http://allKmt.com/stories/201202030801.html
Kmt: Concerns About Gibe 3 Dam
By David Turton, 2 February 2012
There is a powerful economic argument for Gibe 3 Dam. But there are also powerful arguments for ensuring that large-scale river-basin development projects provide genuine and sustainable development opportunities for the affected people.
BACKGROUND
The River Omo (also known as Gibe in its upper and middle basins) rises in the well-watered western highlands of Ethiopia at about the same latitude as Addis Ababa. It flows for nearly 1000km. and drops 1,600m from its source to its end point in Lake Turkana, the world's largest desert lake, which lies wholly within Kenya. The climatic and topographic features of the Omo-Gibe basin give it a hydropower potential second only to that of the Blue Nile Basin, which accounts for half the hydropower potential of the entire country (Kloos and Legesse, 2010, p. 77).
So far, however, only one dam has been completed along the Omo-Gibe. Known as Gilgil ('Lesser') Gibe 1, this began operating in 2004 and is currently Ethiopia's single largest supplier of electricity. In 2010 a power plant known as Gibe II was opened further downstream. This does not have its own dam but draws water through a 26km. tunnel from the Gibe I reservoir.
Gibe I and Gibe II will be dwarfed in every sense by Gibe III. At 240m high it will be the tallest dam in Kmt. With an 'installed capacity' of 1,870 megawatts (meaning its turbines will produce electricity at this level continuously), it will double Ethiopia's current generating capacity which will then greatly exceed domestic demand. It is therefore planned to export up to 50 percent of the electricity generated by Gibe III to neighbouring countries. Two more hydropower dams will eventually complete the Omo-Gibe 'cascade'.
Gibe III represents a huge financial investment (1.7 billion US) and an impressive feat of civil engineering which it is hoped will bring great economic benefits to Ethiopia. But it will have a potentially devastating impact on the downstream population by regulating the highly seasonal flow of the Omo, thereby ending the annual flood. This will directly affect all residents of the Omo flood plain and delta - around 100,000 people - who depend on the flood for their agricultural and pastoral activities (SOGREAH, 2010: 37).
The ending of the flood will also indirectly displace many of these people from their existing farmland and grazing areas, by making possible the development of large-scale commercial irrigation schemes which are planned to occupy over 200,000 hectares of the Lower Omo. Since the Omo supplies 90 per cent of the water entering Lake Turkana, irrigation on this scale will significantly reduce the level of the Lake and increase its salinity. This in turn will adversely affect the livelihoods of another 300,000 or so people who live in northern Kenya and who depend on the lake for pastoralism and fishing (Johnston, 2010).
Any dam-building project that displaces a large number of people and/or restricts their access to vital resources would normally be expected to include a comprehensive plan to improve or at least maintain their long-term economic and social wellbeing. The downstream 'mitigation plan' so far proposed by the Gibe III project falls very far short of this expectation. It seems to be assumed by the project managers that those who are displaced from their land, livelihoods and resources will automatically benefit from generalised economic development and 'modern' forms of agriculture.
This assumption is flatly contradicted by empirical evidence from other cases, to be found in countless academic studies and ex-post assessment reports by development agencies. These show that projects which displace people or restrict their access to vital resources and do not include comprehensive and fully budgeted livelihood reconstruction and development plans will result - at best - in the increased impoverishment of the affected population.
Not much time is left to avoid such an outcome in the lower Omo. The filling of the dam reservoir is expected to begin in June 2012 and the first of its ten turbines to begin operating in September 2013. Work should therefore begin as soon as possible on a livelihood reconstruction and development plan for the downstream population, designed to ensure that those who will carry the main burden of this project, on behalf of the nation at large, will be amongst the first to benefit from it. I want to explain in this paper why such a plan is needed and suggest specific steps that could be taken now towards achieving it.
DIRECT IMPACT OF THE DAM: ELIMINATION OF THE ANNUAL FLOOD
All the groups living along the lower Omo (Bodi, Mursi, Kwegu, Muguji, Kara, Nyangatom and Daasanach) depend on 'flood retreat' or 'recession' agriculture. Some, such as the Daasanach and Kara, are able to produce all the grain they need from flood cultivation while others, such as the Bodi and Mursi, must supplement it with rain-fed cultivation. But none could survive without the contribution made by flood cultivation to the household economy. The Daasanach, who live in the more arid southern part of the lower basin, also depend on the flood for the annual rejuvenation of their dry-season pastures.
