Today, The Irrawaddy would like to express its strong support for those who have stood up to protect our namesake, the Irrawaddy River. This includes environmentalists, activists and politicians such as pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, all of whom have given voice to growing concerns about the fate of this mighty river, which is now facing an unprecedented threat in the form of ongoing dam projects in Kachin State.
The Irrawaddy River is Burma's lifeline, flowing through several of the country's main cities. For centuries, it has provided millions of people with food, water and a vital means of transport. It stretches 2,170 km (1,348 miles) from the snow-covered peaks of the Himalayas, through jungle-covered highlands and the sun-scorched plains of central Burma to the country's agricultural heartland, where the waters of the Irrawaddy Delta spread out and flow into the Andaman Sea.
Humans are not the only ones who depend upon this mighty waterway for their survival: It also supports an abundant variety of flora and fauna, including such endangered species as the Irrawaddy dolphin. However, due to the failure of successive governments to protect the river, it is no longer such a reliable source of life-giving water: In recent decades, it has become increasingly difficult to navigate during the dry season, and even adequate supplies of potable water are no longer easy to procure.
Experts say that the steady degradation of the Irrawaddy is a result of poor enforcement of conservation laws and a lack of ecological awareness on the part of local people and officials alike. But it is the government that clearly bears the greatest responsibility. Over the years, it has built numerous bridges across the river without due regard for location and design, while its cronies have undermined the river's watershed with rampant logging and pumped it full of pollutants from their mines and factories. Combined with the impact of global climate change, the sustainability of the river looks more uncertain with each passing year.
But dwarfing all of these concerns is a massive Chinese hydropower project in Kachin State that will construct a number of dams at or near the confluence of the Mali Hka and N’MaiHka rivers, the twin sources of the Irrawaddy. The main one is the 6,000-megawatt Myitsone dam, facilitated by the Burmese government and financed by China’s state-owned China Power Investment Corporation (CPI).
The project will take a huge social and environmental toll on the area, according to an environmental impact assessment obtained by the Thailand-based Burma Rivers Network. “The fragmentation of the Irrawaddy River by a series of dams will [cause] serious social and environmental problems not only upstream of dams but also very far downstream to the coastal area,” concluded the 945-page report, which was fully funded by CPI and conducted by a team of Burmese and Chinese scientists.
The study also recommends that a full social impact assessment be conducted along the full length of the river, but so far there are no signs that this will ever happen. Indeed, there has not even been an impact assessment for the 31 villages located in the area that will be flooded as part of the project. According to rights groups, the dam will create a reservoir the size of New York City and displace 10,000 people, submerging historic churches, temples, and cultural heritage sites that are central to ethnic Kachin identity and history.
Further raising the stakes is the fact that the site of the Myitsone dam is less than 100 km from a major fault line, meaning that basin inhabitants could see their homes literally wiped off the face of the earth should an earthquake weaken the dam structure or cause landslides in the reservoir.
Although the dam will generate an estimated $500 million in gross annual revenue for the Burmese government by providing electricity primarily for Chinese consumption, the losses it will entail and the risks it poses warrants a serious reevaluation of whether any of the supposed advantages of the project justify the enormous costs it will impose on Burma's people and environment.
A complete cost-benefit analysis must take numerous factors into consideration. For instance, while some claim that the dam could help to regulate Burma's most important waterway, others say that any diminishing of the Irrawaddy's flow could contribute to the intrusion of salt water into the delta, reducing the amount of arable land in the country's most fertile region.
While Burma's social, economic and environmental challenges remain daunting, it is an encouraging sign that the country’s new president, Thein Sein, recently acknowledged some of these problems for the first time.
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