About Salween Watch

Salween Watch was set up with the primary aim of preventing the building of harmful hydroelectric dams on the Salween River. The group members aim to inform and raise awareness among local and international communities about the impacts of the proposed hydropower development projects in the Salween Basin.

The coalition works to collect information directly from the affected project areas about the environment and the people. It also collects and analyses information from the media and from other credible sources. The information is used to raise awareness about the development projects and the potential effects on the environment. Both the positive and negative aspects of development projects among the affected communities are evaluated. The group strives to build the capacity of local activists, and supports local community initiatives to help organise against development projects that potentially harm their livelihoods. At the same time, much of the group's information and campaign activities are directed outwards, with the aim of alerting and motivating key sections of the regional and international community who are in a position to access more information, influence policy, and block the financing of the hydroelectric power projects.

In Burma, the project areas in the Salween Basin are heavily militarised and part of a landmine strewn war zone. The potential dam sites on the Burma side are mostly surrounded by “black zones”, in which the people are not uncommonly shot on sight, tortured and killed on suspicion of giving support to rebel ethnic resistance groups. This makes it particularly difficult to collect some types of useful information, such as photographic evidence.

Group members exchange information through campaign materials, mass email-out publications, and local language printed publications. They carry out interviews, and produce reports in collaboration with network coalition partners and other closely associated NGO’s.

Salween Watch coalition members have produced “Salween Watch Updates”, which contain much of the published information relating to the Salween, along with some otherwise unpublished material and analyses. The members also produced and submitted a report to the World Commission on Dams (WCD). They have additionally worked to generate a campaign in Japan, as a major push for the creation and a source of funding for hydropower development projects is perceived to be coming from Japan.

Salween Watch members have been active in networking, interviewing, organising, and informing journalists and other NGO’s about planned development projects on the Salween River. They encourage all, both at the regional and at the international level to work together, to help prevent the further development of planned projects on the Salween.