Thousands of villagers could be displaced and a fragile ecosystem destroyed by a hydropower project being built on Burma’s Salween River, the international conservation group WWF said.

The Ta Sang hydropower plant is being built in a joint venture between Burma’s Government and the Thai power producer MDX Group.

WWF claims that damming the Salween, one of Southeast Asia’s last untamed rivers, would have a massive impact on “ tens of thousands of poor, marginalised people from ethnic minorities”. Robert Mather, of WWF, said: “The Salween is the only free-flowing river linking the Himalayan glaciers to the Andaman Sea.”

But a Burmese official said that the dam was in a remote area and that few people would need to be relocated. He added that efforts would be made to limit its impact and accused industrialised countries of causing much more damage to the environment than developing nations. ( AP)

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