Applying AHP to Evaluate Hydropower Projects of Lao PDR in Implementation of the Environmental Management and Monitoring Plan

Abstract:

Environmental protection is a major issue that is critical to the sustainable development of the country. The government of Lao PDR is taking the energy plan into consideration in order to manage and mitigate the negative impacts and to monitor the mitigation programs. Usually, the Environmental Management and Monitoring Plan (EMMP) of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report contains the terms and conditions with which the project developers must comply. In order to ensure that a project developer fully implements its commitment under EMMP, the MoNRE of Lao PDR have developed an environmental monitoring guideline and checklist which contains key indicators and parameters to be used by the monitoring authorities. The objective of this study is to evaluate the implementation of EMMP performed by 5 hydropower projects existing in Lao PDR, namely, Nam Thurn2, Nam Thurn Hinboun, Nam Ngum2, Num Lik1-2 and Num Ngum5. This study analyzed the monitoring data under multiple parameters including water quality, fish and fisheries, waste and pollution, watershed, downstream river flow, camp sites and construction sites, and reports, undertaken by different inspectors. The Analytic Hierarch Process (AHP) is accepted to be a powerful and flexible method for ranking decision alternatives and selecting the best ones when the decision makers have multiple criteria. Therefore, it is a selected tool used for determining the optimal hydropower project in Lao PDR based on the collected monitoring data. A case study was conducted to understand which one could be considered as the environmental friendly project and which parameter has the importance role to the accomplishment of project development.

• Periodical: Advanced Materials Research (Volumes 931-932)
• Pages: 768-773
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.931-932.768
• Online since: May 2014
• Authors: Bounkham Vorachit, Phanarut Srichetta*
• Keywords: Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), Environmental Management, Hydropower Projects, Monitoring Plan, Multi-Criteria Decision Making

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