Picture of the Week – 19.1.15 – The Corridor of Opportunity
By Tessa Bunney on 19 January 2015
Washing clothes in the Nam Ou river in the remote and roadless village of Ban Mouanghoun, Phongsaly province, Lao PDR.
In Laos, the 425km long Nam Ou river, one of the Mekong’s major tributaries, connects small riverside villages. It is a place where children play and families bathe, where men fish and women wash their clothes. But this river and others like it, that are the lifeline of rural communities and local economies are being blocked, diverted and decimated by dams as the Lao government hopes to transform the country into ‘the battery of Southeast Asia’. The villagers in Ban Mouanghoun are waiting to hear when and where they will be relocated due to the construction of the Nam Ou Cascade Hydropower Project Dam 5.