Page 2 of 2 Laos power plant misses jumbo payout
By Beaumont Smith
The WCS now runs an elephant conservation program in Laos' southern provinces,
where large-scale logging, dams and mining projects threaten some of the
globe's last remaining wild tropical places. They are carefully monitoring
human-elephant conflicts, as dams inundate mineral licks, food sources and
well-worn tracks for elephants.
Muted protests
A consortium of donor and government agencies, including the Lao Journalists
Association and conservation groups, are planning to use the upcoming Southeast
Asian Games, where the mascots will be two cutely named cartoon elephants,
Champi and Champa, as an opportunity to highlight the country's disappearing
wildlife.
But the focus will be on prevention of poaching and changing
tastes for wild foods. The push for land conversion for economic development,
such as required for the lignite mine, is beyond criticism. The government does
not countenance opposition to national policies, and villagers have reported in
the past armed troops supporting government officials to negotiate certain
contentious land concessions.
Another lignite mine and power generation plant operated by EGAT in Mae Moh,
near Lampang in northern Thailand, attracted sustained local and international
criticism that prompted investigations by Thailand's Ministry of Natural
Resource and Environment. Air monitoring found excessive levels of sulfur
dioxide, which had caused significant health problems in the surrounding
community.
It has been estimated that the Mae Moh power plant has annually contributed
about 4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emission into the atmosphere,
representing one of the biggest regional contributors to climate change. As a
result, a complex and expensive set of engineering and technical controls,
including meteorological warnings, now govern the running of the controversial
plant. Those controls included the installation of electrostatic precipitators
and forced oxidation flues to remove excessive sulfur from the plant's
emissions.
Despite the government-initiated controls, a Greenpeace study in 2002 showed
how the Mae Moh Power Plant produces 4.4 million tonnes of fly ash along with
39 tonnes of the neurotoxin mercury annually. The samples of fly ash tested
contained three times more arsenic and 14 times more mercury than is found in
normal soil. Fly ash can be used in construction and sequestered inside cement,
but a lignite mine on the scale proposed for Hongsa would produce more than is
possible to capture, experts say.
The major difference between Mae Moh and the proposed lignite project for
Hongsa is that the public was allowed to express its displeasure in more
democratic Thailand. In Laos, public demonstrations are frowned on and people's
fears of government reprisals run deep. This bodes ill for Hongsa, where people
and animals are dependent on locally grown fodder, food crops and ground water.
Environmentalists say that it is likely that the adjacent river Kene, a source
of fish for nearby villages, will suffer contamination from pollutants spewed
out by the plant. Fish are known to take up mercury. Inorganic mercury, present
in a lignite mine's fly ash, can be converted by bugs found in soil and fresh
water into the very poisonous methyl-mercury, a potent neurotoxin affecting
both humans and elephants.
"Elephants may look huge and invulnerable, but they are very sensitive to diet,
stress or change," said Richard Lair, one of the world's leading experts on
Asian elephants, from his home in Lampang. "They can get diarrhea and die just
from social stress. This [mine and power plant] may just kill a lot of the
remaining herds."
Dwindling herds
Elephants are already highly endangered in Laos. For every live birth there are
around 10 deaths, with many perishing due to lack of care or disease. There are
estimated to be only 10 to 14 elephants under 10 years old in the country. If
replacement is not soon achieved by breeding programs - one of ElefantAsia's
goals - the species will soon be extinct in Laos. At the present ratio of
births to deaths, this will happen in perhaps less than 30 years.
Meanwhile, even adult numbers are diminishing in the so-called "land of a
million elephants", as touted in government tourism literature. There are only
480 domesticated elephants left in Laos, about half the number of 10 years ago.
Many have been overused in logging operations and have failed to breed. Now
that the forests are shrinking, there is little for them to do or eat.
The mahout tradition in Sayaboury province is ancient in its spiritual
significance and Buddhist rituals. Images of the Buddha riding an elephant can
be found in many of Sayaboury's temples. Hongsa, in particular, is famous
throughout Southeast Asia for its elephant trapping and taming skills.
Traditional veterinary medicines, such as the use of forest herbs found to be
effective in treating most minor ailments such as lacerations and boils, have
recently been enhanced by modern technology from visiting international
doctors. It is not, then, merely the extinction of a species that is at stake,
but also a complex and still living culture that is making contributions to
modern science.
Rather than reaching an inventive and possibly profitable solution to its
national symbol's future, Laos seems set on following its neighbors into
human-elephant confrontations, where jumbos usually lose. Bounthana, a resident
of the elephant-centered tourist village near Vientiane known as Ban Na, was
until recently on the front lines of the conflict.
He recounted in an interview how "our villagers were hungry after a herd of 30
elephants trampled our gardens. Our people were so angry they wanted to kill
them. We could sell the tusks and toe nails."
Klaus Schwettman, a national ecotourism consultant, came to the rescue with a
United Nations-funded project designed to enable people to not only coexist
with elephants, but also make the jumbos into an asset. Schwettman was alarmed
at the increasing pressure on herds by land conversion to plantation crops and
a rise in poaching. His fears were realized when five elephants were killed in
one month in the middle of this year, in the Lao Ministry of
Defense-administered Phou Khao Kuai protected area in Vientiane province.
Brutally butchered for parts, the elephant's faces had been hacked off.
Another was killed in Phou Phanang, an area in Vientiane province also under
control of the Ministry of Defense. Each loss is a disaster for both the
elephants and villagers of Ban Na, who have recently been making a good living
from elephant tourism.
In Sayaboury, two domesticated elephants allowed to roam in the wild were
recently shot and injured. The bull escaped serious injury, but the pregnant
cow, which had as local tradition dictates been sent to the wilds to mate and
had done so successfully, lost her calf, and most likely her life.
At the same time, despite rapidly dwindling herds and projects that threaten
elephants' livelihoods, the authorities are giving away their remaining jumbos
for diplomatic purposes. The government's recent decision to give as a gift two
four-year-old elephants to North Korea as a gift angered the NGO community.
"These animals are in actual fact priceless - many times more valuable than the
fanciest car," said Duffillot, noting that the sale of endangered species like
elephants is illegal internationally. "So why not rent them for say three years
at $1 million a year as other countries are doing? That is what China charges
for its pandas. Elephants in Lao are as rare as pandas."
The irony is that if the Hongsa lignite mine project were scrapped and
Sayaboury province was made into an internationally recognized center for
elephant breeding, priced at $1 million per elephant per year, the government
would potentially earn more profits than from its controversial energy project,
say eco-tourism advocates.
The mining lease for Banphu's lignite project is for 25 years, which means that
at present low levels of elephant replacement compounded with the likely
environmental damage from the project, the elephants and the project might both
expire at the same time.
Beaumont Smith is a Vientiane-based journalist.
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