by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 9, 2013 | Indigenous Autonomy, Obstruction & Occupation
By Agence France-Presse
A Malaysian state minister Friday said the government would not push ahead with building a dozen new dams on Borneo island, acknowledging they have caused outrage from local tribes and environmentalists.
The proposals sparked fears that the dams would destroy pristine rainforests, endanger wildlife, and displace natives in Sarawak, a Malaysian state crossed by powerful rivers with rich jungle habitats.
“It is not a firm plan to build 12 dams. I don’t think we will need that. We will only need four,” James Masing, Sarawak’s state minister of land development, told AFP in an interview.
Masing said the government was backing off in response to widespread criticism. Protests over the years have seen activists and locals staging blockades of roads into dam areas.
“I’m pleased that this type of thing (protests) takes place. Not all that we do is correct, and this shows we need to refine our plans and think again,” he said.
The now-complete Bakun mega-dam, which is not part of the new dam proposal, has already been dogged for years by claims of corruption in construction contracts, the flooding of a huge swathe of rainforest and the displacement of thousands of tribespeople.
Despite that, the government mooted constructing more dams as part of an industrial development drive to boost the resource-rich state’s backward economy.
Another dam at Murum, also deep in the interior, is nearing completion and two others are in the planning stages as part of the new proposal.
Together the four dams — at Bakun, Murum, Baleh and Baram — are already expected to put out nearly 6,000 megawatts of power, six times what Sarawak currently uses, Masing said.
“The protests are becoming more vocal on the ground so (the dam rethink) is a very good development for me,” said Peter Kallang, member of a Sarawak tribe and chairman of SAVE Rivers, an NGO that has campaigned against the dams.
However, he said plans for the Baram and Baleh dams should be scrapped as well, noting that the Baram dam would displace about 20,000 people, compared to about 10,000 at Bakun, and destroy irreplaceable forest.
He said SAVE Rivers last month organised a floating protest along the Baram river that cruised down river for three days and was met with support along the way by local tribespeople.
Kallang and other activists have also travelled abroad to lobby against the dams, including meeting officials of Hydro Tasmania, an Australian corporation that advises the Sarawak government on the dams.
The Tasmania government corporation pledged in December after meeting the activists that it would pull its personnel out of Sarawak by the end of 2013, Kallang said.
Sarawak’s tribes — ethnically distinct from Malaysia’s majority Malays — fear that they will lose their ancestral lands and hunting and burial grounds, as the government encourages them to make way for projects and move into new settlements.
Those are equipped with medical clinics, electricity, and Internet access. But village elders and activists say alcoholism, drug use, and crime are on the increase and anger is rising over continuing encroachment on native lands.
In one of the blockades in 2011, Penan tribespeople blocked roads into their lands for a week to protest logging and alleged river pollution by Malaysian firm Interhill until the blockade was dismantled by authorities.
Read more from Global Post
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 7, 2013 | Agriculture, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy
By John Vidal / The Guardian
Human rights abuses in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo valley are said to be rampant, with tribal leaders imprisoned, dozens of people killed and troops cracking down on dissent ahead of the building of a massive dam, which is forcing the relocation of some of the most remote tribes in Africa.
The valley, a Unesco world heritage site renowned for its isolated cultures and ethnic groups, is home to 200,000 pastoralist farmers including the Kwegu, Bodi, Mutsi and Nyangatom tribes. These groups all depend on the Omo river, which flows through their traditional land on its way to Lake Turkana in Kenya.
But their way of life, which has remained largely unchanged in thousands of years, is now being devastated by the Ethiopian government’s plans to turn the Omo valley into a powerhouse of large commercial farming. Malaysian, Indian and other foreign companies have been allocated vast areas of land and water resources to grow palm oils, cereals and other crops.
So far, says US-based Oakland Institute in a new report, 445,000 hectares (1.1m acres) have been earmarked for plantations, which will be irrigated by the $2bn (about £1.3bn) Gibe dam. This is expected to eventually double the energy capacity of Ethiopia, storing water in a large lake that will feed irrigation projects.
More than 2,000 soldiers are said to have been drafted into the area downstream of the dam and most of the Omo valley is now off limits to foreigners. But evidence collected in the last few months by an Oakland researcher, suggests that relocations, killings and repression are now common.
