April 25, 2006

Yu Xiaogang, who has won a 2006 Goldman Environmental Prize, led a group of Nu valley farmers on a field trip two years ago to visit the Manwan dam on the Lancang (Mekong) River. The visitors were shocked at the destitution they found.

Yu Xiaogang, founder of the Kunming-based group Green Watershed, has
won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in recognition of his
work on watershed management and the social impacts of dam building in
China.

Yu Xiaogang at Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yunnan (Photo courtesy of Tom Dusenberg/Goldman Environmental Prize)

• See the Goldman Prize site [PDF] for a profile of Yu Xiaogang, photos and video.
• See an account
  of an eye-opening field trip Mr. Yu led two years ago when he took a
  group of Nu valley residents to visit the Manwan dam on the Lancang
  (Mekong) River, to see how people resettled a decade earlier for that
  project were faring. The Nu valley visitors, themselves facing possible
  resettlement due to dam development on their own river, were shocked at
  the destitution they found.
• See our fact box,
  with background information on the plans to dam the Nu, one of only two
  major rivers in China that remain unfragmented by dams.