Thai activist links new Mekong mega-dam to Myanmar mining pollution crisis, demands ‘no-go zones’

Mizzima

Rivers and Rights executive director Pianporn Deetes called on regional governments to declare “no-go zones” for mining and dam construction along the Mekong River and its tributaries, telling a Chiang Mai University conference on 15 August that a newly agreed hydropower project on the Myanmar-Laos border compounds a mining pollution crisis already poisoning rivers flowing into Thailand.

The call follows a Thailand-Myanmar Terms of Reference signed on 7 August, witnessed by Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul and Myanmar junta leader Gen. Min Aung Hlaing during the latter’s visit to Bangkok.

The agreement sets up a joint working group on water quality for the Sai and Kok rivers, contaminated by runoff from unregulated mining in Myanmar’s Shan State, and is set to run for three years. Critics, including a regional coalition of civil society groups and members of the Thai Senate, have said the pact contains no clear measures to regulate mining, identify polluters or compensate affected communities, and that a confidentiality clause restricts public access to the water-monitoring data it collects.

Beyond the pollution dispute, Myanmar and Laos agreed on 4 July to a joint feasibility study for a 2,790-megawatt hydropower project straddling the Mekong’s mainstream border, signed during a state visit by Min Aung Hlaing to Vientiane. If completed, it would be the largest dam ever built on the river’s mainstream outside China, and the first to span the territory of two countries.

The rare earth mining fueling much of the regional tension is concentrated in Kachin State, which supplies roughly half the world’s heavy rare earths used in electric vehicles and wind turbines, and where governance has shifted from a military-aligned militia to the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), an ethnic armed group based in northern Myanmar.

Demand for the minerals is intensifying despite the pollution concerns: India’s ambassador to Myanmar, Abhay Thakur, said in July that bilateral cooperation on rare earths had “gained significant momentum,” as New Delhi seeks alternatives to China’s dominance of the global supply chain.