While China is presiding over the COP 15 on biodiversity in Montreal, a dam project is being debated in the Middle Kingdom. It concerns Lake Poyang, the largest freshwater lake in the country and could threaten the ecosystem of more than half a million birds.
Alarmed by unprecedented drought in China, authorities have relaunched a controversial dam project on the country’s largest freshwater lake. The project, presented in 2016, seemed well and truly buried after protests by environmental activists. But the idea of a dam on Lake Poyang was revived after the summer that China has just experienced.
A summer of 2022 which was the driest for 70 years and which was marked by power outages repeatedly while the production of electricity depends in part on hydraulic dams.
Winter refuge for birds
The local authorities therefore want to relaunch this project on China’s largest freshwater lake, which supplies water to the 4.8 million inhabitants of Jiangxi province. Poyang Lake is also a winter refuge for over half a million migratory birds. Among them is the Siberian crane, classified as critically endangered.
Activists fear the 3,000m dam will cut the lake off from the Yangtze River, turning Poyang into a dead lake. In 70 years, China has built no less than 50,000 dams in the Yangtze basin, including the Three Gorges, despite the concern of environmentalists.
►Also read: ‘Red alert’ for China’s largest lake in the face of unprecedented drought