The International Risk Podcast

Episode 276: China's Push to Build the World's Largest Hydropower Dam System in Tibet with Brian Eyler and Palmo Tenzin

• Dominic Bowen • Episode 276

Share episode

On 19 July 2025, China began construction on a 60,000-megawatt hydropower project at Medog, with three times the output of Three Gorges and roughly the UK’s entire annual power production. This is a 1.2-trillion-yuan investment (USD 170 B) that Beijing frames as clean energy and development. It is located in southeast Tibert, and only 30km upstream of India. Delhi hears strategic risk. Tibetans see cultural erasure. And over 100 million people downstream are wondering who controls their tomorrow.

Today, we are joined by Brian Eyler and Palmo Tenzin. 

Brian is the Director of the Stimson Center’s Southeast Asia and Energy, Water and Sustainability programs. He is widely recognised as a leading voice and expert on transboundary water-energy-food nexus security issues in the Mekong River basin, having spent more than 15 years living and working in China. He is the co-lead on the Mekong Dam Monitor, an award-winning open-source platform providing near-real-time monitoring of dams and environmental impacts along the Mekong.

Palmo is an Advocacy Officer and Senior Researcher for the International Campaign for Tibet. Her research specialises in Chinese politics and contemporary Tibet, Sino-Tibetan relations and Asia-Pacific security. Before working at the ICT, Palmo held a position working in the Australian government and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. She is the author of the report published in December 2024 titled, ‘Chinese Hydropower: Damning Tibet’s Culture, Community and Environment’, which she has presented at the UN Human Rights Council in March, the European Parliament in May and most recently at World Water Week in Sweden.

The International Risk Podcast brings you conversations with global experts, frontline practitioners, and senior decision-makers who are shaping how we understand and respond to international risk. From geopolitical volatility and organised crime, to cybersecurity threats and hybrid warfare, each episode explores the forces transforming our world and what smart leaders must do to navigate them. Whether you’re a board member, policymaker, or risk professional, The International Risk Podcast delivers actionable insights, sharp analysis, and real-world stories that matter.

Dominic Bowen is the host of The International Risk Podcast and Europe’s leading expert on international risk and crisis management. As Head of Strategic Advisory and Partner at one of Europe’s leading risk management consulting firms, Dominic advises CEOs, boards, and senior executives across the continent on how to prepare for uncertainty and act with intent. He has spent decades working in war zones, advising multinational companies, and supporting Europe's business leaders. Dominic is the go-to business advisor for leaders navigating risk, crisis, and strategy; trusted for his clarity, calmness under pressure, and ability to turn volatility into competitive advantage. Dominic equips today’s business leaders with the insight and confidence to lead through disruption and deliver sustained strategic advantage.

Tell us what you liked!

Brian Eyler: 00:03
First of all, it's been called the Super Dam, the dam of all dams, and nothing greater has ever been built for a hydropower project.

Elisa Garbil: 00:11
Welcome back to the International Risk Podcast, where we discuss the latest world news and significant events that impact businesses and organizations worldwide.

Dominic Bowen: 00:20
I'm Dominic Bowen and I'm the host of the International Risk Podcast. And in July 2025, China began the construction of a 60,000 megawatt hydropower project at Midong. That's three times the output of the free gorges and roughly the UK's entire annual power production. Now, this is a 1.2 trillion one investment, and that's over 100 billion US dollars. Beijing's framing that as clean energy and a development project, but it's located in southeast Tibet. It's only 30 kilometers upstream of India. Some Tibetans are talking about cultural erasure, and at least 100 million people downstream are wondering who controls bear tomorrow and what risk this might bring. Joining us today to unpack this, we have Brian Eyler and Palmo Tenzin. Brian's a director of the Stimson Center's Southeast Asia and Energy Water Sustainability Programs. He's widely recognized as a leading voice and an expert on transboundary water, energy, food nexus, and security issues, especially along the Mekong River basin. He spent more than 15 years living and working in China, and he co-led on the Mekong Dam Monitor, which is an award-winning open source platform that provides near real-time monitoring of dams and environmental impacts along the Mekon. And we also have Palmo Tenzin, and she's an advocacy officer and senior researcher at the International Campaign for Tibet. Her research specializes in Chinese politics, contemporary Tibet, as well as Sino-Tibetan relations and Asia-Pacific Security more broadly. And before working at ICT, Palmo held positions working with the Australian Government and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. She's the author of a report published in December titled Chinese Hydropower Damning Tibet's Culture, Community and Environment, which is also presented at the UN Human Rights Council in March, the European Parliament in May, and most recently in Stockholm at the World Water Week. Palmo, Brian, welcome to the International Risk Podcast. Happy to be here, Dominic.

