ABSTRACT
The Lao People’s Democratic Republic opened its borders in the mid-1980s, thus ending more than a decade of isolation from the capitalist world. For this land-locked nation which is among the poorest in Asia and suffered untold damages during the period of the Vietnam War, hydro-power has emerged as a promising potential means of establishing a foothold in the international market. Indeed, so attractive appear the prospects of exploiting this ‘white gold’ that as many as sixty dam projects are in various stages of consideration by the Lao Ministry of Industry and Handicrafts. A combination of political, geographic and economic conditions in Laos has spurred a race for hydro-power that is occurring on a scale and at a speed that is unprecedented in South-East Asia. Although only two projects had reached the construction stage by 1995, several others were in the planning stage. If even a fraction of these materialize, there are expected to be serious implications for the Lao environment and for people whose livelihoods are dependent on riverine and forest ecosystems.
