Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi told China’s premier on Thursday that her new government is willing to look for a resolution that suits both countries to a suspended Chinese-funded hydropower project in northern Myanmar, a senior Chinese diplomat said.
Finding a solution to the US$3.6 billion Myitsone dam project is important for Suu Kyi who needs China’s cooperation in talks with Myanmar’s ethnic minority armed groups operating along northern borders with China.
Vietnamese scientists have warned of the unusual increase in the depth of two major rivers in the Mekong Delta, with sand mining and hydropower dams said to be the cause.
According to experts, instead of being accreted, the 250-kilometer long Tien (Front) River and 200-kilometer Hau (Back) River have become five to seven meters deeper since 2008.
The Mekong separates in Phnom Penh into the Tien River, the main northern branch, and the Hau River, the primary southern distributor, after entering Vietnam.
China’s best preserved forests in south-west China’s Yunnan province are under threat from illegal mining, according to a new report.
The study by Greenpeace shows mining and industry activity in the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan protected area is destroying pristine forests in one of the world’s most biodiverse regions. The researchers combined remote sensing data and field visits to show mining is leading to deforestation, water pollution and habitat loss in the mountains of north-west Yunnan on the eastern foothills of the Himalayas.
President Htin Kyaw on Friday formed a new commission to evaluate all proposed hydropower projects on the Irrawaddy River prior to their going ahead.
The committee formation comes a week before State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi’s trip to China as Burma’s foreign minister.
Since the installation of the National League for Democracy (NLD) government in April, China has been lobbying for the resumption of the multi-billion dollar Myitsone Dam, which was being constructed with Chinese backing just downriver of the confluence that forms the Irrawaddy, in Kachin State, prior to a government suspension order in 2011.
The Chinese will certainly lobby on the suspended Myitsone dam project during State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi’s visit to China, Kyaw Zeya, director-general of the Foreign Affairs Department under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told a press conference.
Officials from the ministry, the Electric Power and Energy Ministry and the Border Affairs Ministry held a press conference on their undertaking in their first 100-day plans under the new government at the Information Ministry in Nay Pyi Taw.
Development of the second stage of the country’s first economic zone will begin with infrastructure including roads, electricity and water, said U Myint Zaw, general manager of Myanmar Japan Thilawa Development Limited.
“We will implement Zone B in phases. Once one phase is complete, we will start on the next one,” he said.
Meanwhile the smaller Zone A is around 90 percent complete, with US$760 million in foreign investment committed to the project across 400 hectares of land. The project is located to the south of Yangon.
Myanmar’s new government has announced ground-breaking reforms to its $31bn (£23.7bn) jade industry in a move campaigners claim could signal “a new era of fundamental change” in a business long dominated by abuse, corruption and cronyism.
The decision to freeze any renewals of existing jade permits, and to suspend the licensing of new ones, follows a series of deadly landslides in resource-rich Kachin state, widespread protests against lack of regulations, and extensive NGO and media reports exposing social and environmental abuses in Myanmar’s jade trade.
Mekong Partnership for the Environment Key stakeholders related to EIA in Cambodia provided feedback on Cambodia’s draft national guidelines on public participation in the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process during the country’s first national public consultation workshop on 19 July 2016 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, organized by the Ministry of Environment with the Vishnu Law […]
The government is planning on reviewing the status of dams throughout the country to see if they are worth keeping. U Htun Win, deputy minister for agriculture, livestock and irrigation, told parliament on August 2 that the review would take into account the efficiency, cost-effectiveness and long-term benefit of the dams.
A shift in policy, away from building dams and toward running irrigation channels to farmland, has already led to a 50 percent cut in the request for irrigation funding next year. The ministry’s assistant secretary, U Myo Tint Tun, told The Myanmar Times on July 18 that expenditure in 2017-18 would be less than half of this year’s level, falling from K253 billion (US$216 million) to K120 billion. The funds would be used primarily to provide irrigation drainage to existing dams that lacked it.
Villagers living along a canal in Svay Rieng province’s Bavet town say its water has been polluted by untreated discharge from the nearby Manhattan Special Economic Zone (SEZ), rendering it unusable.
Three communes live along the Tapov canal – Bati, Prasat and Bavet – with villagers from the first two saying that they have complained about the pollution since 2015 and that the quality of the water has continued to decline and the smell is unbearable.
