Dams Built by China

1. Background

Project Overview

Chinese corporations, financial institutions, and the government are involved in billions of dollars worth of large dams in Africa. Civil society and dam-affected peoples’ movements are concerned that China’s own poor record on protecting human rights and the environment could mean trouble for African rivers now targeted for Chinese-built large dams.

Africa is a growing source of raw materials for China’s industrial sector as well as a marketplace for Chinese goods. Chinese companies are heavily involved in many fields: oil, mining, logging, and infrastructure. Unlike western financiers China’s assistance comes with almost no strings attached.

This spreadsheet, downloadable below, contains 107 dam projects the Sinohydro Corporation is involved in outside of China. For some of the projects, only a memorandum of understanding has been signed. Others are currently being studied regarding their feasibility or are under construction. Yet others have already been completed.

Published by EarthRights International, this survey reveals a rapidly increasing number of Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) involved in hydropower, oil and natural gas, and mining projects in Burma. The report identifies that at least 45 Chinese companies have been involved in approximately 63 hydropower projects in Burma. The report raises concerns about the lack of public information about these projects as well as the potential social and environmental impacts given the current situation in Burma. Read the full report here.

 

Two hydropower projects are being built on the upper Trishuli River in Nepal, planned by the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) and funded entirely by China Exim Bank.  Increased industrial activity, runoff, overfishing, and the construction of large hydropower projects has led the IUCN to declare that over 20% of Nepal's freshwater fish species are threatened or endangered. The Upper Trishuli 3A and 3B hydropower projects will block fish migration and further impact these imperiled freshwater fisheries.

The Neelum Valley in Kashmir made history on October 2005 when a deadly 7.6 earthquake hit the highly contested Pakistan-Indian border region. Now both India and Pakistan want to build a dam on the Neelum River, which runs through both countries. Authorities believe the river can provide badly needed energy and irrigation to one side of the border or the other, but not both.

Nam Tha 1: A Khmu community on the banks of the Nam Tha in Luang Namtha Province (David J.H. Blake)

The Nam Tha 1 Hydropower Project is located in the mountainous northwest corner of Laos. Nam Tha 1 would require the resettlement of nearly 8,000 mostly indigenous people. It would also impact downstream communities along the Nam Tha River and the mainstream Mekong.

While a contractor for the state-owned Guangxi Electric Power Industry Investigation Design and Research Institute (GXED) conducted an EIA and SIA for the project, according to a new report, the assessments were rushed and underestimated the environmental and social impacts of the dam. In particular, it failed to take into account the effects the dam on water quality, aquatic ecosystems, and the challenges that the resettled population would have to face.

Chinese come to drill soil for samples at Stung Cheay Areng, March 2007 (Carl Middleton)

Known to conservationists as a biodiversity jewel of Southeast Asia, the government of Cambodia (with China's help) is proposing to build a dam in a densely populated region of the Stung Cheay Areng. If built, the dam's reservoir would flood almost two thousand hectares of land belonging to the indigenous Khmer Daeum, including five hundred hectares of sacred land in the Central Cardamom Protected Forest. More than 1,500 people would have to relocate from their homes and farmlands. Thousands more would be negatively impacted by the dam, which would block the flow of the river and destroy downstream habitats for wild fish that are crucial to the local economy. The dam would alter the natural seasonal flow variation of the Stung Cheay Areng, which local communities depend upon to nourish over six hundred hectares of rice paddies with nutrient-rich waters.

The Diamer-Bhasha Dam on the Indus River in northern Pakistan comes with an astounding price tag of over US$8.5 billion. The 200-square-kilometer reservoir would flood 100 kilometers of the Karakoram highway, and the villages and farms of over 35,000 people would disappear. Tens of thousands of thousand-year old rock carvings would vanish. The project, after an eight-year construction period, would provide 4500 MW of electricity for the national grid, but it would not address the far more pressing issue that half of Pakistan's population (around 80 million people) have no electricity access whatsoever. Diamer-Bhasha is a costly project that would only benefit industries and wealthy Pakistanis.