"On a football pitch ringed by misty mountains, the air rang with fiery speeches as an Indigenous community protested against a planned mega-dam, India's latest move in its contest with China over Himalayan water. India says the proposed new structure could counteract China's construction of a likely record-breaking dam upstream in Tibet by stockpiling water and guarding against the release of weaponised torrents."
"But for those at one of the possible sites for what would be India's largest dam, the project feels like a death sentence. We will fight till the end of time, said Tapir Jamoh, a resident of the thatch-hut village of Riew, raising a bow loaded with a poison-tipped arrow in a gesture of defiance against the authorities. We will not let a dam be built."
India proposes a massive storage dam in Arunachal Pradesh to counter a Chinese upstream project on the Siang/Yarlung Tsangpo by stockpiling water and protecting against weaponised torrents. Proposed reservoir would hold the equivalent of four million Olympic swimming pools behind a 280-metre dam. The plan has prompted Indigenous Adi community protests and threats of resistance over fears of displacement and cultural loss. China is advancing the $167bn Yaxia project upstream with multiple hydroelectric stations that could outproduce Three Gorges, while Beijing denies downstream harm. Locals fear the project would feel like a death sentence for affected villages.
Read at www.aljazeera.com
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