The article does feel a bit like propaganda. Environmental groups are notorious in the region for being used as political instruments to halt all manner of cons

The article does feel a bit like propaganda. Environmental groups are notorious in the region for being used as political instruments to halt all manner of construction. When a new road is to be built, you’ll have environmental agitators coming out of the woodwork claiming that the road would cross a newly discovered frog habitat and that it would lead to the deaths of many frogs trying to cross the road. Never mind that there are ways to manage even those situations. The important thing is to weigh the human benefits against the overall negative impacts of a project. Environmental extremism generally smacks of foreign interests trying to keep the status quo and the region from flourishing economically and thus competing with them, or at least making things economically inconvenient. There is quite a history of such self-serving foreign meddling that involves patronizing appeals to all manner of fashionable sentiment, hence my skepticism.