Word: nu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...celebration now appears premature. Along the river, signs are emerging that dams will be built, and soon. In March the State Development and Reform Commission published its five-year plan for energy development, which listed the commencement of work on two dams on the Nu as key projects. Equally galling to the anti-dam campaigners is the secrecy that has surrounded the decision. Details of the plans have not been made public, and the environmental assessments ordered by Wen have not been released. Because the Nu is an international river - it flows into Burma on its southward journey...
Public discussion or not, work along the Nu is moving ahead. Xiaoshaba, a riverside village of 120 families just a few miles upstream from the regional capital of Liuku, has been leveled and its residents relocated to higher ground. The project was officially carried out under the national "New Socialist Countryside" program. Villagers were compensated for the loss of fields that will be flooded. Earth movers, laborers and survey teams from the Sinohydro company, a member of the consortium that wants to dam the river, crawl over the site...
...Saige, which along with Xiaoshaba are the two sites mentioned in the develoment and reform commission's five-year plan. While signs say the Saige work is for a transportation project, a surveyor standing on the roadside by the site readily admits they are building a hydropower dam. (The Nu prefecture government and the Yunan provincial government did not respond to requests for comment...
...Beijing-based environmental groups, the loss of the wild Nu is unacceptable. Sheltered by the Gaoligang and Biluo mountain ranges, the Nu valley has fostered diverse human and animal life. More than a third of China?s 56 recognized minority groups live in the area. Many, like the farmer Yu Guifu, are Lisu, a Tibetan-Burmese group with a high percentage of Christians owing to the early 20th century work of British missionary James Fraser. In Nu prefecture the Han people, who are a vast majority nationwide, make up less than 10% of the population...
Just how much a hydropower boom will help is uncertain. The steepness of the hillsides along the Nu mean that much of the valuable farmland abuts the river and will be flooded by dams. The new residences for the Xiaoshaba residents looks more like a middle-income Hong Kong housing estate than a rural Chinese village. But despite the exterior improvements, villagers are upset that they can no longer raise livestock outside their homes. One former resident of the now-demolished village says his family lost valuable cropland and the payment offered by the government is not enough to compensate...