There are few places in Southeast Asia more remote than this forested plateau in southern Laos, but over the decades, history seems to have chosen it as a battleground.
During the Vietnam War, it was busy with the movement of Vietnamese troops heading down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and it became one of the most heavily bombed places on earth.
These days it thunders to the dynamite of dam builders and the roar of construction equipment, some of it widening and paving parts of the wartime trail just inside the border with Vietnam.
For more than a decade, long before construction began last year, the project has been the focus of a different kind of battle, which reflects the region's economic transformation since the war.
It is under vigorous attack from opponents concerned about the destructive effects of dams, both on the balance of nature and on the surrounding population.
Now that it is well under way, critics say a number of important questions about those effects remain to be answered. About 6,000 people will be displaced on the Nakai Plateau, which will be partly flooded, and the livelihoods of at least 100,000 more will be affected downstream.
Those numbers are small compared with an estimated 1 million people who have been displaced by the Three Gorges Dam, which has just begun operations in China.
The dam in Laos, called the Nam Theun 2, has become a test case, the first major dam backed by the World Bank after a self-imposed moratorium in the mid-1990s because of the concern over the environmental and human impact of big dams.
Together with its partner in the project, the Asian Development Bank, it is trying hard to prove that it can meet the social and environmental standards set by its critics.
"If they fail, they will have an identity crisis and will have to rethink their development model," said Jean Foerster, the social and environmental director for the Nam Theun 2 Power Co., which is carrying out the project.
When it is completed four years from now, the dam, on a tributary of the Mekong River, will address two pressing needs. It will feed electricity to energy-hungry Thailand, its far more developed neighbor to the east, and it will instantly become a major source of cash for Laos, one of the poorest countries in Asia.
For the first 25 years of operation, until the dam is turned over entirely to local control, the government will earn an estimated US$2 billion.
"The sustainable development of hydropower is one of the few options the country has for long-term growth and for further reducing poverty," said Haruhiko Kuroda, president of the Asian Development Bank, when the two banks agreed to finance the project last year.
Some critics question even those basic goals, saying Thailand could find other, less disruptive, sources of power and warning that the Laotian government cannot be counted on to use its windfall as promised, for social and economic development.
Supporters say no other dam project has taken such pains to mitigate potential destructive effects. Hundreds of studies have been carried out over the years, examining everything from annual flood patterns to hardy forms of grass for grazing.
"We have recorded all the people having one banana tree," said Bernard Tribollet, the chief executive officer of the Nam Theun 2 Power Co, describing the thorough-ness of the research.
Even if the project falls short of its goals, the developers say, it is a better option than the more destructive, full-throttle approach of countries like China, India and Vietnam.
For a project of that magnitude, though, experimentation, uncertainty and trial-and-error appear to be playing a significant role. The livelihoods of displaced villagers, the effects on downstream rivers, the protection of wildlife and the role of the government are all still works in progress.
"The main issues we are concerned about are the social impact, the environmental impact and then the overall costs and benefits for the people of Laos and the ability of the government of Laos to manage a project as complex and risky as Nam Theun 2," said Aviva Imhof, campaign director at the International Rivers Network, a private monitoring group that opposes dams.
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