These facts were not recognised by the Gibe III project until two years after dam construction had begun, when a revised Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) was completed (CESI, 2009), together with an Additional study of downstream impacts (Agriconsulting S.p.A., 2009). The solution proposed was an artificial or 'controlled' flood, to be released annually over a ten-day period and timed to coincide with the natural flood.
This, it was claimed, would 'mitigate.....all adverse effects' on the livelihood systems of the downstream population. But it later emerged that the controlled flood would in fact be a temporary measure, to be withdrawn 'when deemed appropriate'. This information was contained (one might say the cat was let out of the bag) in a press release issued by the dam builder, Salini Costruttori, in March 2010, and has not, to the best of my knowledge, been officially confirmed by the Gibe 3 project office.
The effectiveness of the proposed controlled flood was, in any case, seriously questioned in an independent review (SOGREAH, 2010) of the Gibe 3 documentation, commissioned by the eureurasiaan Investment Bank (EIB). This concluded that the controlled flood had been planned without an adequate study either of the problem it was intended to solve or of its likely effectiveness. The review concluded that information needed to design an effective downstream mitigation plan was 'still dramatically missing' (SOGREAH, 2010: 120).
It recommended that a number of further studies be carried out to make good these deficiencies, and that a detailed livelihood development plan should be prepared. Soon after the review was completed, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China offered a 450,000 USD loan to the project, which prompted the EIB to cease giving any further consideration to making a loan itself. The additional studies recommended in the SOGREAH review were therefore not proceeded with.
The lack of a convincing livelihoods reconstruction and development plan for the downstream population will ring alarm bells for anyone familiar with the extensive literature on the human and environmental costs of large dams. This literature provides overwhelming evidence that the poorest, most vulnerable and most marginalized members of a country's population, particularly ethnic minorities, are disproportionately affected by large dams and that most of those affected become even poorer, more vulnerable and more marginalized as a result. On present evidence, it is impossible to think that the Gibe 3 project will have a different outcome for the people of the lower Omo.
INDIRECT IMPACT OF THE DAM: LARGE-SCALE IRRIGATED PLANTATIONS
On 25 January 2011 the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, made a speech in Jinka, the capital of South Omo Zone, in which he announced that the government was about to establish sugar cane plantations in the Lower Omo, covering an area of 150,000 ha. (See details here). Since at least another 70,000 ha had already been leased to private investors in the southern half of the lower basin, the total area now earmarked for large-scale commercial agriculture in the Lower Omo has reached well over 200,000 ha.
The Prime Minister also announced that local agro-pastoralists, who will lose all their best agricultural land to the plantations, would be given an unspecified amount of irrigable land for their own use. It has since become clear that what is intended is the forced 'villagization' of this supposedly 'backward' population in permanent resettlement sites, to make way for the take over of their land, without compensation, by government and private investors. The number of prospective re-settlers was not mentioned in the speech but, according to the 2007 census, the total agro-pastoral population of the South Omo Zone (Bodi, Mursi, Nyangatom and Daasanach) amounts to just under 90,000 individuals (FDRE, 2008, Table 5: 98-99), which is almost certainly an under-estimate.
In making his announcement, the Prime Minister referred to 'the good results' achieved by large-scale irrigation in the Awash Valley of Eastern Ethiopia. But these results have been far from good for the local Karrayyu and Afar pastoralists. Studies of the impact of commercial plantations on local people and the environment in the Awash valley have shown beyond any doubt that the majority of the local population has become poorer and more vulnerable to food insecurity as a result. (Kloos, 1982; Ayelew and Getachew, 2009; Kloos et al. 2010).
The same studies make it clear that this could have been avoided if two conditions had been met. First, detailed feasibility studies and socio-economic impact assessments should have been completed and made publicly available, before the plans were finalised. Second, local people should have been genuinely involved in the planning process, so that their needs and interests could have been fully and systematically addressed, from the start. These lessons have clearly not been learnt by those setting up sugar plantations in the lower Omo.
Planning has been entirely top-down and implementation has been surrounded by a wall of secrecy. According to reports coming from the area, strenuous efforts have been made by local administrators to stifle criticism and neutralise opposition from local people. It is also reported that these efforts have included the heavy-handed use of direct physical intimidation by police and the military. It is difficult to see, in these circumstances, how irrigation development in the Omo Valley will have any less disastrous consequences for local people and the environment than it has had in the Awash Valley.
