(Adnkronos) – India’s fears for the project of the new Chinese mega-dam, three times larger than the Three Gorges Dam, considered to date the number one hydroelectric power station in the world, have not subsided. The colossal project, along the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo or Yarlung Zangbo River (Brahmaputra for the Indians and Jamuna in Bangladesh), on the Tibetan plateau, was formalized in December by Beijing, the eternal rival of New Delhi, and in recent days it has been defined by the spokesman for the Indian Foreign Ministry, Randhir Jaiswal, as “a mega project with many ecological disturbances”.
“There are fears of all sorts – summed up Shivshankar Menon, former National Security Advisor of India and head of the Ashoka Center for China Studies quoted by the Financial Times – Geopolitics does not help, of course, because no one trusts each other”.
The plant would end up on the border with the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Experts point out how India and Bangladesh fear changes to the natural course of the river. The Chinese have already sought to contain fears about the project’s environmental impact.
“It will not have negative repercussions on the ecological environment, on the geological conditions and on the rights and interests related to the water resources of the countries further downstream”, said the spokesman for the Beijing Foreign Ministry, Guo Jiakun.
Activists, highlights the Financial Times, denounce how 193 hydroelectric power projects built in Tibet since 2000 have been associated with serious human rights violations and environmental damage. There are also those who remember how the area is at risk of earthquakes.
China announced in December the green light for the project, presented in the name of the goal of carbon neutrality, but has so far released very few details and in the meantime India is planning the construction in Arunachal Pradesh of what will be the largest dam for the subcontinent, the Siang Upper Multipurpose Project, capable of generating 11 gigawatts of electricity.
