(July 6, 2012) Experts fear a proposed dam cascade slated for the Jinsha River, a tributary of the upper Yangtze River, could spell disaster. Reports on dam construction in western China’s seismic hazard zones and the risks of over-damming, released by Probe International earlier this year, are highlighted.
(April 19, 2012) Around 20,000 residents from the vicinity of China’s massive Three Gorges Dam face relocation because their homes are at risk from “constant landslides.” Patricia Adams, editor of online news portal Three Gorges Probe, writes: “Twenty years later, the critics have been proven right on all counts.”
(April 17, 2012) Twenty years ago this month, China’s epic Three Gorges Dam received construction approval from the Chinese government, with the blessing of a Canadian government report: both governments stood to benefit from the ill-conceived state vanity project at great cost to many. Probe International’s Patricia Adams looks back at how the symbol of China’s ‘rise’ has become an omen of all that is wrong with China and why a country like Canada would inflict such risks on citizens elsewhere.
(April 12, 2012) Patricia Adams discusses a new report commissioned by Probe International in today’s Huffington Post Canada.
(December 8, 2011) The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada held an online conversation on the question: is there a “best way” for Canada to promote human rights in Asia? Patricia Adams of Probe International says that there is: by “getting its own house in order and ensuring that Canada does not aid and abet abuses abroad.”
(November 21, 2011) In this instalment of Weibo Watch: the media investigates cadmium-contaminated rice, technological bird kills, and rivers polluted with heavy metals or choked with weeds; netizens catch online vendors selling protected species; and professors kneel in protest against steel factories, setting off a heated debate.
(November 17, 2011) The Yarlung Zangbo, or Brahmaputra, is a major international river passing through China, India and Bangladesh. Yet the countries share very little information on the river’s flow, or on their plans to build dams on it. chinadialogue reports on a workshop that brought together scientists and journalists from across the borders, and discusses the real risks of huge dams on the river.
(October 22, 2011) The recent suspension of the Myitsone dam in Myanmar shows just how unpopular China’s international dam-builders are becoming. In recent years, China has built a spate of new hydropower projects on rivers outside its borders, without much concern for their ecological and economic impacts downstream. Myitsone is a sign of growing resistance to these projects.
(October 19, 2011) Independent documentary film plays a particularly critical role in a country lacking freedom of speech. Because the Chinese government is hiding the damage done to China’s environment by two decades of economic growth, citizens are taking up the job using film to expose the trade-offs between the environment and the economy, and the effect this is having on Chinese citizens and society at large.
(October 18, 2011) From next year on, water quality will become a form of criteria used to evaluate the performance of local officials in Xichuan county of central China’s Henan province. The whole range of ecological indices to be adopted for official evaluation include the quality of water entering Xichuan, the establishment of tree plantations, the control of soil erosion and treatment of garbage and waste water, as well as the number of polluting enterprises that have been shut down.
In China, hydroelectric output dropped by 20% from a year earlier. Authorities are now warning of winter power shortages in hydropower-rich southern and central regions due to low water storage, leading to questions about the reliability of China’s hydropower assets.
Myanmar’s announced cancellation of the Myitsone dam on the Irrawaddy River has brought long-standing tensions with China into the open – including setting off conflicts with the Kachin Independence Organization in the north of the country. “It may be that the Myanmar government sees Chinese investment, in particular the Myitsone dam, as a destabilising force,” said Patricia Adams.
(October 8, 2011) The Burmese president announced that the controversial Chinese-financed Myitsone dam on the Irrawaddy River would be suspended. Now the Chinese government is threatening legal action if the rights and interests of its state enterprises aren’t protected.
Three years after the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake, geologist Yang Yong investigates the proliferation of hastily approved mining and industry projects putting the area at risk of further geological disasters.
Patricia Adams of Probe International says worse things are happening to China’s air than increased CO2 emissions: “Nitrogen oxides and mercury are also emitted when hydrocarbons are burned and those emissions are truly troubling.”
Probe International 