Why Thailand should step in to halt the Luang Prabang dam project

Thailand does not need the power from the Lao dam and, to honour its Unesco commitments, can help pull the plug in the Thai developer’s project
As a World Heritage site, Luang Prabang is a cultural asset that belongs to the world and deserves protection, even if its own government won’t

Tom Fawthrop

Published: 4:00am, 15 Jul 2021

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The ancient capital of Luang Prabang, nestled amid the mountains of northern Laos, is one of Unesco’s most impressive and well-preserved World Heritage Sites. But it has not been spared from the dam ambitions of the Lao government, which has approved plans by Thai corporation CH Karnchang to install a hydroelectric dam only 25km upstream from the cultural gem.

This mosaic of Buddhist temples, French colonial villas, artisan craft shop and tree-lined cobblestone alleyways is sandwiched between the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers. Unesco’s mounting concerns about Luang Prabang is on the agenda at the 44th annual conference of Unesco’s World Heritage Committee, to be held in Fuzhou, China from July 16-31.

If this Thai-Lao dam project goes ahead, it would violate the 1995 Unesco agreement with the Lao government to protect, enhance and develop the town of Luang Prabang. Unesco experts warn that a large dam upstream would destroy Luang Prabang’s authenticity by turning the town’s much-cherished natural river-scape into a man-made lakeside. Local fisheries, livelihoods and communities would all suffer.

This is exactly the sort of nightmare scenario that a World Heritage agreement is supposed to prevent.

The government’s prioritisation of building ever more dams has led the communist leadership to default on its legal obligation to defend the nation’s heritage. Under pressure from Unesco, the government belatedly agreed to carry out a heritage impact assessment in March – after preliminary construction had started around the dam site.

Many local people worry about a loss of tourism should the dam be built, but for many more, the greater fear is of what might happen in the case of an earthquake.

The proposed dam in this earthquake-prone region of northern Laos has been dubbed a high-risk project by experts on the Mekong River Commission. An earthquake-induced dam failure would have catastrophic effects on the whole town. The Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy dam collapse in 2018 left widespread devastation. As recently as in 2019, northeastern Laos saw an earthquake hit 6.1 on the Richter scale.

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The Lao government may resist the growing pressure to cancel the dam project, but Thailand could readily pull the plug given that dam developer CH Karnchang is based in Bangkok.

It is counting on funding from Bangkok banks and government approval to buy the electricity. But with its huge energy surplus, Thailand does not need energy generated by the Luang Prabang dam.

Thailand also has legal obligations not to allow any harm to its neighbour’s World Heritage sites. The country is a signatory to the 1972 World Heritage Convention, which states under Article 6.3 that: “Each state party to this convention undertakes not to take any deliberate measures which might damage directly or indirectly the cultural and natural heritage [ ... ] situated on the territory of other states party to this convention.”

A fisherman sorts out a net on a fishing boat in the Mekong river in Phnom Penh. The Mekong, which runs through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, is the lifeline of the millions of people living and working along it. Photo: AFP

Could Thailand’s role in the Luang Prabang project risk being in breach of its Unesco undertaking when it serves on the 21-member World Heritage Committee?

Unesco experts have warned that going ahead with the dam could put Luang Prabang on the endangered list and lead to the ultimate sanction – the humiliation of being delisted.

A leading Thai seismologist who has examined earthquake faults near the World Heritage site told me that: “If this happened to be a cultural heritage site in Thailand like Luang Prabang, no dam would be allowed to go ahead.”

Conservationists around the world are looking to the Thai government to step forward with the simple solution, of not buying the energy and rendering a service to world conservation. As Unesco puts it, ultimately, World Heritage sites belong to all peoples as the cultural assets of humankind.

Tom Fawthrop, an author and filmmaker, has been based in Asia for more than 30 years. He directed the documentary “Killing the Mekong, Dam by Dam”