Myitsone Dam Hangs In The Balance

WITH LESS THAN a fortnight left before the commission set up to assess the trade-offs between the economic benefits and the social and environmental damage of planned hydropower dams on the Irrawaddy (seen above) is due to submit its report to Myanmar’s president, word is emerging that the commission may recommend that the controversial Myitsone dam project is scrapped. If so, that would kick a potentially politically prickly decision to President Htin Kyaw (nominally) and (in practice) de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s new NLD-led government.

The $3.6-billion-dollar dam is heavily China-backed. China Power Investment Corp. (CPI) is financing the 4,600MW project and Sinohydro doing the construction — such as it is to date; then Myanmar President Thein Sein suspended work on the dam in 2011 in the face of local protests over village displacement, traditional livelihoods being at risk and dissatisfaction that China will get 90% of the electricity generated.

Beijing has since been pushing hard for a resumption of work, and at times it has seemed set to restart. In March, Vice foreign minister Liu Zhenmin called the project crucial for China.

While China has six other hydroelectric projects in Myanmar, not to go ahead now with Myitsone would rupture relations between Beijing and the new democratically elected government in Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi has been carefully rebuilding the relationship with Beijing, coloured by its support for the former military dictatorship and her desire to open Myanmar to a broader range of foreign investors.

However, when she visited Beijing in August, the Myitsone dam was conspicuously absent from a range of projects on which she and her hosts agreed to enhance their cooperation. The two sides agreed to no more than “to work together find a solution to the issue of the stalled Myitsone Dam project”. Termination of Myitsone would set precedents for other unbuilt or in-construction Chinese-backed infrastructure projects in the region that would be unwelcome to China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ aspirations.

However, cancellation of Myitsone would be popular within Myanmar. Myitsone is in Kachin state. Many ethnic Kachin reportedly said they voted for the NLD in the recent historic elections because they saw the party as their best hope of getting Myitsone stopped.

Alienating those voters risks making the NLD government’s hoped-for settlement with Myanmar’s ethnic armed groups more complicated. The armed wing of the Kachin Independence Organisation, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), is one of those still fighting the government.

Beijing will not want an even more unstable border than it has now. Since the breakdown of a ceasefire between the KIA and the Myanmar military in 2011, It has already had to take thousands of Kachin refugees fleeing the conflict into camps on the Yunnan side of the border. It has brokered talks between the KIA and Naypyidaw in the hope of bringing some stability to the area.

There is a thriving but illicit trade in gems, timber, drugs and increasingly people across the border. China is also the biggest (legitimate) purchaser of Myanmar’s jade, has two oil and gas pipelines that pass through Kachin state and six other dam projects apart from Myitsone, the most notable of which is the Dapein Dam 1, which started generating power in 2011.

There is more than a single dam project in play. Myitsone will be being weighed in the balance of that greater calculation in both capitals while frantic efforts are made to see whether there is any face-saving deal that can be struck. Stakes are high on both sides. As a result, we may well not see the details of the commission’s report when it is handed over on November 11.

Work To Resume On Myitsone Dam?

This Bystander is getting reports that suggest Myanmar may be gearing up for the resumption of work on the Myitsone Dam, if not immediately then at least once the summer rains are done. Myanmar’s President Thein Sein unexpectedly and unilaterally pulled the plug last September on state-owned China Power Investment Corp.’s hydropower project in Kachin state near the headwaters of the Irrawaddy river. We now are told that in the past two weeks Myanmar government soldiers have been re-evicting 100 local villagers who were originally relocated from the area but since the project’s suspension have returned to reclaim their old homes. Soldiers have also been leveling the remains of the village, according to Kachin activists.

Ethnic Kachins, who have been fighting the Nawpyidaw government for greater autonomy for their state, particularly since a 17-year old truce broke down last June, have been at the forefront of the opposition to the dam. Environmental groups say it will damage the ecology of the Irrawaddy, the country’s main waterway. Some 2,000 villagers were moved out of five villages in 2009 and 2010 so construction could start. Apart from being removed from ancestral homes that will be submerged by the reservoir created to feed the turbines, they complain that they have been resettled on land too barren to farm.

The latest round of clearances followed by a week a call by China Power Investment’s president, Lu Qizhou, to restart work on the dam. President Thein had said it would remain suspended for the duration of his term of office, which runs until 2016. But we here the sounds of backtracking. Reports say a compensation deal has been hacked out and discussions continue to get work restarted. Yet it remains a thorn in the side of relations  between Beijing and its old ally in Naypyidaw, which is now as less steadfast one as it opens more to the outside world. The fighting in Kachin, refugees spilling over the border into Yunnan and drugs- and gun-running are making China’s western reaches more unsettled than Beijing cares for.

Plus it wants the power. The Myitsone dam was to be the first in a series of seven on the upper Irrawaddy that would eventually supply hydropower to western China. Planning work on the other six has continued and China Power Investment employees have remained on site at Myistone, where, we are told, they have been mining for gold with CPI’s Myanmar partner in the dam project, Asia World, Myanmar’s Mining Enterprise No. 2 and Hka Ka Bo Mining.

Large-scale panning of gold on the Irrawaddy and Chindwin rivers is to be banned when existing one-year mining permits expire later this year. Discharges of mercury and the other highly toxic waste chemicals are polluting the rivers, while the open mining is eroding the top soil. We have no independent confirmation of CPI gold mining, but many gold mines in Kachin state not operated by the military and their friends are operated by Chinese interests. Truckloads of gold-containing earth are seen being driven back to China for processing.

It may be the re-evictions are to prevent interference with the gold-mining operations. One other factor to consider is the weather. Work on the dam would anyway be suspended during the rainy season, from June to October. Many workers from Sinohydro, the sub-contractor building the dam for CPI, were already off-site last year when President Thein made his announcement about suspending the project. Even if work restarted tomorrow, there would be only two months before the rains come. Yet such is the political pressure from Beijing to restart the project, a resumption of work once they cease looks a more than fair bet.

Myitsone Announcement ‘Astonished’ Chinese Contractor

China Power Investment Corp. wasn’t given any prior warning that Myanmar President Thein Sein was going to announce the suspension of construction of the Myitsone Dam, the company’s president, Lu Qizhou, says. State media quotes him as being “totally astonished” by the news, which he says he learned through the media. Lu also says that in February, Myanmar’s Prime Minister, during an inspection of the site, had urged the company to accelerate construction. “The sudden proposal of suspension now is very bewildering,” Lu said. “If suspension means construction halt, then it will lead to a series of legal issues.” These would include the loan that China has provided Myanmar in connection with the project.

In the lengthy Q&A, Lu gives a robust defence of the dam’s environmental impact and the plans to relocate local villagers who would be displaced by the reservoir that would be created behind the dam.

Meanwhile, China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), which is building an oil and gas pipeline connecting Myanmar’s Indian Ocean coast with southern China, has announced that it is giving $1.3 million to build eight schools along the pipeline.