Palmo Tenzin: 02:09
Yeah, thank you for this invitation.

Dominic Bowen: 02:10
Well, look, we're talking about something that brings energy, security, geopolitics, human rights, one river all together on this big collision course. So I think there's a lot to unpack here. And Brian, I'd love to hear from you why. Why has China decided to build this dam? Why is it pursuing such a huge project? State media talk about this being the project of the century. It's got five cascading stations, huge capacity coming out of it. The scale, the scope, and the speed of this project, I think is unprecedented. So can you tell us about why has China done this?

Brian Eyler: 02:40
First of all, it's been called the Suber Dam, the dam of all dams. Nothing greater has ever been built for a hydropower project. But what I've learned over the last year, digging into the design of the dam, is that it's not just one dam. And Dominic, you mentioned five cascading hydropower stations. That's already five. So we're still learning more about what it is, but this is a mega system. It's not a single dam. There are either three large dams or eight. We're not quite sure. Palmo, maybe you can shed light on some of what you understand about the design. But the design hasn't been released. What we're going to talk about today has been put together through looking at open source information on China's WeChat or Doyin or other things where people who are at construction sites are posting things that they see, people in resettlement areas talking about their resettlement experience. And it's just, it's a huge project that spans like 250 kilometers of the river system. But it's being built ostensibly for clean energy purposes. And it's been called the coal killer in Beijing because, you know, Beijing has a net zero target for carbon emissions reduction. And this dam plays into that discourse. I used to live in Beijing. I remember the days when, you know, you'd cough up black stuff because of the coal, fire, power production that was that was coming out of the surrounding hills there in Beijing and across China. So certainly pollution is an issue, air pollution is an issue. China is the world's largest carbon emissions producer right now. But all that doesn't mean this dam has to be built. It's an extremely risky project. Resettlement numbers are relatively high, and there's no real guarantee that it will work.

Dominic Bowen: 04:19
But Palmo, beyond the engineering feat and beyond some of the clean energy narratives, which I'm keen to explore with both of you, can you talk to us about the symbolic or the political messaging that Beijing's currently trying to convey with this project? Interesting that as Brian said, the actual designs and the schematics haven't been shared, but there certainly has still been a lot of messaging about this project. What is China saying to its domestic audience? What is it saying to Tibetans? And then conversely, what's it saying to the international community?

Palmo Tenzin: 04:45
What's important to realize is this Medod Dam is truly ambitious and unprecedented globally, but also for the region. And it needs to sort of be understood within the context of a broader campaign to expand hydropower generation capacity across Tibet and across a lot of, I guess, what you would call Western China. For me, I have been following this particular Medod Dam, also known as Motor in Chinese, pretty much since my undergraduate honour thesis. At the time, India was terrified about it. There was speculation and China would release little tidbits of information about this mega dam. So it's been around for a while, and only very recently China has said, okay, construction has begun. And I mean, in December last year, they had announced also that it had been approved by the national government and that obviously then construction would slowly begin in the next few months. But even that piece of news was retracted. We couldn't find the source because it caused so much, I guess, interest and controversy and pushback from downstream countries and international stakeholders. So I think overall there's a lot of secrecy behind this, not only for this dam, but also other dams. And so you'll see China releasing information strategically when it serves sort of a propaganda goal of saying, look, we're going to be leaders in this energy transition campaign. Yeah, we'll hit net zero emissions by 2060, and hydropower is a part of that. For me, when I look at this dam, I really see it like in terms of what it wants to tell the world that China's a leader and that it shouldn't be scrutinized, that China is an engineering power and tends to really look at nature as something to be conquered, mastered through engineering. So I think that's really what it's saying. It's a projection of state power as well, to say, look what we can do. And for Tibetans, what it's really saying is, you have been a thorn on our side. We've been trying so hard to stabilize this region, this border region, that they need for security and they're unable to gain legitimacy to rule the Tibetans, obviously, with a lot of pushback and protests. People ask me why is hydropower accelerating right now. There's no pushback in the civil society in China right now because the NGOs have been dismantled. And so in the past there was pushback and resistance from local communities, from environmental NGOs, because there was space for civil society to be part of a discussion about the pros and cons of these huge hydropower projects. Now we're seeing really the energy power companies, the lobbyists really having free reign to say, oh, we can frame hydropower energy generation as green.

