A Laoseng minority woman outside her home in remote and roadless Ban Watai, Phongsaly Province, Lao PDR. The villagers of Ban Watai wait to hear when and where they will be relocated and joined with three other Laoseng villages following the construction of the Nam Ou Cascade Hydropower Project Dam 5. The Nam Ou river connects small riverside villages and provides the rural population with food for fishing. It is a place where children play and families bathe, where men fish and women wash their clothes. But this river and others like it, that are the lifeline of rural communities and local economies are being blocked, diverted and decimated by dams. The Lao government hopes to transform the country into “the battery of Southeast Asia” by exporting the power to Thailand and Vietnam.
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