STOP ANOTHER HUNGARIAN ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE IN CENTRAL HIGHLANDS OF VIETNAM
Let’s protect the safety and livelihood of 14 million people living in the Central Highlands
and Dong Nai river basin of Vietnam
The Viet Ecology Foundation has launched an online petition for concerned world citizens to join
Professor Nguyen Hue Chi, the co-founder of the Bauxite Vietnam website and several thousands
of Vietnamese citizens, scholars, scientists, and environmentalists to call for the Government of
Vietnam to stop the mining projects in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.
The Central Highlands of Vietnam is known to have 5.4 billion tons of bauxite reserve base or the
world’s third largest; if the extraction project is not stopped, its total caustic mud generated would
reach 90 million cubic meters. This caustic mud would be stored in reservoirs at an altitude
hundreds of meters above sea level, subjected to 2.5 meter annual rain fall, flash floods and over
14 million basin residents.
Vietnamese scholars and scientists believe the $15.6 Billion Mining Project in Central Highlands of
Vietnam is economically, technically and environmentally unsound; it does not include all social
and long term environmental costs and does not address the transportation system. In addition,
the World Intangible Cultural Heritage Gong Culture of the Central Highlands of Vietnam, the
traditional and sustainable agriculture of the Dong Nai river basin people would be gravely
endangered by this project.
For more information please contact Long Pham (949) 309-7767 Email: longpp@vietecology.org
PETITION
We the undersigned wholeheartedly support the Chinese scientists and scholars’ petition and wish to join them in putting forward this petition again for the Chinese people overseas, the concerned Southeast Asian people living downstream of the Yunnan seismic faults and giant dams, the concerned world citizens on behalf of the millions people and their descendants - that the Chinese should set up a joint investigation team, which would include experts and scholars who have done long-term research in this field of study, to carry out the following tasks as soon as possible:
- Re-examine the seismic intensity originally set for each of all large-scale hydro dams in the southwest of China;
- Re-examine the risks posed by the cascades of dams and reservoirs to the downstream areas in the event of earthquakes;
- Conduct further studies to determine the risk that reservoirs could induce seismic activity (RIS) in geologically unstable regions;
- Make public the results of the re-examination and information generated;
- Prepare special emergency plan for the regions, where hydro dams have already been built, based on the conclusions obtained by the joint investigation team; and, at the same time, make necessary adjustments to official plans to massively and intensively develop southwest China’s water resources and construct cascades of hydro dams throughout rivers in southwest China in keeping with the principles of planning and environmental assessment.
- Temporarily suspend the approval of big hydro dams in geologically unstable areas in southwest China before carrying out all the above tasks.