Brian Eyler: 07:03
Just to add, regardless of what the downstream NGOs say, and regardless of what the international NGOs say. I mean, China does respond to international scrutiny, but there has been no response to the criticism of some of it very valid on the Middle Eg Super Dam system.

Dominic Bowen: 07:16
And you also mentioned Brian earlier. There's no doubt this is a massive project, it's ambitious. How long are we talking about construction? So obviously they've just started the construction now, but I'm particularly keen to hear about some of the risks that they could face. You spoke about some of the challenges. You know, what are some of the challenges that we should be aware of or expecting that the Chinese government could come across?

Brian Eyler: 07:34
Well, we don't really know. And groundbreaking has happened, satellite injury shows that. And it's interestingly not at Me Dog or Moto, it's far upstream at a place called Milan, where the most upstream dam will be built. And so many unknowns because the designs haven't been released. This is what people like Palmo have been calling for, what the Indian government has been calling for to understand more about the project, its implications, and its downstream impacts, rather than China just giving a broad statement saying we've done environmental impact assessments. In fact, this dam will improve environmental outcomes downstream, ecological outcomes downstream, and it will bring developed and you know a golden age to Tibet or something like that. And I mean, no one believes that stuff. It's really laughable in 2025 that Beijing would believe that anyone outside of Tibet or even inside would swallow this. But again, there's no pushback to otherwise. I mean, India does have cards in its hand to push back. I worry about this moment now where she and Modi are becoming buddies and what the implications are for the dam. This is one of the most geologically volatile areas of the world. The Himalayas are still pushing up, and that would be a really bad idea. There are lots of glaciers around this area. Homo, you could also clarify perhaps protected areas in there and other really important cultural sites. But this is the Great Gorge of the Great Bed. And on that 200 kilometers of the Great Bed, there's a 2,000 meter drop in elevation. But 2,000 meters of drop is achieved through about 50 kilometers of distance. And that's what the superdam system does. So the first dam is built up at me. And this is going to be what we think a rather large dam to have a bit of storage so that when water is diverted out of the river through a tunnel system, that tunnel system can have a steady flow of water to generate something like 60 gigawatts of power generation acidity. So there's got to be another dam at that diversion point in order to get the water into the tunnels. The tunnels are going to go through the mountains, which are risky, volatile, rising all the time, earthquakes, lots of earthquakes happening in this area. The water will shoot down through that 2,000 meter drop through those five generating cascading stations and then back down into the river above the Meadog Dam and then enters into India. That's basically from what I understand how the system will work. And it's a diversion project. How the flow of the river will be altered, we do not know. It's possible that the alteration will be relatively low, but it could be large as well. And where the actual location of this Meadog Dam is, we're also not very sure. There are a lot of questions that I have about this. I'll just turn it over to Palmo. Is this how you understand the system will work?

Palmo Tenzin: 10:05
Yeah, I think it's like you said, it's very hard to decipher all the information that's out there. But I think there will be about four tunnels going under the mountains. That's what we've seen. But one thing I want to sort of specify is that there's this perception that it is a run-of-a-river dam. So, you know, it's not going to withhold water. But you still have to to stop the water at some point to build to create a diversion. And so that's quite unimaginable when you think of this river and you see its size and the speed that it would flow. You're still going to disrupt the water flow into India.

