Lao minister says “trust us” on Mekong dam

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View Original Source:  http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFL3E7G53BM20110505?sp=true

Thu May 5, 2011 2:28pm GMT

HANOI May 5 (Reuters) – Communist Laos called on Thursday for trust on a controversial dam across the lower Mekong river that has sparked strong opposition from its neighbours and environmental groups.

In a rare direct comment from the secretive country, Khempheng Pholsena, chairwoman of the Laos National Mekong Committee and a government minister, said the Xayaburi Dam would be “socially and environmentally sustainable”.

“Trust Laos,” she told reporters in Hanoi on the sidelines of an annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank.

“We take the concern seriously. Please give us time,” she added.   Plans for the dam have put Laos on a collision course with its neighbours and environmentalists who fear livelihoods, fish species and farmland could be destroyed, potentially sparking a food crisis.

Last month the four countries that share the lower stretches of the 4,900 km (3,044 mile) Mekong — Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam — failed at a meeting to reach agreement on construction of the 1.285-megawatt (MW) dam, the first of 11 planned in the lower Mekong that are expected to generate 8 percent of Southeast Asia’s power by 2025.

Vietnam, which has long been the closest ally Laos has, last month asked it to delay the $3.5 million project by 10 years.

The Lao government has hailed Xayaburi as a model for clean, green energy that will stimulate its tiny $6 billion economy and improve the lives of its 5.9 million people, over a quarter of whom live below the poverty line, many without electricity.

Its energy-hungry neighbour, Thailand, will buy about 95 percent of the power generated by the dam and three Thai firms have a stake in the project, according to an announcement on Thailand’s stock exchange last month.

Pholsena said Laos had faced opposition to another dam project, the Nam Theun hydropower plant, but had laid concerns to rest, and would do the same again.

Laos needed to be “strong and stand on its own feet”, she said. (Reporting by Tran Le Thuy; Editing by John Ruwitch and Robert Birsel)

© Thomson Reuters 2011 All rights reserved

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An investigation by the Bangkok Post Sunday which visited the area surrounding the Xayaburi dam on the Lower Mekong River last week found major road works under construction and villagers preparing to be relocated.  Several of the villagers said they were to receive as little as US$15 (450 baht) in compensation for moving from the area.  Trucks and backhoes bearing the name of Ch Karnchang, the Thai company jointly involved in the $3.5 billion project with the Lao government, were seen clearing and grading roads.  More

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Ch Karnchang sees way clear for Xayaburi dam

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Hydropower on the Mekong: Might not give a dam

but warned that further environmental studies would take longer than Laos was willing to wait. Indeed the patience of the Lao authorities may already have run out. A report in the Bangkok Post includes photos that appear to show that construction at the site is already under way.  More

HOME, SWEET HOME: One family which has been asked to move to make way for the dam.

Laos villages struggle with life after opium

View Original Source:  http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hOBcd8hfOPr_HzTxQuf2pZOK7fVg?docId=CNG.d2df36a436b57b1cbfaa2f6c481280cf.21

By Amelie Bottollier-Depois (AFP)

An Aka ethnic hilltribe woman and her children bathe at a public fountain at Ban Nammat Kao village in northern Laos

HATHYAO, Laos — The poppies that once dotted the fields around the village of Hathyao in mountainous northern Laos have disappeared, replaced by rows of trees prized for their milky white sap.

In the 1990s, opium was the local cash crop. Today it is rubber.

But some other villages in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation are finding it harder to kick the habit, returning to poppy cultivation in a setback to the country’s efforts to stamp out opium production.

“The poppy was a culture adapted to the area, and there was an important market,” said Dominique Van der Borght, a local representative with the charity Oxfam Belgium.

“Laos should have defended its right to opium production” at least for the pharmaceutical industry, he said.

Eradication of the poppy fields has had a significant impact on local communities.

“The rich families which made a living from opium left and the social fabric has disappeared,” Van der Borght said.

He believes foreign donors, notably the United States, pushed the Communist government in this direction, but says the majority of the programmes to encourage people to switch from opium to other crops “have been a failure”.

The opium poppy eradication campaign launched in 2002 is trumpeted by the Laotian authorities and the United Nations as a success.

Areas set aside for poppies fell from 27,000 hectares at the peak in 1998 to 1,500 in 2007, according to an estimate from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

“The challenge was for a long time that eradication was achieved quicker than the income replacement,” said Adrian Schuhbeck, a development expert with a German-backed agency in northeastern Louang Namtha province.

While production has certainly plunged, it has been a high price to pay for many villagers who have struggled to adapt.

“There has been a lack of alternative development assistance reaching all farmers in the former opium growing areas,” said Leik Boonwaat, country representative for the UN drug agency.

“That has probably helped persuade farmers to go back to growing opium,” he said.

But “the argument that they are poorer now does not really hold true. They always were poor. But in areas where we have been able to provide alternative assistance, we can see the improvement,” he added.

Despite everything, the UN recognises that poverty and a lack of alternative income, coupled with the high value of the drug and relaxation of controls, have led some communities to return to opium production.

