Evaluation of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) of Chinese EIA in Myanmar: Myitsone Dam,the Lappadaung Copper Mine and the Sino-Myanmar oil and gas pipelines

The economic relationship between China and Myanmar is regarded as a win–win cooperation. However, Chinese investments, especially in extractive and natural resource sectors, are associated with a number of unwanted environmental consequences. Moreover, the environmental impact assessment (EIA) quality of Chinese enterprises has often been criticized. EIA identifies adverse impacts to the environment through evidence-based decision making. On this basis, this paper provides an evaluation of Chinese EIA performance within the natural resources sector through a structured review of 15 environmental impact statements (EISs). This research also evaluates the EISs of the three largest and most controversial projects, the Myitsone Hydropower Dam, Lappadaung Copper Mine and Sino-Myanmar oil and gas pipelines. The findings reveal several omissions, inadequacies and deficiencies in all the projects with a significant number of EISs falling short of satisfactory quality. Through the analysis, the paper summarizes the factors affecting the EIA performance and proposes feasible recommendations to improve EIA practices in Chinese development projects in Myanmar.     

A three-stage real-time detector for traffic signs in large panoramas

Computational Visual Media - Traffic sign detection is one of the key components in autonomous driving. Advanced autonomous vehicles armed with high quality sensors capture high definition images...