Brian Eyler: 10:33
Again, there's so many unknowns, but we think that this dam is actually going to be quite large, the Melian Dam. And much of the resettlement around this project has already been completed. So one thing that, again, Palmo, maybe you can shed some light on, you know, how far upstream has the resettlement done? A final point is this downstream dam is supposed to re-regulate the river flow. And it's possible, it's highly possible, we're not sure, we don't know the details, that natural flow conditions could be reintroduced as the water goes into India. And in a sense, that could placate India's concerns. We don't know though. There needs to be a lot more transparency, and the design of this project has to be understood. Again, so many risks related to hazards, natural hazards, sediment that's flowing through the river, and how the sediment can kind of mess with the turbines that are producing all this power, and many other questions that really the world needs to be watching this project. It's kind of Chinese moonshot. Nothing like it has ever been built before. And when a moon mission happens, the world is watching. Palmo, did you want to add something to that?

Palmo Tenzin: 11:35
Yeah, I mean, to give you an idea of how much opacity we're facing is like there's no name to this dam, really. We're calling it Medno Dam. The Chinese now, because they realize how sensitive it is, they're calling it the dam projects on the lower reaches of Yalong Tsangbu. So something very generic. One other element about understanding, you know, where these dams sit in terms of the intersection of climate change, energy transition policy, the fact that it's occurring in a region that is still in a territorial conflict and is contested, but also the fact that it's happening in a border region right before the river flows into India, and a region where the boundary is still contested. You know, once you put concrete down and say these are our projects, then you're claiming the land and you know, changing realities on the ground. Final thing I wanted to add was also that no one has really talked about the economic viability of these projects. We're just thinking, oh, big dams, incredible energy potential, but they're in these remote regions, so you have to build supporting infrastructure, roads, transmission lines, additional hydropower stations or energy stations. And the grid in Tibet is still not fully connected to the national grid. No one has thought the project through, and there is no debate happening in China right now. So that's the biggest risk, and that's why everybody needs to pay attention.

Dominic Bowen: 12:48
And how do we look at it? I mean, Beijing, as I said before, is portraying this as a win-win. It's a green energy initiative. It's development, it's reaching environmental goals, which I think most of us get behind. It's highlighting its role in reducing emissions, which Brian mentioned. Great, let's get behind that and expanding clean energy supply. Again, something that all countries are grappling with, especially, you know, as we as we look about the increasing energy supply required around artificial intelligence and all the data centers that everyone is building, including in China. It's also aligning with China's carbon neutrality by 2060. But of course, some critics are talking about state control. They're talking about resource extraction. But what's a reasonable, as objective as we can be way to evaluate whether this really is a climate solution as a positive project or something that's more about statecraft, population control, extraction of resources? How are you looking at this, Palmo? And how do you recommend our listeners consider these sort of activities?

Palmo Tenzin: 13:40
First of all, I think it's important to acknowledge that local residents or Tibetans in Tibet are not against hydropower. They also want the benefits of energy, more reliable energy and clean energy. But I think the question is what are the costs and how are they distributed? And where are the benefits going, right? And right now, the way that equation is set is that the benefits are quite high for energy producers and local government officials, you know, who sign these contracts, but they're probably quite profuse and marginal for the urban end users who receive this energy. Because this energy is mostly being transmitted to central and eastern China. And then in terms of the costs, the costs are quite high, they're immediate, and they largely fall on Tibetans because they are possibly relocated, they lose access to lands that are, you know, essential for livelihood, and then also their local environment is interrupted, inundated, and then you have associated deduction of environments from creation of the structure of infrastructure such as roads and transmission lines. And so I think not all hydropower is bad, but you also have to consider the costs. And the additional costs are the environmental costs. So the scientific literature is overwhelmingly actually quite against hydropower because of the impact it has on river systems, both local and downstream. Generally, and I think this is not a pipe dream, but we've always said we need to pause these really, really large hydropower projects, need to have really transparent environmental impact assessment processes because they're not transparent. They're often copy and paste from existing environmental impact assessments. I wanted to also add the cultural impacts. What we've seen actually is we've had several protests that have erupted in Tibet, especially a case in Dege County of Sichuan, where Tibetan communities have actually resisted the destruction of big monasteries, two which house 14th-century murals that survived both the Chinese invasion and the Cultural Revolution.

