Each family has a piece of arable land of 6

As 6500 other inhabitants, Khamsi, mother of six children and head of the village of Sop On, in the centre of Laos, has seen his life disrupted by the Nam Theun 2 dam, in which EDF puts the finishing touches. "Our daily lives improved, she explains." Before, I had to walk back and fifty minutes to go to fetch water. "Now we have the pump at the foot of the House." With the construction of the dam, the River became a lake. The open-sided classrooms have left the place in houses on stilts in planks, with electricity and television. Each family has a piece of arable land of 6.600 square metres and the children go to school every day. There is a sawmill in co-op, four clinics have been opened and six hospitals rehabilitated throughout the province. Now, here produces rice, on fishing fish for sale and not only to feed her family. Evidence that a large dam is not always synonymous with ecological disaster, but it can also have positive consequences for the populations around.

It was in any case the sine qua non to the building of this vast hydroelectric work. $ 1.29 Billion project which extends over 200 kilometres long by 50 wide. It should enter into test phase this week with a commissioning planned for the end of the year. If the first shovel blows were given in the spring of 2005, the story of Nam Theun 2 is so old that the inhabitants of the neighbouring region of the Viet Nam and the Thailand, to which will be sold the current began to despair. After sketches in the 1950s, a previous project, launched in 1993, had overturned four years later because of the Asian crisis. But already, in 1927, "The economic awakening of Indochina" described precisely that EDF engineers, master of the project with 35 of the Nam Theun Power Company (NTPC), come to realize. Their colleagues of the time had not only identified the hydroelectric potential of the Nakai plateau, traversed by the River Nam Theun, imagined but above all how to take advantage of his elevation to the plain of the Mekong River. They thus provided that energy capture would be not at the foot of the dam, "where the poor plant would be drowned" by the floods of the monsoon, note the newspaper of the time, but "by the diversion of part of the Nam Theun." by jumping from a bond of 300 metres above the edge of the plateau Eighty years later, this recommendation has been strictly followed.

The return of the World Bank

This project will enable Laos, one of the poorest countries of the world, with a GDP per capita of $ 673, valuing its energy potential by exporting its watts. "Hydroelectric energy is essential to our economic development lever," explains Soulivong Daravong, the Minister of energy and Mines. Other projects are in the cards since the Viet Nam is also looking hydroelectric capacity of its neighbour. But, alone, this first achievement will enable the Government to earn on average 80 million per year for twenty-five years, duration of the concession. His term, the entire property will pass to the lao State. The Thailand, several firms are shareholders of the NTPC, is committed to buy 95 percent of the electricity and the construction of a line of 500 kilowatts running through the Mekong has just been completed. This clean energy source will reject an average 2 million tonnes of CO2 less than a gas of a power plant.

The giant site also marks the return of the World Bank on a hydroelectric project. The institution, which guarantees, along with other financial institutions, the 25 of the lao State in NTPC, had indeed withdrawn such funding at the end of the 1990s. At the time, it had aroused the ire of associations for the defence of fragile populations or the environment for funded projects which have totally unbalanced areas. On this record, counterparties have been defined as the study phases, consultations were held before even the beginning of the work, and an envelope of $ 76 million was assigned to the set of social and environmental measures.

The construction of the dam is truly "an instrument of development for the whole region", insists the lao Minister confident in the emergence of this area until Thakhek, city of transit with the Thailand. The 270 kilometres of new roads throughout the year are the first asset. The second is the diversion canal, long 27 kilometres, to bring the surplus of water to the Xe Bang Fai River. Some of this water irriguera fields, providing peasants two crops of rice per year instead of a during the monsoon.

Ensure the power of the Central, required a vast reservoir. The Nam Theun 2, which retrieves the slopes over 4,000 km2, water covers 450 km2 in the rainy season. The territories of hunting and gathering of thousands of poor villagers have thus been submerged, and their way of life underwent a drastic change. In total, 1.251 families were relocated on the banks of this new body of water where even emerge from the thousands of trees. Fish, which proliferate, seem to be accommodating, for the benefit of the populations, at which it was provided with a flat bottom fishing and 650 boats equipment. Scientists however monitor the quality of the waters, the decay of biomass could deteriorate, despite a powerful system of oxygenation.

Biodiversity protected

Before the magnitude of these upheavals, EDF had to meet the most stringent rules (CSR) corporate social responsibility. "I was very pleasantly surprised by what has been done there, welcomed Philippe Pesteil, administrator CFDT at EDF. People seem happy. They are appropriate to their homes and their way of life and those who wanted to remain in the forest had the freedom to do so. "In fact, 50 families have preferred to stay in the isolation of primary forest, decreed a protected zone for the next thirty years. The program has received funding of $ 31 million to preserve "an exceptional biodiversity, with more than 1,000 species of birds and 150 wild elephants", said Jean-Christophe Philbe, Director EDF for the region.

This approach was all the more compelling that "for EDF, it is a superb card." "This project has the meaning on the industrial level, preserving our hydraulic expertise, and human", insists Philippe Pesteil. He hoped that the Group would take advantage of this success to position itself on other projects of the same type.