Blocking a Bloodline: Indigenous Communities along the Tanintharyi River Fear the Impacts of Large Scale Dams

There are a total of 76 villages, 6,118 households and 32,008 people living directly along the Tanintharyi River, who depend on it as a vital source of food security, water, transportation and cultural expression.

Plans to construct large dams on the Tanintharyi River stand to submerge an area of 144,557-acres, potentially displacing up to almost 7,000 people in 32 upstream villages, and significantly impacting the livelihoods, access to water and transportation of over 22,000 in 42 downstream villages. Local communities have never been substantively consulted on these plans.

The proposed dam would also have catastrophic environmental impacts, destroying rich aquatic ecosystems and habitats, and inundating vast areas of pristine forest, destroying some of South East Asia’s largest remaining intact forest and biodiversity.