Brian Eyler: 15:24
Are those monasteries still standing?

Palmo Tenzin: 15:26
Right now they are because they're poor, but this whole region is in lockdown. So we can't even get access to information because people have been detained and the two leaders of the monastery haven't been prisoned and sentenced to three and five years, and one is in the ICU because of torture due to calling attention to the hydropower dam that is being built. And so I think this case specifically highlights very clearly what the costs are for even just, you know, saying, please stop. Why are you doing this? Why are you building this dam? We've done nothing wrong. Like, can we please, please protect our cultural heritage and our monasteries and our communities? So there's no conversation, it's just no, we're cracking down. This whole region is shut down. So information can not only get out to the outside world, but not even to other parts of Tibet. There's absolutely no space for discussions about the benefits and costs and maybe even negotiating where the dam is built and the impacts it has.

Dominic Bowen: 16:14
Just wondering if we can unpack that a little bit more, Palmo. I think this is something that hasn't been in the news really lately. There's been so many conflicts, there's been so many autocratic regimes cracking down on countries. I don't think we've heard much in the news about Tibet. As you said, it's not just an infrastructure project. This also has cultural implications. And, you know, for some people, there's an existential threat with people being displaced, removed from ancestral ties and land that they've had for generations. So from people you're speaking with, the communities that you're able to engage with and the travel that you're doing, can you talk about the culture, the community, the environment, and how it has been affected and how this could impact it? But also you spoke about that one example, which, you know, just the information you provided being an ICU after being tortured. Can you talk about, you know, what are the risks that people face if they do speak out?

Palmo Tenzin: 17:00
Sure, happy to add detail. So, like I mentioned, this case of Kamdo Dam in Dege, we had protests erupt in February 2024, and then the region was shut down because the Chinese government really did not want for this information to spread. And the local communities actually were pleading. They were waving Chinese flags, saying, please, please, please, we're not separatists, you know, we're not against Chinese government rule. We just want to protect our monasteries, cultural heritage, and our communities and also our livelihoods, because where dams are usually built are in these regions where you have a bit more fertile land. And so the costs were the whole region was shut down, hundreds of people were detained temporarily and then released. But the monastery leaders of Vienna Monastery, the abbot and the, I guess what you would call the administrator, were both detained, and then we really had no information about what their names were, where they were located. Only a year later we heard information about their names and what they were sentenced for. And then the local communities really petitioned for the administrator Gombot Searing to be admitted to the hospital because he was really, really quite close to death. And so then he was admitted to the ICU. And so we are getting more and more information, but we have to be very careful how we share that information because it's intentionally restricted, right? And so we have to protect our sources as well. But I want to flag what's so interesting for us when we look at this information is people think, oh, this is an isolated case of protest. There's not so many protests here. Tibet seems to be stable, there's social harmony in Tibet. But really, this community in Dega is quite unique because they stand out as protesting. Most other communities have resigned themselves to the violence that results, the collective punishment that comes after protesting. So we've seen other communities that rather than protest, they'll prostrate, they'll pray, they'll hold ceremonies, but they won't resist because they know how futile it is. It results in being blacklisted after being imprisoned. For us, this was a bit of an alarm bell that they were really alerting us to the fact that hydropower's back and that the international community has to pay attention. Because I think the overall arching message of it for damming in Tibet is really that, first of all, not many people think of Tibet as this hotspot for hydropower generation or even for environmental and climate change, when really it's quite a hot spot for climate warming. That's primarily because of territorial conflict. They think of Tibet through this one-dimensional way of oh, it's just something going on politically, then it was occupied, but I'm not sure what's happening. So they don't really think of Tibetans or Tibet in more ways than the politics. Second reason that people don't talk about this region and Tibet in an environmental sense is also because China has intentionally worked very hard to isolate Tibet. Tibet is a taboo word. So whenever we talk in international forums about Tibetan transboundary rivers, a lot of our sort of peers won't talk about Tibet. They'll call it high mountain Asia or Hindukush Himalayas, the third pole when Asia's major six rivers start. So people intentionally exclude Tibet. And then I would say the final reason is because hydropower is still classified as like a sensitive topic in the Chinese world. I think all these additional layers that everybody who's trying to understand hydropower in Tibet and in China need to read more about and be cognizant of because it is multi-laden.

