(January 16, 2008) A review of World Bank loans to India’s health sector by the Bank’s own internal watchdog, indicates fraud and corruption put lives at risk, enriching contractors in the process. Worse still, says WSJ, the bank repeatedly looked the other way.
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China Southern Power Grid Company turns to Three Gorges and Hong Kong amid coal shortage
(January 16, 2008) China Southern Power Grid, owner and operator of power distribution networks in the country’s southern provinces, will seek to buy more power from the Three Gorges dam and Hong Kong to plug a supply gap caused by the worst coal shortage in the southwestern region in five years, SCMP reported.
Clearly Odious
(January 16, 2008) Reporting on Indonesia’s ex-president Suharto’s death watch, Canada’s National Post writer, Peter Goodspeed, paints a clear picture of how the people of Indonesia became saddled with a legacy of odious debts.
Scholars chart new legal course
(January 16, 2008) The principles of the odious debt doctrine exploded into the modern debt debate following the U.S. led invasion of Iraq, capturing the attention of legal scholars and exciting new thought on the history, the foundation, and the future application of the doctrine.
Folsom quits
(January 16, 2008) The World Bank’s chief anti-corruption investigator calls it a day: pressure to leave over allegations her appointment due to Republican party connections.
Development schemes displace Laotian farmers: Canadian study
(January 15, 2008) The Lao government’s ambition to become one of Southeast Asia’s biggest exporters of hydropower and wood chips is hurting the country’s small farmers and driving young people to neighbouring Thailand in search of better prospects, a recent Canadian-led study has found.
Made by China: Damming the world’s rivers
(January 15, 2008) In the past decade, companies and banks in China have greatly expanded their involvement in building and financing dams overseas. The cumulative social and environmental impacts of these projects is huge. This map shows just some of the proposed and ongoing dams that Chinese financiers and companies are involved in.
[Channel 4 News] China’s Three Gorges Dam Project
(January 14, 2008) “The project could lead to catastrophe.” Not the words of a dissident environmentalist, but the official Chinese news agency in a story about the Three Gorges Dam. Lindsey Hilsum in this report for Channel 4 News (UK) looks at the concerns expressed by Chinese government scientists over problems associated with the giant dam.
Up the Yangtze
Straight from the Sundance Film Festival to a Canadian cinema near you.
Thai, Chinese power companies to build US$5 billion coal plant in Cambodia
(January 11, 2008) Thai and Chinese power companies have joined with Thailand’s biggest construction company, SET-listed Ital-Thai Development, to develop a $5 billion coal-fired power plant in western Cambodia, Bangkok Post reports.
China bows to public over chemical plant
(January 9, 2008) In an unprecedented move, the Chinese government appears to have bowed to public pressure to relocate a controversial chemical plant, reports Nature.
Drowning the Tiger Leaping Gorge
(January 8, 2008) Even in the biting cold, thousands of tourists still take the treacherous daily journey through the mountains from Lijiang to see the Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of China’s most renowned attractions. However, the entire site could vanish within a few years.
China’s audit authority finds US$816 mln in misused social security funds
(January 8, 2008) China’s National Audit Office (CNAO) discovered 7.1 billion yuan (816 million US dollars) in illegally used social security funds in 2006, said Auditor-General Li Jinhua on Monday.
Yangtze Power “profits” unhinged from Three Gorges’ spiraling environmental costs
(January 8, 2008) China’s Yangtze Power Company posted a 47 percent rise in “profit” last year, though critics, including Probe International, argue these profits would vanish if the company were forced to pay its share of the project’s rising environmental costs.
PI Policy: The problem with environmental impact assessments
(January 6, 2008) Environmental impact assessments (EIAs) are now standard practice for dam builders. Probe International’s Grainne Ryder and Patricia Adams explain how this seemingly positive development actually undermines citizen rights and harms the environment.
Patricia Adams
Dai Qing
Fan Xiao
Lawrence Solomon
Mu Lan
Probe International
Lisa Peryman
Probe Media
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Probe International 