Featured Image Credit: Li Lin/China News Service/VCG/Fei Yang/Getty Images
A human rights group has raised the alarm as the world’s biggest mega project costing $137,000,000,000 is approved.
It’s the most expensive building project on the planet and it looks like it is officially happening.
The enormous dam will be three times the size as the current world’s biggest, which is the Three Gorges Dam in China.
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However, it will pale in comparison to the one due to be built on the Yarlung Tsangpo River, which is also in China.
The new dam will coast a whopping $137 billion, and the Chinese state media have described it as ‘a safe project that prioritizes ecological protection’.
However, there are concerns about just what the environmental and cultural effects of the dam will be.
Human rights groups have spoken out to warn about the potential consequences, which could include the displacement of local communities.
Researchers in China have also raised the alarm that excavation in the area, which will be required for the project, could increase the frequency of landslides.
The construction will need extensive excavation as reports say that the team will build at least four 12-mile-long tunnels through a mountain to divert the river.
While Chinese authorities have assured those worried about the plans that there won’t have any major environmental impact, the building of the Three Gorges Dam resulted in 1.4 million people being forced to move.
And experts fear that this new dam could mean the uprooting of Tibetan communities in the area.
The river actually starts in the glaciers located in western Tibet before it drops down a huge 25,154 feet, flowing into India and Bangladesh.
Once constructed, the structure will be the biggest hydropower dam in the world, with the waterfall offering a big potential for generating power.
In a 2020 report that was published by Australian think tank, the Lowy Institute, having ‘control over these rivers (in the Tibetan Plateau) effectively gives China a chokehold on India's economy’.
China’s foreign ministry also claimed in the same year that China has a ‘legitimate right’ to build a dam in the river.
But this hasn’t eased concerns for many, as some fear the earthquake-prone region could lead to devastating effects.
In 2022, a senior engineer from Sichuan provincial geological bureau said: “Earthquake-induced landslides and mud-rock flows are often uncontrollable and will also pose a huge threat to the project.”
Time will tell if the project begins construction.