Poppy cultivation areas doubled in size between 2007 and 2010, reaching 3,000 hectares, which is still well below the figure for the 1990s.

Laos accounts for just two percent of global production, while Afghanistan has a share of more than 70 percent and Myanmar over 20 percent.

For some villagers, like the 1,500 ethic minority Hmong of Hathyao, rubber has provided a new way of life.

In the mid-1990s, anticipating the eradication policy, the residents went to China to learn how to plant the trees.

In 2002, after the first trees matured, they started to tap them for latex, used to make natural rubber that is in strong demand by Chinese industry.

“Before 1994, a lot of families grew opium, but a lot of people were addicted. It was not healthy,” said Wasiu, the deputy head of the village, which harvested five tonnes of latex in 2010.

“After we started sending rubber to China, our life was better. We could save money in the bank, have big trucks and motorbikes, send our children to school and build new brick houses,” he added.

Other villagers followed in their footsteps with mass planting of rubber trees, but many have struggled to achieve the same level of success.

Farmers must wait seven years after planting a rubber tree before they can start tapping the precious white sap, during which time the village grows poorer.

Some farmers therefore have been forced to relinquish their land to foreign companies and work as ordinary rubber tappers instead.

There are also “considerable environmental risks” posed by rubber plantations, said Schuhbeck, citing water shortages, soil erosion and the use of pesticides and other chemical products.

In the nearby village of Nam Dy, the effect is already visible.

“Now we have money, but we also have problems with water. The river is very low. It is the impact of growing rubber trees,” said the 60-year-old village chief Tongsi Tangchaosan.

But, unlike some, he added that he has no plan to return to poppy cultivation.

“It is necessary to grow rubber trees because we cannot do anything else,” he said.

Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved

ADB signs $1.38 Bln package for Vietnam water, environment, transport – Fund offers gifts to poor Vietnamese in Laos

View Original Source:  http://www.saigon-gpdaily.com.vn/National/2011/5/92239/

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) signed Thursday a US$1.38 billion financial assistance package to enhance Vietnam’s nationwide clean water access, conserve threatened forests, and ease urban gridlock.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung witnessed the signing in Hanoi between ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda and State Bank of Vietnam Governor Nguyen Van Giau.

Mr. Kuroda is in the Vietnamese capital for the 44th ADB annual meeting that takes place from May 3 to May 6.

AFP - President of Asian Development Bank Haruhiko Kuroda addresses the opening session of the ADB 44th annual meeting in Hanoi on May 5, 2011.

The total cost of the three development projects is almost US$4.5 billion, ADB said.

“ADB’s assistance will help ensure that more people in Vietnam have access to clean water, more livable cities, and biologically diverse forests that will be preserved for future generations,” said Mr. Kuroda.

A US$1 billion financial support facility from ADB will help improve clean water access for three million families in the country’s cities, including half a million poor households who will receive their own piped water connection for the first time. The assistance is part of a larger $2.8 billion investment program, according to the bank.

A US$30 million loan from ADB’s concessional Asian Development Fund will enhance cross-border cooperation in protecting a contiguous stretch of biodiversity-rich forest in the country’s Central Annamites, which spans the highlands of Quang Tri, Thua Thien-Hue and Quang Nam Provinces, the bank said.

This is part of a larger program that is also supporting the preservation of key forestlands in Cambodia and Laos. The assistance package for Vietnam includes about US$8 million to improve clean water and sanitation services and upgrade market roads in the 34 largely ethnic minority communes in the project area.

“Sustainable economic development and environmental preservation are intertwined,” said Mr. Kuroda. “In the long term, coupling conservation and livelihood improvements will help ensure that Vietnam’s forests and their biodiversity are managed well.”

The third component of the assistance is a US$350 million loan, which is the first tranche of an overall $636 million ADB package. This package is supporting a $1.6 billion project to construct a modern expressway to the south of congested Ho Chi Minh City.

With the city’s population expected to swell by more than 50% by 2025, new roads are needed to complement other modes of transportation, including an ADB-supported metro rail system, to ensure the efficient transportation of goods and people, the bank said.

The 57-kilometer expressway between Ben Luc in Long An Province and Long Thanh in Dong Nai Province will reduce traffic in the heart of the mega city by allowing vehicles traveling from east to west to bypass the city center.

When the full expressway opens in 2017, it is expected to reduce east-west travel time by 80% and cut the number of traffic accidents by 10%, according to ADB.

By Khanh Van

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Fund offers gifts to poor Vietnamese in Laos

View original Source:  http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/Domestic-Press-Highlights/210952/Fund-offers-gifts-to-poor-Vietnamese-in-Laos.html

A delegation of the Overseas Vietnamese Community Support Fund during its current visit to Laos presented gifts worth VND800 million (US$40,000) to 1,600 poor Vietnamese living in several Lao provinces including Attapeu, Sekong and Pakse. The fund under the Committee of Overseas Vietnamese of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also presented 100 scholarships each worth $50 to Vietnamese children in Laos who had made outstanding achievements in the 2010-11 school year.

Sai Gon Giai Phong (Liberated Saigon)