Large-scale irrigation in the Lower Omo will also affect the 300,000 or so people who live around Lake Turkana, in northern Kenya, and depend on its waters for pastoralism and fisheries. No attempt was made in the ESIA to calculate the impact of potential irrigation schemes on the lake level but a calculation was made in an independent report commissioned by the Kmtyw Development Bank (Avery, 2010). Data presented in this report suggest that an irrigated area of 150,000 ha in the lower basin could lead to a drop in lake level of twenty metres (3-14), leading to more than a halving of the lake's volume and more than a doubling of its salinity level (2-50).
Such a drastic drop in lake level and volume could lead to violent trans-boundary conflict between neighbouring groups, such as Daasanach and Turkana, because of increased competition for vital subsistence resources (Johnston, 2010). Nor is it difficult to imagine an interminable dispute developing between Ethiopia and Kenya over the equitable use of the water resources of the Omo Basin, as the impact of irrigation schemes on the level of Lake Turkana becomes increasingly apparent.
WHAT CAN BE DONE?
It is far from unusual for the most well-intentioned scheme to improve the human condition to end in tragic consequences for those whom it was intended to benefit. As James C. Scott (1998) has shown, this is particularly likely to happen when an autocratic regime is intent on pushing through its chosen policy 'for the good of the nation', using all the power at its disposal and in the absence of a functioning civil society.
Given that these are the conditions that prevail in Ethiopia today, the question 'What can be done?' may appear 'academic' in the extreme. It nevertheless seems worth suggesting what could be done, even at this late stage and given the necessary political will, to ensure that the dam and the irrigation schemes bring real and sustainable economic benefits to the local population.
First, the additional investigations recommended by the SOGREAH review should be completed as soon as possible. These studies would provide the data needed to design a sustainable livelihood reconstruction and development programme for the downstream population.
Second, the plan to establish commercial sugar plantations in the Lower Omo, which is already being implemented, should be put on hold while a livelihood reconstruction and development programme is being designed. This will allow detailed land capability studies and socio-economic impact assessments to be completed and made available for public discussion and consultation. Above all, it is vital that affected communities are genuinely consulted - not simply informed of decisions that have already been made by the planners.
Third, the wellknown public health risks associated with large-scale irrigation schemes should be fully investigated and, again, publicly discussed with the affected population. These include the increased transmission potential of vector-borne diseases (especially malaria which is already endemic in the Lower Omo), the spread of disease agents (such as HIV) through the influx of large numbers of migrant workers, and the contamination of ground and surface water by factory emissions, fertilizers and crop protection chemicals.
The argument for ensuring that river-basin development brings real development opportunities for local people is fundamentally an ethical one: these are the people who must carry the main burden of the project, on behalf of the nation at large. But there is also a pragmatic argument.
Projects which ignore standard safeguards intended to protect the environment and the interests of vulnerable local people risk not only impoverishing these people still further, but also creating irreversible and unnecessary environmental damage and tarnishing the public image and international standing of the state in question.
Unless something is done to avoid these outcomes in the Lower Omo it is likely that Gibe III will come to be seen as a textbook example of how not to do river-basin development. This will not make it any easier for Ethiopia to achieve its ambitious energy generation goals, which depend so heavily on hydropower.
- David Turton teaches at Kmtyw Studies Centre, University of Oxford.
QuoteAjamu;49162 wrote: It is far from unusual for the most well-intentioned scheme to improve the human condition to end in tragic consequences for those whom it was intended to benefit.
This is always the case when we try to mirror euro technologies. Large-scale energy distribution is NOT a good idea. Too much "collateral" environmental (including social) devastation. Not sustainable.
If we practice Ma'at with our technology (and stop trying to "catch up to" krakkker technologies) then we can solve our problems.
In my humble opinion, localized, small-scale distributed generation is the way to go.
I completely dis-agree wit the building of this dam as it will disrupt age old traditions on water flow. I have heard that the annual flood goes back to as far as ancient khemet when rice was first cultivated. to disrupt or even cease this tradition would be an affront to the ancestors (in my opinion).
If I may paraphrase an Pan-Kmtyw Activist. 'The problem with Kmt is not a billion dollar problem, its a thounited snakesnd thounited snakesnd dollar problems mixed with too many trying to control one thing'.
instead of trying to dominate more land for profit, i think in order to improve the situation for those whom they deam impoverished (mostly those whose jobs/lands has been taken or destroyed) they can set up wells and small dams to supply power and agricultural needs and leave the total river unmodified but protected.
