China's ideas for Himalayan super dam stoke fears found in India
11 April, 2021
China is planning for a mega dam found in Tibet able to make triple the electricity generated by the 3 Gorges - the world's greatest electricity station - stoking fears among environmentalists and in neighbouring India.
The structure will span the Brahmaputra River prior to the waterway leaves the Himalayas and flows into India, straddling the world's longest and deepest canyon at an altitude greater than 1,500m.
The project in Tibet's Medog County is likely to dwarf the record-breaking Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in central China, and is billed as in a position to produce 300 billion kilowatts of electricity every year.
It is mentioned in China's strategic 14th Five-Year Plan, unveiled in March at an annual rubber-stamp congress of the country's top lawmakers.
But the strategy was short on specifics, a timeframe or spending plan.
The river, referred to as the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibetan, can be home to two different projects far upstream, while six others are in the offing or under construction.
The "super-dam" even so is in a league of its.
Previous October, the Tibet municipality signed a "strategic cooperation agreement" with PowerChina, a open public construction company specialising on hydroelectric projects.
A month later the head of PowerChina, Yan Zhiyong, partially unveiled the project to the Communist Youth Group, the youth wing of China's ruling party.
Thinking about "the world's richest region regarding hydroelectric resources", Yan explained that the dam would draw its power from the enormous drop of the river as of this particular section.
"REALLY BAD IDEA"
Beijing might justify the massive project as an environmentally-friendly option to fossil fuels, nonetheless it hazards provoking strong opposition from environmentalists in the same way as the Three Gorges Dam, built between 1994 and 2012.
The Three Gorges created a reservoir and displaced 1.4 million inhabitants upstream.
"Building a dam how big is the super-dam is probable an extremely bad idea for many reasons," said Brian Eyler, strength, water and sustainability program director at the Stimson Center, a US think tank.
Besides appearing known for seismic activity, the region also contains a distinctive biodiversity. The dam would block the migration of fish and sediment move that enriches the soil during seasonal floods downstream, said Eyler.
There are both ecological and political risks, noted Tempa Gyaltsen Zamlha, an environmental policy consultant at the Tibet Policy Institute, a think tank linked to the Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharamshala, India.
"We have a very rich Tibetan cultural heritage on those areas, and any dam development would reason ecological destruction, submergence of parts of that place," he told AFP.
"Many local residents would be forced to keep their ancestral homes," he explained, adding that the project will inspire migration of Han Chinese personnel that "gradually turns into a permanent settlement".
"WATER WARS"
New Delhi can be worried by the project.
The Chinese Communist Get together is effectively able to control the origins of a lot of South Asia's water source, analysts say.
"Water wars certainly are a key element of such warfare because they let China to leverage its upstream Tibet-centred ability over the virtually all essential natural learning resource," wrote political scientist Brahma Chellaney last month in the changing times of India.
The risks of seismic activity would also help to make it a "ticking water bomb" for residents downstream, he warned.
In reaction to the dam idea, the Indian government has floated the chance of creating another dam in the Brahmaputra to shore up its water reserves.
"There is still much time to negotiate with China about the continuing future of the super-dam and its own impacts," said Eyler.
"A poor result would see India create a dam downstream."
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