Panel of Environmental and Social Experts for the Nam Theun 2 Hydropower Project The Panel of Environmental and Social Experts (POE) weighs the social and environmental costs of the Nam Theun 2 Hydropower Project against the potential benefits of the project. In its yearly to biyearly reports, the Panel makes recommendations to minimize the project's negative externalities and maximize the positive effects. Along with other groups, including NGOs, the Panel provides oversight to the dam project and provided the initial social and environmental reasoning for the dam's creation. Despite its goals, it has received allegations from scholars and NGOs. Overview of the Project The Nam Theun 2 Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Nam Theun River in Laos. Before the commercial operations of the plant began in March 2010, the World Bank along with other investors conducted various tests of the projects social, environmental, and economic impacts. The project had to divert water from the Nam Theun River, a tributary of the larger Mekong River, to the Xe Bang Fai River in order to create an elevation difference so that the gravity dam would function. By damming the river, the project made fundamental changes to the biodiversity and the indigenous communities of the area. Although accounts vary dramatically, many agree that approximately 6,200 indigenous people living on the Nakai Plateau have been resettled to make way for this project. Additionally, more than 110,000 people downstream, who depend on the Xe Bang Fai and Nam Theun rivers for their livelihoods, have been directly affected by the project, due to destruction of fisheries, flooding of riverbank gardens and water quality problems. Reason for the POE's Existence During the 1990s, the World Bank received criticism for merely doing engineering and economic assessments of the proposed projects thereby dismissing the significance or reliability of social or environmental issues. The POE is one of many aspects of the multi-layered environmental and social monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, which advise the Nam Theun 2 project. In the 1995, World Bank President James Wolfensohn canceled the Arun 3 dam in Nepal after receiving claims that the feasibility studies conducted for the project ignored the strong likelihood of negative ecological and social effects. Goldman labels this phenomenon the “Narmada effect” in which the Bank staff remind themselves that they must “reform or die” in order to continue their development projects. This effect also relates to the growing interest