Greater Mekong Subregion - Nam Theun 2 Hydroelectric Project

It is important to avoid overly ambitious objectives in project design. The enhancement of biodiversity conservation in NNT-NPA was an overly ambitious objective. The area to be protected involved the entire watershed and an area downstream. Its size challenged the capability and capacity of a number of agencies to plan, implement, and sustain conservation requirements. With the benefit of hindsight, it can be seen that even the requisite output—NNT-NPA protected from illegal logging—would have been a stretch for the purposely created WMPA, whose ability to assume its mandate of protecting NNT-PA, managing reservoir fisheries, and restoring the livelihoods of enclave villagers remains a major challenge nearly two decades after its establishment in 2001. Also, the fact that the objective of enhancing biodiversity conservation was added on to a complex $1.4 billion hydropower project in a high-risk setting inevitably led to its ending up lower on the priority scale, as suggested by the 4-year gap in the participation of ADB safeguards specialists in the joint IFI supervision missions. This suggests that enhancing biodiversity conservation may better have been pursued as a separate, stand-alone project, albeit one suitably phased with overall project preparation and implementation.