This site-based research on the impacts of energy derivation in the China-Myanmar border provinces showed both environmental and economic effects of China’s energy sourcing in Myanmar. Hydropower, the focus of this research, is one form of energy that relies on a moving resource and thus affects vast transboundary areas. Within the local socio-ecological system it is nearly impossible to separate environmental effects, including the surge in carbon release discussed here, from economic ones. The targeted areas of Shan and Kachin States show significant socio-economic as well as ecological impacts on the entire area, including the large-scale displacement of rural producers.

In the still predominantly agricultural economy of Myanmar, the significant loss and deforestation of land to large-scale hydro-energy projects is directly responsible for increased carbon release as well as income loss for local producers filling regional demand. Environmentally, the construction of dam projects leads to large areas of deforestation and hence less atmospheric carbon absorption; further, deforestation resulting in the loss of some surrounding watershed ecosystem services has also led to soil erosion, lost soil fertility, and loss of biodiversity. In particular, large-scale hydro-energy projects, of necessity constructed in rural and thus productive areas, submerge an average of several hundred hectares of productive land and sequester hundreds more for the securitization of the area around the facility. There is displacement and economic instability for cultivators, and loss of the crops and livestock pasturage upon which the local, national, and regional economies rely. The “renewable” resource, water, thus risks becoming non-renewable because it is now unsustainably derived under rapidly rising demand conditions. Further, the derivation and capture processes as well as the transmission of the derived electricity further stress other ecosystem components that are the essential bases of the current economy.

Cite

Thiesmeyer, Lynn. (2018). Upper Mekong region energy development impacts on Myanmar’s socio-ecological systems. 10.4324/9781351037587-11.