Hundreds of groups join in protest against Ethiopia’s mega-dam
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By Tesfa-Alem Tekle
March 30, 2011 (ADDIS ABABA) - Some 400 organisations from across the
world have signed a petition against the construction of Ethiopia’s
multi-billion dollar Gibe III Dam project, Survival International has
told Sudan Tribune.
JPEG - 15.6 kb
Members of the Karo tribe at the Omo river, on which the Gibe III dam
is being built (www.guardian.co.uk)
In an e-mail exchange Sarah Shenker, researcher at Survival
International, said that the petition had been delivered to Ethiopian
embassies across Europe and the United States on World Water Day.
“We have delivered the petition on 22 March, to Ethiopian embassies or
representatives in France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the UK and the
USA,” she said on Wednesday.
Survival International says construction of the dam will devastate the
fragile ecosystem of the area by altering the seasonal flooding of the
Omo River and reducing its downstream volume, resulting in the drying
out of the land endangering the lives of 500,000 people along the
lower Omo Valley and Kenya’s Lake Turkana.
For these reasons, the group strongly argues construction of the dam
must be halted and funds must stop.
“The Ethiopian government claims that 40% of the dam has been built -
and yet they still have not consulted the Omo Valley tribes - this is
against international standards and in violation of Ethiopian law. If
the Ethiopian government applied its own laws and respected its own
citizens, construction could halt tomorrow”, Shenker said.
“Moreover the government needs to find funding to carry on with the
dam The European Investment Bank and the African Development Bank have
decided against funding the dam.”
Currently, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the Exim
Bank of China are both funding aspects of the project but Ethiopia
still needs to find more money. The Italian government is still
considering whether to fund the dam.
Despite growing outrage from environmental groups, the Ethiopian
government however disagrees on the claims and insists it will
continue the project with or without foreign funds.
Addis Ababa says that the hydroelectric dam will not damage the
environment and the water is only needed to generate electricity and
will not affect its flow.
According to Ethiopian officials, the power generated out of it will
be used for its population and to sell power to neighboring countries,
including Kenya.
Campaigners also argue that the dam could trigger a resource-based
conflict between communities living around the Kenya-Sudan-Ethiopia
border.
Kenya signed a memorandum of understanding with Ethiopia to receive
significant amounts of electricity to be generated by Gibe 3. However,
following sustained campaigning from Kenyan organizations, the Kenyan
government has begun to investigate more carefully the likely impacts
of the dam on Kenyan communities living around Lake Turkana. Part of
the problem with Gibe 3 is that construction began well before any
real studies on the human impact of the dam were carried out - good
information on this is still hard to come by.
‘‘We have received reports that there are some people in the Kenyan
government who are very concerned about Gibe 3 dam and especially the
impacts it will have on Lake Turkana and the peoples in that region.
Last year it announced that it would commission an independent EISA on
the impact of the dam on Lake Turkana”, the researcher said.
“We hope that the Ethiopian government will uphold its own
constitution and hold proper and meaningful consultations with all the
tribal people who will be affected by Gibe 3, as well as heed a
growing body of experts and funders who believe the social and
environmental impacts of Gibe 3 dam outweightoutweigh whatever
benefits it may bring to the nation’’.
According to Shenker , Survival International is not against
industrialization, nor against dams. But she said that such projects
must only happen with the full, free, and prior consent of the people
who will be most affected.
Survival International’s director Stephen Corry said in an email: ‘If
the government dams the Omo Valley tribes’ water and parcels off their
land to outsiders, these peoples may not survive. The government is
pushing industrialization at the ultimate expense of the country’s
most vulnerable peoples.’
Gibe III is located 450km southwest of the capital, Addis Ababa, near
the border with Kenya. It is the largest project of its sort ever to
be implemented in Ethiopia and will be Africa’s tallest and second
largest hydroelectric dam after the Kariba dam on the Zambesi River
between Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Construction of the massive dam was started in 2006 by Italian
company, Salini Costruttori. Some 3,000 Ethiopians and foreigners are
currently engaged in the project. When it goes operational it will
have power generating capacity of 1900MW annually rising the current
power supply in the country to 95%.
(ST)
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