China’s Last Natural River Faces Threat from Hydropower Company

The Nu River, located in a remote pocket of southwestern China near the Myanmar border, is facing the threat of being turned into a giant dam by a state-owned hydropower company, according to an article by The Christian Science Monitor (CSM).

Officials say that the Nu, the last natural river in the country, is the solution to the country’s growing demands for electricity.

Environmentalists and activists are hopeful, however, that the Chinese government will have a change of heart. According to them, the current government is more respectful of the environment, the CSM reported.

“It is clear this government has more environmental caution,” said Ma Jun, an ecology warrior from Beijing. “It is paying more attention to environmental protection,” with efforts to curb carbon emissions and air pollution as evidence.

The Nu, a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site, is China’s remaining undamned river that flows through Yunnan Province. The region as a whole has been described by the United Nations as an area of “rich biodiversity in China and maybe the most biologically diverse temperate region on earth.”

Animals such as the rare red panda and the white-speckled laughingthrush have been sighted in the region.

Its huge energy potential, however, has made it hot among the eyes of numerous hydropower companies for the past several years. Initial plans to build 13 dams in the Nu have already been shut down by the government back in 2004.

Huadian, the state-owned hydropower giant, as well as the Chinese government, have yet to confirm with the law-required environmental impact assessment. Should the project continue, environmentalists fear the destruction of the river ecology.

“It will not be good for us,” said Xiong Xiangnan, a local farmer who makes a living on the side by selling fish he caught from the river. “Dams will pollute the river and hurt the fish.”

By building a dam, Xiong and many others like him “will lose our farmland and our terraces.”

Local farms aren’t the only ones that will benefit should the dams be canceled. Even farmers from as far as Myanmar and Thailand, who rely on the Salween, will be benefited.