A Hollow Victory?

In a rare and high profile victory for China's environmental movement, controversial plans to build a huge dam at Tiger Leaping Gorge on the upper reaches of the Yangtze river have been scrapped. The dam would have drowned one of the country's most renowned tourist areas and forced the relocation of 100,000 residents in the southwestern province of Yunnan.

But it is unlikely that hydropower construction will come to a halt in what remains a remote and energy-poor region. Officials have turned their attention to sites further upstream and are proceeding with several other giant dams. The government says its hydropower plans for the upper reaches of the Yangtze are designed to counteract some of the worst consequences of industrialisation that have left filth and debris floating in the lower and middle reaches. The damming of the Jinsha, or upper reaches, they admit, is one way of cutting off the silt that surges down the Yangtze, threatening to incapacitate the politically important Three Gorges Dam project and cripple local shipping routes.

After years of rampant hydropower construction, activists hope that the age of big dams is coming to an end. But despite recent coverage of the potential catastrophes that surround China's biggest and most notorious dam at the Three Gorges, the government has fought back hard on the issue of hydropower. While admitting that riverbanks have collapsed, that biodiversity has dwindled and that many displaced communities have failed to thrive, the government has said that the benefits of construction still far outweigh the risks. It has also pressed on with the launch of the country's second largest hydropower plant, known as the Xiluodu, also on the Jinsha river.

Source: http://www.futurefuelsme.com/news/2008/news_08_005.html#