By Kalyan Barooah
This was revealed by Michael Buckley, a Canada-based writer and photographer, who researched on the dams across the Tibetan Autonomous Region and made a film Meltdown in Tibet. Buckley, who has travelled extensively in TAR, screened his award winning film at Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia here on Friday.
However, Buckley was sceptical about the Chinese claim on diversion of Brahmaputra river, describing it as confusing, because Dam is already half way across the river.
Zangmu Dam, is an under construction large dam, on the mid-reaches of the Tsangpo located in a gorge about140 km southeast of Lhasa, at an altitude of 3,260 metres. Zangmu Dam is expected to generate 540 MW of electricity.
Its height is estimated at 116 metres and length 390 metres. Zangmu is the first dam in a series of five planned for the same region, in Shannan Prefecture. The five dams are Zangmu, Gyatsa, Zhongda, Jiexu and Langzhen.
As reported, China has said that it has always taken a responsible attitude towards trans-border rivers.
Foreign Minister of China has clarified that the construction at Zangmu, on the main Yarlung Zangpo (Brahmaputra) river, is that of a small power project, which would not store or regulate the volume of water, and therefore, would not have an adverse impact on the downstream areas, Minister of State for External Affairs Preneet Kaur had said in a Rajya Sabha reply.
On Friday Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao had told a seminar at Observer Research Foundation (ORF) that India is alert to reports of China damming trans-border rivers and sought assurances from China that it will take no action to negatively impact flow of the rivers into India.
“China has assured us that the projects on Brahmaputra are on the run-of-the-river projects and are not meant for storing or diverting water. We look forward to working closely with China in the critical area of environmental and livelihood security,” she said.
But Buckley doubts China’s words, pointing out that Beijing is planning mother of all dams the 38,000 MW Motuo Dam on Tsangpo. For one, the dam is located in Metog region and sits right in an earthquake-prone zone.
Plans are for a massive dam at the Great Bend of the Tsangpo identified as Motuo, with a staggering capacity of 38,000 MW, roughly double the capacity of the Three Gorges Dam.
Blocking the Yarlung Tsangpo could devastate the fragile eco-system of the Tibetan plateau, and would withhold the river’s sediments to the fertile floodplains of Assam and Bangladesh, he quoted experts as having observed.
Buckley said construction of these dams on rivers flowing into India and then on to Bangladesh would automatically lead to diversion of water and hit the two lower riparian countries.
Fortunately though, the Chinese engineers have postponed the Motuo Dam Project, still on the drawing stage because of incessant rains in the area. They were not able to build a dam because of rains, said Buckley.
Buckley’s 40-minute film shot on breath-taking locations in Tibet, has shots of under construction dams using his small camcorder. He travelled to the region as a tourist hiding his identity. He travelled to remote locations tracing the tightly guarded construction activities by road and also kayaking on fast flowing rivers in and around the dam sites.
China is building dams like there’s no tomorrow. Over 23,000 large dams are under operation in China today. There are at least 11,000 more large dams in South Asia, including over 4,500 large dams in India. That brings the total of large dams in China and South Asia to over 34,000, which roughly translate into 70 per cent of the world’s large dams.
Both China and India are forging ahead with building of large dams. Both nations appear to be oblivious of the climate change threat—neither is adopting a more cautious approach to dam building in the Himalayan region. It does not make sense to build scores of large dams in a stark future, where there may be no flow of water due to major rivers drying up, Buckley observed.
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