earth, they shutthle phosphorous upstream (with the fish) and minerals and soil downstream to the benefit of all along the river. To build a wall into them is like building the Berlin wall or the iron curtain or the Chinese wall (yeah, the Chinese are masters of walling off things already).

And if you go to the homepage of that company that builds the dam (look up its name on google, I will not link to it here), they call it "green, sustainable and clean" and in the same page they mention that factories & roads will be built, that holes will be blasted in mountains and coastlines to build bridges, tunnels (they call it "improving the roads) and ports. I dont know if indigenous people in that area are affected, but there is a good chance they are. The forests there are unique and scientists use them to study pristine forest ecosystems up to now. And now they want to ****ing flood them.

[Pandora Alive]

What was the decision on the Xayaburi dam? I hope the Chilean government thinks this through very very carefully.

[Pandora Alive]

Good news http://www.newscientist.com/article/...iant-fish.html

[AuroraGlacialis]

Yeah - decision postponed for now. But I hate the WWF:

In a study also published last week, WWF calculated that the same amount of electricity could be generated without the same environmental impact from [a larger number of] smaller dams built on tributaries.

Always the same **** - what gives them the fracking right to suggest such a thing - to trade in the life of one river to that of many others. Or to sell off forest to be cut down in exchange for preserving another. There is so precious few places left that are still free, that can still live and the big NGOs are just stupid corporations selling off parts of these as if they own it instead of seeing their task in protecting these places!

But still - at least the big dams are postponed for now, that gives more chances to keep it from ever happening. But if they follow that WWF suggestion, any resistance will be a lot harder, because each such project in itself is less damaging and affects only fewer (probably relatively powerless) people.

[AuroraGlacialis]

News on the Chilenian dam project - it just got approved
... against the advice and protest of environmentalists and indigenous people (who were in turn teargassed):

In Patagonia, controversial dam project gets environmental OK « Earth First! Newswire

A $7 billion dam project in Chile’s Patagonia that would dam two of the world’ last remaining wild rivers gained environmental approval from the Chilean government late Monday, despite protests and a growing wave of opposition.

Police used tear gas and water cannons on demonstrators outside a city building in Coyhaique, where 11 of 12 members of the Committee on Environmental Assessment of Region XI approved the controversial project for HidroAysén. As the country’s mining industry clamors for more energy, powerful groups have their sights set on pristine Patagonia

EDIT: And this is what comes afterwards the legal appeals and letters to the governors have failed to incite a shred of sanity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WzBKwuLJ7c
Look at the beautiful rivers in the video and listen to what they talk about how they want to destroy them for copper smelters and economic growth.

[Corporal Carnage]

because pretty rivers don't put food on the table and pretty mountains don't clear your debts with bigger countries.

[HufweMakto]

But it's not neccesarily pretty rivers and pretty mountains we're talking about, are we?

Clean water, pristine mountains with vegetation that isn't torn out so we won't have mudslides, rockslides and the like help people by not getting them killed.

Likewise, dam building has caused people to be forced off of their homes, farmland being flooded so we won't be able to grow more food. Keeping a clean and healthy environment helps a society and makes it grow.

[Tsyal Makto]

^ That.

The environment is worth more to us alive than dead.

[Ja'k Dawsiin]

Sigh - and while we're at it:

Patagonia Chilena ¡Sin Represas!
Decision on HidroAysén Pushed Back Until April 2011 | International Rivers



Peak oil is coming closer and people start to drop their superficial environmentalism, it seems :(

This is so ****ing sad! They are damming and damning the last big rivers, the last places where fish can swim freely, where water runs as it comes and where migratiory fish species hatch. They block the sediment from downstream lands, blocking the upwards AND the downwards movement of nutrients. Rivers are lifelines, veins and arteries of the Earth, they shutthle phosphorous upstream (with the fish) and minerals and soil downstream to the benefit of all along the river. To build a wall into them is like building the Berlin wall or the iron curtain or the Chinese wall (yeah, the Chinese are masters of walling off things already).

And if you go to the homepage of that company that builds the dam (look up its name on google, I will not link to it here), they call it "green, sustainable and clean" and in the same page they mention that factories & roads will be built, that holes will be blasted in mountains and coastlines to build bridges, tunnels (they call it "improving the roads) and ports. I dont know if indigenous people in that area are affected, but there is a good chance they are. The forests there are unique and scientists use them to study pristine forest ecosystems up to now. And now they want to ****ing flood them.

what is the present consensus as to when we shall actually hit the 'peak oil plateau'? as in when global demand exceeds known remaining supply that is recoverable. jw