Brian Eyler: 20:00
Well, Dominic, you mentioned that no one's following that case that Palmo mentioned. That that was covered decent well in international media. But journalists can't access these places, Chinese journalists nor international journalists. And the rivers of the Tibetan world, again, which is much larger than the TAR, have been shut off to civil society groups, NGOs, to journalists. And I think one of the last trips that any civil society group took up the Tibetan River was through Green Watershed, a group out of Kuanming that pushed back and had some successful cases convincing the Chinese government not to build dams in certain parts of southwest China. And they found that eight million people, mostly of them were ethnic and many of them were Tibetans, had been resettled on the upstream reaches of the Yangtze River, what we call the Yangtze River in the tributaries. And these are in parts of Sichuan province, Gansu province, Qinghai province as well, outside of the traditional TAR. And no one is telling their stories. Eight million people have been resettled. So I just want to ask Palmo, can you give us a sense of what it's like to be resettled, to be a Tibetan person, resettled, wrested away from your land and environment around you and the things you're familiar with, put into a total alien place? What is it like?

Palmo Tenzin: 21:14
Yeah, we've heard, I mean, what's really interesting for me is this resettlement from hydropower projects is very similar to the resettlement from other infrastructure projects and also forced relocations just to settle nomads, right? And the experience is very similar across the board. Tibetans have a strong connection to the land because obviously you have to live together in somewhat harmony with land because you're so reliant on it for your everyday resources and you have to really understand the weather and the climate to navigate Tibet. And so a lot of people felt disconnected from land, disconnected from their communities because they're very often moved into sedentary houses in these concrete blocks, and they're not always located in the same place. And then they lose the connection to their community in that way. Then because their livelihoods are relied on agricultural land or for grazing, they're often relocated somewhere without grazing. They can no longer own land in the same way, and then they're expected to enter the Chinese labor market, which requires Chinese language skills, but also an understanding of how things work, right, in the Chinese labor market. And they have to engage in very informal labor, they don't get the respect that they expect. So it's very alienating for them, and often they lose access to their usual sources of nutrition, and then they end up quite malnourished, in fact, when they're meant to be modern citizens that have been settled into more urban centers. And so people become quite lost. You're really forcing an assimilation and alienation actually of Tibetans from each other, from their lands, and also from their sacred lands and cultural sites, because you can't throw a monastery and then relocate it to a new center. These monasteries are hundreds of years old, they've accumulated sacredness over time because of the individuals that have visited, the teachings that have been delivered there, the communities that have invested in the monasteries, and also that the fact that the monasteries are also learning centers. It's not just a church or a temple that you just go to, but it's where our history, our knowledge is stored. They're not passive structures. I think this broader policy to monetize Tibet's renewable energy or hydropower energy serves this other goal of assimilation, right? That you can control Tibetans by placing them into these urban centers and you can monitor them more easily.

