NT2

A couple of days ago a reader, Nicholas Cantrell, posted a very interesting comment in my post “Nam Theun 2: Just about ready to start filling in.” The comment poised a number of questions, but if I can paraphrase just one of them, I think the basic premise was this: “how does the World Bank [or any of the financiers] ensure that the new lives of the resettled populations are sustainable in the long run?”  The truth is, I ask myself the same question all the time.

A few weeks ago I wrote that “many perceive NT2 to be a World Bank hydropower project. From my perspective, that’s inaccurate in every respect. More on that in a future posting.” Following intense pressure from my reading public (thanks, Nanda), it’s time to explain what I meant.

Priests and vicars have long demonstrated a penchant for biodiversity. There have been missionaries in remote places who have built up and preserved beautiful collections of butterflies, plants etc. which eventually found their way into the great natural history museums of the world.  The Rev. Gilbert White (1720-93) was the classic 18th century English clergyman-naturalist. Over many years he made observations of the plants and creatures he saw and he pulled the strands together in a widely-read book, 'The Natural History of Selborne'.  In a reflective letter to a colleague in 1768 he wrote, "It is, I find, in zoology as it is in botany: All nature is so full that that district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined". 

There are two types of people in the world. Those with whom mosquitoes fall passionately in love, and those to whom mosquitoes turn only as a last resort. I unfortunately am one of the former, and I was awoken a little before sunrise by a swarm of well-informed mosquitoes in Lak Sao, behaving a little like my 3-year old when he thinks he can persuade me to give him chocolate milk for breakfast.

(But first, take a look at the new villages for the local residents. My colleague Nanda does the talking):

Lak Sao is one of the closest places to stay to the NT2 dam wall, where we were headed for the tunnel closure ceremony. The event went off smoothly: Monks blessed the event; His Excellency Borsaikham Vongdala, Minister of Energy and Mines spoke of the importance of the project to the country; engineers and executives explained what was happening; and His Excellency Deputy Prime Minister Somsavat Lengsavad waved the flag that prompted workers across the river to start slowly dropping the “stop-log” across the diversion tunnel. 

So the last couple of days have been – how should I put it? – intense. I’m sure at some point when you’ve had some major deadline approaching like preparing a major report for work, handing in a PhD or Masters thesis, preparing for a presentation at a big meeting, making a speech at a conference… You had to double check all your facts, or make sure the footnotes where right, or endlessly practice your presentation, or ensure all the attachments were prepared, or have all the documentation necessary to submit your report, or pray the computer didn’t swallow your information and damage the floppy disk or USB drive in the process (or all of the above)…. Well, getting ready to start the gradual process of filling the NT2 reservoir is easily 100 times more complex than that.

About a couple of months ago I took over as the team leader of the Nam Theun 2 Social and Environment project  and am joining Nanda to blog about the project. Nanda’s description of eating insects made an American colleague mention a popular US reality TV show called “Fear Factor” that apparently revolved around eating insects. Here in Laos that’s no big deal – I can recommend crickets stir fried in soy sauce to accompany your beerlao – but the thought of being stuck in endless NT2 team meetings does seem to induce real terror among some.

Meetings abound because NT2 is a pretty big and complex program, and we have a large team with a broad range of expertise, including a number of long-standing consultants. A number of us, including me, are based in Vientiane. The rest of the team is spread across Asia, Europe and North America, which makes videoconferences part of life, and guaranteed to be at a bad time for someone.

So I’m not eating insects any more (like I was last year*) as unfortunately that really isn’t my daily job (by unfortunate I mean the wildlife tracking, not the insect eating), but back in the office catching up on Nam Theun 2 (NT2) readings after coming back from a 2-week trip that included no insects.

It’s amazing how many things can happen in two weeks time, particularly if it’s an incredibly complex project we’re talking about:

Arrived at Ban Navang! Arlyne and Tony with some of the villagers who were working on the wildlife monitoring.

Feb. 9, 2007* - This morning we, sadly, had to make our way out of the forest. We had our breakfast and left around 6:30 am as the transect teams were leaving to do their last day (day four) of their surveying in this area (tomorrow they’ll move to a new location).

The walk on the trail back was absolutely stunning. It is such a beautiful forest, it’s hard to describe and no adjective would probably ever do it justice. On the walk back we got lucky again and saw some Douc Langurs! They really are amazing creatures. And they sure make some giant leaps as they make their way from tree to tree.

We stopped midway to have lunch, and reached Ban Navang shortly after 3 pm (about a 16-kilometer walk from Camp 6, towards the opposite direction than Tha Phai Ban). Ban Navang is a very nice, but very poor, village of about 310 people. With support from the WMPA they have been able to build water wells, a school, and the typical “toilet houses” you see in Lao villages: small, little houses made up of wood and palm leaves with a squat toilet. They also have some water wells where Arlyne and I bathed today.

Feb. 8, 2007* - Second day of transect for us and third for the team. Arlyne and I joined a different group today, while Tony and Jim joined our group from yesterday. Our most interesting viewings today were Brown Hornbills – big birds about 70 centimeters tall, with a tucan-like beak, and sitting very high up in the trees – and a Giant Black Squirrel, just sitting there, with its large, bushy tail that made it look kinda like a skunk from where I was sitting (with my binoculars about 200 meters away.) The animals were so beautiful! I never imagined getting this excited about seeing a bird, squirrel or monkey, particularly when they are hundreds of meters away! But it’s exciting stuff! Like Tony says… the “WOW” factor: that moment when you first say “wow” and your perspective changes forever….

Perhaps almost as amazing as seeing the wildlife is noting the talent of these men in spotting things that are hundreds of meters away (granted they used to hunt for a living). While they have binoculars as well, they mainly spot the animals with their bare eyes, it’s incredible! I could barely see the hornbill at first, and they could just tell from hundreds of meters away, that high up on a tree, was a silhouette next to some leaves (which was a hornbill). I guess Arlyne and Tony are right; these are just the skills that they develop on a daily basis.
Lao Jungle Diary 5

Mr. Xaypanya signals on the map where we went that day while Tony and Arlyne, on the left, and Jim and I, on the right, watch.

Feb. 7, 2007* - Although this was my first transect ever, and our first transect here, it was the team’s second day. We woke up at 5:30 am, had breakfast, and left for the transect just before 7 am. Arlyne and I joined one group, while Tony and Jim joined another. In each group there are generally three people (usually men in this case): the leader and another “observer” (looking out for species) and a guard (just in case).

The idea of the transect is to cover about two kilometers of territory, in a straight line (which is set up on the first day following GPS location and compass bearing), slowly and quietly, listening and looking out for the species. Why five types in our case? According to Arlyne, they chose these five because they generally are relatively easy to either hear or see in this forest but are also some of the most threatened by hunting – a big concern in the NT2 Watershed.