“I was walking peacefully in my field when soldiers began shooting me for no good reason. I was shot with a bullet in my knee. That day 11 people were killed and the soldiers threw four bodies off Dima village bridge. They were eaten by hyenas,” one man said.
“Here in Koka, the roads that we the Suri people have built were destroyed by the plantation’s trucks. Nothing is done to help us,” said another. “They diverted the water to their fields and there is nothing left for us to drink. We have no choice but to go to the mountains. It is dangerous now.”
The report is impossible to verify, but it reinforces other accounts of human rights violations in the area.
The government, which denies human rights abuses, claims that 150,000 jobs will be created by the plantations, but the Oakland researcher could find little evidence of people employed.
“In Suri, the government is said to have cleared much of the grass and trees to allow the Malaysian investors to establish their plantations. Water has been diverted leaving the Suri with nothing for their cattle,” says the report.
“Entire families had to leave their land. The elderly could often not walk any more, they were suffering so badly. We are threatened by famine, we have less milk, less maize. Without good pastures we are nothing. The military hunts us so we flee into the forest,” one tribesman said.
According to Kenyan NGO Friends of Lake Turkana, more than 60 Suri people were killed last May. “Following the violation of their rights, the Suri took arms an engaged the government forces. The government killed 54 Suri in the marketplace in Maji; it is estimated that 65 people died in the massacre. Suri people are being arrested randomly and sentenced to 18, 20 and 25 years in prison for obscure crimes.
According to the report, every bulldozer operated by a Malaysian plantation company is now guarded by several soldiers. This follows the alleged killing of 17 people near the plantation in October 2012.
“Four Suri chiefs were thrown into prison in August. Visits are forbidden,” one Suri tribesman told the researcher, who has asked to remain anonymous. “We fear the worst.”
From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/feb/07/ethiopian-dam-project-devastating-remote-tribes
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 10, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay
A new report by the NGO, International Rivers, takes an in-depth look at the role China is playing in building mega-dams worldwide. According to the report, Chinese companies are involved in 308 hydroelectric projects across 70 nations. While dams are often billed as “green energy,” they can have massive ecological impacts on rivers, raise local conflict, and even expel significant levels of greenhouse gases when built in the tropics.
“The Chinese state owned Sinohydro Corporation is now the largest hydropower company in the world. Many Chinese companies involved in the construction of large hydropower projects such as the Three Gorges Dam are now taking the lead role in new hydropower projects around the world,” reads the report which adds that “the China Export-Import Bank (China Exim Bank) has become a major funder of large dams.”
Nearly half of the dams in question are planned for Southeast Asia, while 28 percent are planned for Africa and 8 percent for Latin America. Since 2008, the number of dams that the Chinese are involved in has grown by 300 percent. Yet many of these projects lack any or stringent environmental and social policies.
“Few Chinese dam builders and financiers have adopted environmental policies in line with international standards,” the report notes, adding that Chinese companies have been involved with building notorious dams, such as the Gibe III in Ethiopia, the Bukan Dam in Malaysia, the Myitsone Dam in Myanmar, and the Merowe Dam in Sudan.
For example, over 50,000 people were forcibly moved in order to build the Merowe Dam. According to the report, the Sudan government “brutally oppressed any protests. Several people were killed and many more were injured in crack-downs by the security forces.”
A number of Chinese-financed dams have faced local and global resistance. Progress has been made in some cases: this year the Sinohydro Corporation has adopted its first ever environmental policy.
“Among other provisions, the world’s biggest hydropower company commits to fully comply with applicable laws on all levels, adopt all World Bank safeguard policies, respect ‘no go’ zones including national parks and World heritage sites, conduct an open dialogue with local communities and NGOs, and create complaint mechanisms for all of its projects,” according to the report.
Still International Rivers warns that “environmental policies are only as good as their implementation on the ground. This will be the next great challenge for Sinohydro.”
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 14, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Protests & Symbolic Acts
By Daniela Pastrana / Inter Press Service
“What do we stand to lose because of the dam? We will lose everything!” said Maria Abigail Agredani, a member of the committee for this indigenous community in the western Mexican state of Jalisco, reporting the damage that will be caused by the hydroelectric complex being built nearby.
