The authorities chinas They continue with their plans build a series of huge hydroelectric dams in a Himalayan gorge three times deeper than the Grand Canyon, despite concerns expressed by Tibetan human rights groups and New Delhi.
Beijing has approved plans to build a dam in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo River, which flows from Tibet to India and Bangladeshas reported on Wednesday by the state news agency Xinhua.
The project would be a “big step in the country’s transition to green, low-carbon energy,” he said. Xinhuaadding that “it would bring a sense of gain, happiness and security to the population of all ethnic groups in Tibet.”
Xinhua He did not say where the dam would be built, when construction would begin, or the size of the approved project. Nor did he give any indication of How builders plan to solve the serious engineering problems of damming the world’s highest river as it passes through the largest land canyon on Earthwhich in some points reaches 17,000 feet (5,100 meters) deep.
Beijing has long considered the mighty river, which plunges nearly 5,400 meters deep through 500 kilometers of steep gorges, to be a major untapped source of renewable energy. The project was included in the Chinese Communist Party’s latest five-year economic development plan, published in 2021.
According to an estimate by the Chongyi Water Resources Bureau, the potential hydropower output is three times that of the Three Gorges Dam. The total cost of the project could reach one trillion yuan ($127 billion).
The project is one of many being carried out on the Tibetan Plateau proposed by Chinese policymakers, who are seeking new sources of energy upstream, beyond the already heavily dammed lower reaches of the Yangtze.
If construction goes ahead, threatens to rekindle border dispute with Indiawhich has only been softened recently. In India, the Yarlung Tsangpo is known as the Brahmaputra and runs through the state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as its own territory.
Responding to Indian concerns in 2020, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated that it has a “legitimate right” to dam the river and that it has fully taken into account the downstream repercussions.
China and India had been locked in a border dispute for four years that was not resolved until October, just before a meeting between the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modiand the Chinese president, Xi Jinpingwith an agreement on patrolling the disputed border regions.
According to Amit Ranjan, a researcher at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, the melt has yet to lead to practical agreements on the sharing of hydrological data, crucial to avoid tensions over new hydropower projects.
“There is a new bonhomie between India and China, and when there are good ties they can resolve these issues promptly,” Ranjan said. But he added that a previous agreement to share data on water levels, discharges and rainfall expired in 2023 and its renewal has not been announced.
Human rights groups have also warned that these dams will drastically alter the natural landscape of Tibet.will damage fragile local ecosystems and displace local communities.
In February this year, Tibetan communities staged rare protests in Kamtok, a remote mountainous region on the border between Tibet and Sichuan province, against a dam that human rights groups say would flood six Buddhist monasteriessome of which house wall paintings dating back to at least the 16th century.
“For the first time, dam construction in China is affecting landscapes that were previously among the least disturbed habitats on Earth,” Tibet Watch, a London-based nonprofit, wrote in a report in May.
Chinese researchers are also concerned that such extensive excavation and construction in the steep, narrow Yarlung Tsangpo Gorge would increase the frequency of landslides in an area prone to earthquakes.
Even if the dam itself is built to withstand seismic activity, “landslides and flows of mud and rock caused by earthquakes are often uncontrollable and will also pose a huge threat to the project,” a chief engineer at the dam warned in 2022. Geological Office of Sichuan Province.
Pei-Lin Wu in Taipei contributed to this report.
© 2024, The Washington Post.