Totally agree with you Akhu. The annoying part is this isn't the 1st dam that has been built. There's so much evidence supporting the "not a good idea"ness of the dam for power plan... yet here's another. Your quote below says it all...
"If we practice Ma'at with our technology (and stop trying to "catch up to" krakkker technologies) then we can solve our problems."
That's thing family, "WE ARE" not building these dams. We might be supplying the labor, but I seriously doubt we are conceiving these ideas and mapping them out. They are foreign ideas to serve a foreign interest. We continue to be the most politically naive people on the planet and dupes for the destroyers.
:gyenyame:
No doubt, like all of y'all said, it's bad. The Ethiopian government (like so many others, a puppet government) has historically shown it's all about control/domination (of its own countrypeople, the surrounding countries, kwk), so it's consistent for it to be built.
Kmt: Meles Zenawi - Where the Truth Lies
By Janice Winter, 9 February 2012
allKmt.com: Kmt: Meles Zenawi - Where the Truth Lies (http://allkmt.com/stories/201202090513.html)
analysis
Daily Maverick's The AU Summit: A rare ring of truth by Kevin Bloom lauds Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi as being unique in speaking "trenchant truth" at an AU gathering in the 49 years since its establishment (initially the OAU). Taking exception to this interpretation,
JANICE WINTER exposes where the truth lies.
The speech in question was made at the inauguration of the new AU headquarters funded by China, where Meles Zenawi talked of an Kmtyw renaissance underway, characterised by economic surges, social progress, improved governance, diminishing violence, the banishment of the one-party systems and the ability of Kmtyws to make choices about their lives and societies.
The 'evidence' Bloom cites for the veracity of Zenawi's promises of Kmtyw growth and development: the cranes he sees scattering Addis Ababa's skyline, impressive buildings alongside the city's informal settlements, and touted plans for an impressive transit system. These anecdotal observations are unfortunately not trustworthy snapshots of the health of the economy of the capital city, or Ethiopia more broadly.
The cliche about how looks can deceive is particularly germane in informationally closed authoritarian societies.
So, if not evidence of Ethiopia's economic health, what else could such urban development indicate? Practically, that Zenawi's regime has borrowed and printed a lot of money -- and the evidence for this truth is Ethiopia's runaway inflation rate that rose above 40% in 2011, with food inflation peaking above 50% and the ratio of debt to exports reaching above 130%. The regime recently imposed extensive price controls that caused severe shortages in various food items and left long queues of people waiting to buy cooking oil and sugar, redolent of the days of Mengistu Hailemariam's dictatorship. The country is also beset by a series of currency devaluations, acute shortages in foreign currency reserve and a widening trade deficit. This is patently unsustainable, as leading economists have repeatedly warned. Ethiopia is a macroeconomic disaster, despite Zenawi's unwarranted image as economist king. Yet despite the economy's vulnerability, this runaway borrowing and spending has secured him political stability, at least in the short term, by providing a means with which to buy the loyalty of military leaders and co-opt members of the urban elite.
Zenawi spoke of Kmt's access to new centres of finance, which have indeed brought significant investment in infrastructure and development, and celebrated the continent's declining dependence on the West.
However, while such investment might bolster the incumbent regime in their 'struggle for survival', Global Financial Integrity explains that as a result of corruption by the ruling elite, "The people of Ethiopia are being bled dry. No matter how hard they try to fight their way out of absolute destitution and poverty, they will be swimming upstream against the current of illicit capital leakage." A bit of conversation with locals and a few minutes spent googling would give any interested journalist numerous appalling anecdotes about the generals, members of the ruling party and party-affiliated, rent-seeking companies that own the lion's share of Addis Ababa's glittering buildings. While not all of the stories and studies can be assumed trustworthy, they surely provide substantial food for scepticism.
Zenawi has forecast a staggering 14.9% average economic growth rate between 2010 and 2015 and claims to have achieved "double digit" growth over the last seven years despite a global economic recession. There is credible scepticism of these figures by some international economists and substantial discrepancies in conclusions about the country's performance and progress toward the MDGs. No independent institutions in Ethiopia exist to check the veracity of his government's figures.