“We will lose the right to life, our culture, traditions, peace, happiness and freedom, our burial sites and our dead, the square, the Christ of Temaca that we love so much, the Agave temacapulinensis plant, the Verde river and 14 centuries of our people’s history,” said Agredani.
She is a member of the movement to “Save Temacapulín, Acasico and Palmarejo,” small towns that will be completely submerged if the El Zapotillo dam is completed.
Temacapulín, a town of 1,500 people in a kind of bowl surrounded by four hills, hosted a pre-hearing this week about dams by the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT), which has held sessions in this country since October 2011.
After listening to the testimonies of people from nine communities that have fought the construction of hydropower complexes in five of the country’s provinces, the members of the PPT issued their verdict Wednesday Nov. 8, condemning the Mexican government and demanding the definitive cancellation of all the hydroelectric megaprojects.
“In no case has the right to consulting with and providing information to the affected communities been respected,” said one of the tribunal judges, Monti Aguirre, as she read out the verdict, which maintains that the procedures have been characterised by “systematic and continued violation of individual and collective economic, social and cultural rights of individuals and communities under threat.”
The PPT was founded in 1979 in the Italian city of Bologna, inspired by Lellio Basso, a lawyer and political leader. It is an international ethical tribunal that seeks to try cases in which crimes against humanity are denounced. Although its rulings are non-binding, they carry moral weight.
The Mexican PPT will conclude its work in 2014, at a final hearing which will review the verdicts of all the pre-hearings held during three years of trials of the Mexican state, on issues such as the dirty war and human rights, migration and forced displacement, femicide (gender-related murder) and gender violence, and workers’ rights.
Its work also includes matters related to attacks on maize and food sovereignty, environmental destruction, disinformation, censorship and violence against journalists.
At this pre-hearing about dams, which is included in the panel on environmental destruction, Miloon Kothari of India, a former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, and Professor Carlos Bernardo Vainer of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, were invited to act as international judges.
Maude Barlow, a Canadian activist for the right to water, and Monti Aguirre, the Latin America programme coordinator for International Rivers, were also invited.
Local experts Francisco López Bárcenas, an indigenous rights lawyer, Luis Daniel Vázquez, coordinator of the doctoral programme in social sciences at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, and Patricia Ávila of the Ecosystems Research Centre at the National Autonomous University of Mexico also served on the PPT.
In an interview with IPS, Vainer emphasised that a constant feature of complaints from these communities is the lack of information and consultation, and indeed even disinformation that appears to be premeditated on the part of the federal government.
“People are not given adequate, timely information. This seems to be a general complaint,” he said.
The problem, he said, is how each of these cases is connected with the global market. He noted that the links between the dam-building industry and large energy-consuming industries with the financial sector result in emerging economies importing technologically obsolete projects in their efforts to develop.
“To supply people’s energy needs, large dams are not needed, because megaprojects do not serve local development but industrial centres. But how much is energy worth, and what is the value of a nation, a culture or a people? There is no possible comparison,” he said.
In the view of López Bárcenas, the pre-hearing clearly established that the outgoing Mexican government of conservative President Felipe Calderón is “plundering communities” and granting concessions for exploiting natural resources to powerful groups.
“Public policies are promoting the stripping of resources, not the development of communities, and those resources are passed on to other sectors, like mining, hydropower, wind farms and tourism,” he said.
One of the most worrying cases presented at the pre-hearing was that of the Arcediano dam, also in Jalisco. The project is meant to supply water to Guadalajara, the state capital.
If the plan had gone ahead, the village of Arcediano would have ended up entirely underwater. However, in 2009 it was cancelled before completion. But the former residents had to move to small houses in resettlement communities on the outskirts of the state capital.
Guadalupe Lara, who was the last person to leave her home, is now about to publish a book about her struggle titled “Yo vi a mi pueblo morir” (I saw my village die). She told IPS it is “very sad and frustrating to see how those who ought to look after us are robbing us instead.”
Read more from Inter Press Service: http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/11/peoples-tribunal-defends-native-villages-from-dams/
