Chinese state-funded renewable energy firms are spreading the net overseas, as quality new projects become harder to come by at home, and have already been successful in snapping up some prime operational projects, while bidding for others, both in developed and emerging markets.
The two most active are China General Nuclear Power Group, the nation’s largest nuclear reactor developer, and China Three Gorges, the country’s biggest hydro power projects developer.
While the media coverage of the environment in Cambodia is still limited, the Cambodian Environmental Journalism Network (CEJN) has urged media organizations to make more comprehensive coverage of the environment for the public in cooperation with the media in the neighboring countries.
Myanmar will get a new national environmental policy in early 2017, say officials from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation. The retooled version will update the 22-year-old policy currently in place.
USAID-supported Mekong Partnership for the Environment (MPE) partners have launched an innovative data portal in Myanmar. Open Development Myanmar is now available to the public and will aggregate and promote key development and environmental data about Myanmar, especially data with potential regional significance. The platform is the Myanmar sub-site of the major regional open data platform, Open Development Mekong, which gathers and contextualizes objective data on development trends in the Mekong region.
“Water is liquid capital” proclaims the lead-out of World Wide Fund for Nature’s new report “The Role of the Mekong in the Economy.” Released earlier this month at the 2016 Mekong Forum on Water, Food and Energy, the report’s findings stress that despite the Mekong’s central role to the economies of countries in the Lower Mekong Basin, river management decisions are not being coordinated with long term economic development, nor planning efforts. Unless decision makers start considering the connections between water choices and economic development, the region’s prosperity seems destined for trouble.
Myanmar Rivers Network has called for the suspension of construction on mega dam projects, a special economic zone and extraction of value-added mineral resources until a federal agreement is signed.
At a press conference at the Orchid Hotel on December 7, the network released a statement saying that the respective governments and companies must give full compensations to villagers who had been moved by force because of previous dam construction projects.
Before reaching the Keng Kham valley, the bright green Pang river, the Salween’s major tributary running south through central Shan state, splits into three parallel rivers that form myriad channels creating islands and islets, blurring the line between forests and water in a pristine and biodiverse riverscape. Rarely seen by outsiders, these are the famed “thousand islands,” forming a stunning inland delta that gives the “Kunhing” township its name. To the south, the Pang meets the Salween in a cascade of waterfalls. Seen from the air, white water tumbles down through verdant forested islands on an escarpment hundreds of meters long.
The Mekong basin is being stirred up by dams, both on the mainstream and tributaries, despite the warning that they pose serious threats to an ecologically and agriculturally vital area of the world. Experts say a basin scale vision is crucial for good water governance, but when will it become a reality?
Four feet in length, of aggressive disposition, and deadly poisonous: you don’t want to stand on a Russell’s viper in the dark. Especially if there’s no antivenom for miles around. Yet that’s the daily predicament facing millions of villagers in Myanmar, where snakebites cause about 500 deaths every year.
In Yin Ma Chaung, a rural settlement about nine hours by car from Yangon, villagers can rest easier knowing there are doses of antivenom chilling securely in a new refrigerator in the village’s community centre, powered by solar.
Residents of Stung Treng province’s Preah Romkil commune are reluctant to express their concerns over Laos’s Don Sahong hydropower dam since it was endorsed last month by Prime Minister Hun Sen, despite the impacts of the dam already being keenly felt, activists and researchers said yesterday.
Hun Sen last month announced his support of the controversial project, expressing hope that Lao would sell electricity to Cambodia at a low price, but activist Chum Hout said yesterday that since the endorsement, community members are fearful of lodging complaints. “We appeal to Samdech [Hun Sen] to stop supporting this project . . . Fishing has seriously fallen,” Hout said.