Dominic Bowen: 23:21
Thanks very much for explaining that, Palmo. And I think you've outlined it and explained those cultural challenges. And conversely, and I think this is one of the things I'd like to explore how China is seeing this as an economic opportunity and it's seen as sacrificing the sacred in order to pursue strategic objectives. And, you know, Brian, we we spoke earlier about, you know, this price tag of close to 170 billion US dollars, you know, makes it one of the most expensive infrastructure undertakings ever occurred. And in the days after the announcement in July, we saw Chinese stock markets respond extremely positively and bond yields rose, infrastructure stocks surged, not surprising, companies involved in construction, cement, explosives reached uh trading limits. Citigroup estimates that over the next 10 years, this project alone will add nearly 17 billion dollars to the Chinese gross domestic products. So I'd love to hear from you about, you know, it sounds like when we look at just those numbers, if we ignore everything we've just spoken about, but if we just look at those numbers, that this is a positive story. There's lots of opportunities, and I'm sure there's lots of people talking about that narrative. How do we measure the enormous costs and risks and measure those against some of the positives that I guess the stock market and organizations like Citigroup and perhaps the Chinese Communist Party are advocating?

Brian Eyler: 24:32
Well, a better evaluation process needs to come in to, you know, if it's going to go forward, which it looks like it will, to better understand some of the values that Palmo was talking about. Like, what's the value of losing a monastery? Palmo talked about nomadic people being resettled. That's because nomadism, in the eyes of Beijing, is seen as a backwards way of producing a livelihood. And therefore it's invalid, right? It needs to be changed or canceled. But there's a lot of value in nomadic life that's never been assessed by the state or a form of compensation of what was lost and what can be given. That type of exercise has never happened. And the assessors are often like lowland coastal Chinese urbanites trained in Chinese or Western institutions, thinking about assessing livelihoods from that lowland urban coastal type setting. And Tibet is an entirely different setting where it's very hard for those assessors to wrap their heads around what the actual needs are. So it's almost easier just to, you know, cookie-cutter the process and bring practices that are from the lowland areas up into the high mountain areas of Tibet and expect that you know a one-for-one exchange can occur. But as Palmo said, these people are lost. They lose their emotional and psychic connections to the land and the things around them, and in many ways they become assimilated into the state. I mean, the entire exercise is one of imbalance. The beneficiaries, as Palmo mentioned, are far away in China's industrial coastal areas or the interior cities that are building very rapidly. Those that lose are local, which Palmo has described, and then also downstream, India and Bangladesh. The way that the Chinese state can expand and exploit its periphery provides for this type of imbalance to occur, where benefits can be thrown far away from the site of exploitation, and the losses are local and they're not replaced by benefits. And at the same time, the type of new economic system that can come in around that dam area is one that doesn't fit the people. I think that data centers are going to be built beside this dam, or in like Ninja City. The climate is good for it. It's cold up there, you need less energy to run a data center where it's cold. And China needs data centers to fuel its AI dreams and ambitions. These new grids that will be built can link up these data centers to China proper. But that's the most profane and alien type of infrastructure I can imagine in and around Tibet. And we haven't talked much about the downstream impact in India and Bangladesh, to agriculture, to fisheries, to how flood regimes drive agriculture downstream in Bangladesh, how those will be impacted.

Dominic Bowen: 27:12
And so I wonder about that, Brian, because this is something that's not unique to China. We see that along the Nile with Ethiopia building the Grand Renaissance Dam and concerns from Sudan and Egypt. We see it in the Indus river system between Pakistan and India. We see Palestine and Israel with river systems going through the Middle East. But certainly, as you mentioned, there's about 100 million people with their livelihoods in India and Bangladesh downstream from this river system that rely on that. Now, given China's track record on the Mekong, how credible are fears that Bangladesh and Indian governments and communities have about the potential manipulation of water flows and the geopolitics that could be impacting local communities in Bangladesh and India?

