“Environmental effects of Chinese projects in Myanmar”, 15 April 2020

The Chinese “project of the century” — the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)… is causing major environmental deterioration in Myanmar. The BRI has profound consequences, involving soil contamination and erosion, air pollution, water pollution, habitat and wildlife loss. Some projects have been stalled due to local opposition, however it won’t be for long before China resumes these projects. Local activists in few instances have also been arrested and suppressed by the central government of Myanmar…

The construction of a huge hydroelectric dam at Myitsone, Myanmar, by a state-owned Chinese company began in 2009…

A report by China Power Investment Corporation (covering 80% of the project cost) highlighted the possibilities of the disruption of river flow, disappearance of a migratory fish species and flooding of 26,238 hectares of rainforests. They did not plan to make the report public, however, against their will a copy of it got leaked to environmentalists and opponents of the dam, thereby stirring protests in 2011…

In a successful win for civil society groups, the Myanmar government suspended the project in September 2011… Aung San Suu Kyi since becoming the defacto government in 2015 has spoken in favour of the project reversing her previous stance of opposing the dam when she was in the opposition party.

Chinese company, Wanbao Mining Copper Ltd in 2011 formed a partnership with Myanmar’s military associated Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited to take control of the operations of Leptadaung copper mine.

However, the expansion of the mine involved the unlawful confiscation of thousands of acres of farmers’ land. Provisions were made to compensate the farmers in part with 1,900 acres of vacant land from nearby villages, howbeit the new plots of land handed to them were infertile and located far from their villages.

The local residents staged protests in 2011 but it was met with police brutality…

Amid these protests the project was eventually suspended and an investigation committee was led by the then opposition leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The report acknowledged the non-conduct of environment and social assessment, nevertheless advised to continue the project on economic grounds…

Kyaukpyu a coastal town along the Bay of Bengal in Myanmar is valuable to China for strategic and economic reasons. This town is the terminal point of China’s $1.5 billion oil pipeline and a parallel natural gas pipeline running till the China’s Yunnan province.

China National Petroleum Corporation and Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, state owned firms constructed these pipelines between 2010 and 2015…

Furthermore, in 2018 China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC) leading a consortium of six companies struck a framework agreement with Myanmar on building the Kyaukpyu Special Economic Zone (SEZ). In the same year, Myanmar signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with China to establish the China Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC)… Another crucial concern to the activists was the human rights violations caused during project implementation such as forced relocation of more than 20,000 Rakhine residents…

… A study ‘Greening the Belt and Road Initiative’ by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) revealed that the BRI corridor will affect around 265 threatened species, 1,739 important bird areas and 46 biodiversity hotspots. Hydropower projects backed by China along the Mekong river running through Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam is said to highly disrupt the river flow and create a loss of about one million tons of fish every year. Deforestation in areas such as the Pan Borneo Highway that traverses Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei will make it susceptible to landslides, floods, and other disaster related concerns.

… the governments despite their quest for investment must take decisions keeping social and environmental impacts in mind before it gets too late to act.