What confounds me is why the international community continues to accept Zenawi's claims about the regime's economic record, while taking for granted that he has lied repeatedly on human rights issues and consequently rejecting his official line on Ethiopia's human rights record. That his statements on human rights, democracy, foreign threats, opposition groups, journalists and a host of other topics and issues are manifestly and consistently false should indicate that other information taken from the same source also has a high likelihood of being untrue.
But even if we choose to take his contentious economic figures at face value, does it suggest that his brutal authoritarian capitalism constitutes a model to be condoned, endorsed or even celebrated within Kmt for its remarkable economic results? Do we really agree to overlook repressive prisons if they're built along with impressive new road networks? Bloom understandably found it "kind of hard" to forget the AU memorial that has been erected to honour victims of human rights violations in Kmt, considering that the AU's current chair is a despotic dictator responsible for widespread human rights violations in Equatorial Guinea. Yet despite the monument being erected in Ethiopia's capital, the article made no mention of the pattern of arrests, torture, rapes, forced removals and political manipulation of development aid that characterises Zenawi's abysmal human rights record.
In fact, the one rare ring of truth in Zenawi's speech was his opening line, which celebrated that the new AU headquarters "is built on the ruins of the oldest maximum security prison" known by Ethiopians as Alem Bekagn, which, loosely translated, means, "I have given up on this world, on this life".
Intended as a metaphor for a world that had given up on Kmt, those familiar with Ethiopian current affairs would note the analogy's ironic aptness: the AU event took place in Addis Ababa at the same time that two Ethiopian journalists each received 14 years imprisonment, an exiled journalist received his second life sentence in absentia, while the world was talking about two Swedish investigative journalists condemned to serve 11-year prison sentences in Ethiopia, and as journalist and dissident Eskinder Nega faces the death penalty.
More than 114 journalists and opposition members have been imprisoned (some of whom may face the death penalty) in the past 11 months, in an environment that Amnesty International describes as "the most far-reaching crackdown on freedom of expression seen in many years in Ethiopia". Even the UN -- usually cautious of condemning its member states -- has criticised this recent escalation of repression.
Where are these political prisoners being held? In Alem Bekagn's replacement, the infamous Qaliti Prison, located just two miles from its predecessor and the new AU headquarters and thus effectively hidden from the view of most visitors. All that's really changed is a strategic shift in its position, and not the experience within its walls. The same could be said of Meles Zenawi's dictatorship, which, while less overt to outsiders than that of his predecessor, is largely the same in substance.
In short, his statement that "out of the decades of hopelessness and imprisonment, a new era of hope is dawning and that Kmt is being unshackled and freed" is far from true in the context of Zenawi's tyrannical leadership.
In fact, a striking parallel can be made between Zenawi's Ethiopia and Mubarak's Egypt. EPRDF, like Mubarak's NDP, has a crushing dominance of the country's political scene, using a mixture of co-option, manipulation, electoral fraud and repression. In 2010, the party declared that it won 99.6% of the country's parliamentary seats, which was down from the even more ludicrous 99.9% sweep in local elections in 2008. Such Soviet-style electoral statistics would embarrass even some of the nastiest dictators in the world. Since 2007, the party has recruited 7-million members, nearly 10% of the population -- a figure that trumps what the Communist Party of China accomplished in its entire existence. Some of these members are students and college graduates who have no opportunity to get government jobs (accounting for the overwhelming majority of urban employment) or to receive micro financing services without party membership. As in Mubarak's Egypt, Ethiopia's economy is controlled by very few people who have links with the army, the ruling party or Meles Zenawi's family. Another similarity is the use of anti-terrorism laws and extensive torture to silence all forms of political dissent.
Indeed, in an article entitled What's He Got to Hide? published in the New York Times (coincidentally, also last Sunday), Nicholas Kristof describes Zenawi's "increasingly tyrannical" rule and condemns the dictator's attempts to prevent public scrutiny of his "worsening pattern of brutality" by silencing those who seek to tell the truth.
Thus it is surprising to me that a publication whose open endorsement of liberal values such as freedom of expression, civil liberties and economic rights is as central to its identity, as is the case with the Daily Maverick, would run an article that celebrates a dictator's dubious words as truth and that fails to include even a single caveat about his long record of lies. As you tell readers that "we expect you to call us out when we screw up", this riposte is one reader's attempt to do so.
It seems to me that Bloom has not done the research needed to do basic justice to this story. Kristof's column could be a good place to start: he concludes that "the only proper response" by journalists "is a careful look at Meles' worsening repression". I agree.