Brian Eyler: 27:52
Well, I think the fears are justified. And again, more transparency can shine a light on what the actual changes to the river flow will be. But in the Mekong, China has two huge dams. And those dams I think will be much the dams on the Mekong are going to be much larger than the dams in this superdam system or the Mekong, the Maidog Dam system. The reservoirs upstream of the Mekong hold each something like 11 cubic kilometers of water, 11 billion cubic meters of water. We don't think the dams on the super dam system will get close to that. But those dams on the Mekong, which China provides no data to the downstream, doesn't tell the downstream countries, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, when the dams start construction, when they begin to fill their reservoirs, how they're operated, zero information. We monitor those dams here from Washington, DC, and we produce the information that shows how the dam operations impact the downstream. And we found that those dams can at times drive wet season droughts. So they pull down the pulse of the natural kind of monsoon pulse of the river that's important for agricultural production and fisheries. And then during the dry season, they put more water into the river, which has a big impact on ecologies and fisheries and the ability for people who traditionally farm along the riverside to farm along the riverside because the river level is higher. It's possible that all those impacts could also occur in India and Bangladesh. We don't know. We just don't know how this dam will be operated. And one other thing that China's dams on the Mekong do is they release water in waves and pulses. And that could happen here. That's most likely going to happen here. So you have daily irregular fluctuations of the river level, which introduce a lot of change. It's a very violent change to a river system. More information will tell us more. And again, as the world watches, there are ways to mitigate some of these impacts if the dam is to be built. So now is the time to be having that conversation about how to mitigate. What are the actual needs downstream in India and Bangladesh? How can better flow mitigation scenario meet those needs downstream so that the controversies are lessened, the vitriol coming out of India is lessened. There's a lot of room for good discussion and good diplomacy right now.

Dominic Bowen: 30:00
And Palmo, when we hear from the Chief Minister of Indian province and just south of where this project will be made, you know, he's concerned about what he's called water bombs, this sudden release that perhaps Brian alluded to earlier and negative impact that that could have on communities in India. You know, how realistic are these sort of things? Is this hyperbolic or is this from what we see in China, from what we see in other countries? Is this the sort of thing that communities in India should be worried about?

Palmo Tenzin: 30:24
This is a good question because we recently had this panel at World Water Week where we had Dr. Wolfgang Schwangha speak about this happening in India, and it is a very real risk. It causes a lot of damage. And I think the unpredictability of information is not shared to prepare for the release of such water. It's really problematic. So I think it's a real risk. It's not my expertise, but how these dams are managed and the river systems are managed requires greater transparency across the board in China, in Tibet, in India, as well as for Bangladesh downstream. One big theme that I think needs to be understood is what China does because it's the upstream power. It sets a standard for downstream countries. So if China is quite belligerent and just acts on its own self-interest, then India will do the same, and then Bangladesh and Pakistan, and then downstream Mekong countries. And that really is not good for anybody, not very sustainable. But I just wanted to also add back the question of whether it's environmentally friendly, whether it's economically feasible given extreme weather conditions, sometimes unpredictable rainfall, even in Sichuan, where they've had droughts and they've had to turn off and stagger power in Chengdu, sort of tells you, okay, is this still viable? UN Special Rapporteur on the right to a healthy environment, adequate housing, on clean water. Have all said all hydropower projects should be paused. New ones should not be built unless very clear environmental impact assessments integrate human rights considerations. So there's still time to pause. It's not an extreme opinion. It's through experience that people have recognized that hydropower is not sustainable in so many different areas.

Dominic Bowen: 31:51
Thanks very much for explaining that, Palmo. And thank you, Palmo and Brian, for coming on the International Risk Podcast. Thank you, Darn. That was a really great conversation with Brian Eyler, the director of the Stimson Center, Southeast Asia in Energy, Water and Sustainability Programs. And Palmo Tenzin. She's the advocacy officer and senior researcher at the International Campaign for Tibet. I really appreciated hearing their deep analysis of the wide-ranging consequences of this project and examining the economic and energy rationales and whether this holds up to reasonable analysis and, of course, also weighing the environmental, social, sacred, cultural, and geopolitical risks of this project. Please go to wherever you download your podcast and make sure you subscribe to this for future episodes. Today's podcast was produced and coordinated by Anna Kumulsted. I'm Dominic Bowen, your host. Thanks very much for listening.

Elisa Garbil: 32:41
Thank you for listening to this episode of the International Risk Podcast. For more episodes and articles, visit the International Risk Podcast.com. Follow us on LinkedIn, Blue Sky, and Instagram for the latest updates and to ask your questions to our host, Dominic Bowen. See you next time.