Ethiopia's controversial dam project

The Guardian, March 06,2011
The government faces mounting criticism over the Gibe III dam – for not consulting the communities affected by it and for attempting to silence dissent

There is particular concern over the Gibe III dam being built on the Omo river, the largest infrastructure project in Ethiopian history. Campaigners say it threatens the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people in the South Omo region and around Lake Turkana in Kenya.

The Lower Omo Valley, a Unesco World Heritage Site, is home to agro-pastoralists from eight distinct indigenous groups who depend on the Omo river's annual flood to support riverbank cultivation and grazing lands for livestock.

Launching a new five-year development plan in August last year, the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, vowed to complete the dam "at any cost" and lashed out at Survival International and other critics, saying, "They don't want to see developed Africa; they want us to remain undeveloped and backward to serve their tourists as a museum … These people talk about the hazard of building dams after they have already completed building dams in their country."

However, Peter Bosshard, policy director for International Rivers, one of the groups involved in the campaign against Gibe III(pdf), says that international groups had to speak out because local campaigners had effectively been silenced. He said members of affected communities were not consulted; anybody even suspected of opposing the dam risks suffering serious consequences.

"Accountable governments and public participation in decision-making are key elements of social and economic development," said Bosshard. "The Ethiopian government makes a mockery of these concepts. In the Gibe III dam, the biggest infrastructure project in Ethiopia's history, any participation by the affected people has been suppressed, and any dissenters risk arrest or worse.

"Western governments have found themselves on the wrong side of history in the revolutions in the Middle East, and should start paying more attention to the respect for good governance and basic civil rights in their development assistance."

Ikal Angelei, director of the Kenyan charity Friends of Lake Turkana, believes the dam also threatens the existence of communities living around the lake – which is fed by the Omo river – most of whom are residents of Kenya. Describing the dam as "the most outrageous social injustice of our time", she insists a comprehensive impact assessment is required, "capturing the entire Omo river, both in Kenya and Ethiopia, and its effects on the hydrology of Lake Turkana as well as the entire ecosystem".

Last month saw protests outside the Chinese embassy in Nairobi, with campaigners calling on Beijing to halt funding for the scheme. Angelei says the Nairobi government is divided on the issue, but that at least protests are legal in Kenya, unlike in Ethiopia, and she urges donors to heed Human Rights Watch's concerns that "funds given to Ethiopia are not used to oppress its people".

One activist from the Nyangatom people living on the borders of Ethiopia and Sudan recently said: "My mother and father live on the Omo river. If the water is gone they will not have enough food. If they are hungry then I worry about them.

Maybe they will move to Sudan, and maybe I too will leave Ethiopia. They don't want money or electricity, they only think of their cattle. They are being pushed out by these government plans. The dam is not useful to the Nyangatom people. The Nyangatom and other people in South Omo won't benefit, only the government will benefit. The Nyangatom are the victims of the dam."

Although progress on Gibe III has been considerably delayed by funding constraints, China signed a memorandum of understanding last year to finance construction on another mega dam on the Omo, Gibe IV, and plans further dams on the Blue Nile as well.

Ethiopia's plans for constructing dams on the Nile have traditionally met with robust opposition from Egypt, which has tried to maintain control of more than half of the Nile's flow through the colonial era Nile Waters Agreement, as well as through threats of armed force.

Perhaps reflecting Cairo's recent decline as regional strongman, Burundi last week joined five other upstream nations in the new Nile Basin Initiative, creating the two-thirds majority of riverine states required to put the new treaty into force, and thereby effectively wresting control of the Nile waters from Egypt and Sudan. It threatens Egypt's right to 55.5bn cubic metres annually, conferred by the previous agreement.

Control of the Nile waters is further complicated by the imminent independence of southern Sudan, whose proportion of the 14.5bn cubic meters allotted to Sudan each year still has to be decided, as has its membership of the new initiative, although it is likely to join its fellow upstream states.

Protestors from the Stop Gibe III campaign have arranged a further day of action picketing Ethiopian embassies across Europe on 22 March to coincide with World Water Day.

With Ethiopia due to become the leading recipient of bilateral UK development assistance, following last week's review of Britain's aid expenditure there is mounting criticism of its government's rush to extend its hydroelectric programme and lease out large tracts of newly irrigated land to foreign investors without full consultation of communities affected by the schemes.