by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 17, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Lobbying
By Mongabay
Federal public prosecutors in Brazil have challenged a plan to strip protected status from 86,288 hectares of land to make way for five new dams, reports International Rivers. The challenge is set to be heard by Brazil’s Supreme Court, according to the group, which is campaigning against new hydroelectric projects in environmentally-sensitive areas.
The prosecutors, known as the Ministério Publico Federal (MPF), filed a complaint against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on the grounds that eliminating the protected areas violates Brazil’s Constitution and its environmental legislation. The lead prosecutor, Roberto Monteiro Gurgel Santos, said that the hydroelectric projects lack requisite environmental impact studies.
São Luiz do Tapajós and Jatobá, a pair of dams on the Tapajós river, would affect 75,000 hectares alone, including 17,800 hectares in the Amazonia National Park, 36,158 ha in the Itaituba 1 and Itaituba 2 National Forests, 856 ha in Crepori National Forest, and 19,916 hectares ha in the Tapajos Environmental Protection Area. Meanwhile 8,470 hectares would be excluded from the Mapinguari National Park for the Jirau and Santo Antônio dams on the Madeira River, and 2,188 acres would be excised from the Campos Amazônicos National Park for the Tabajara dam on the Machado River.
The order to reduce the extent of the protected areas is in question. The Rousseff Administration says the move was proposed by ICMBio, the federal environmental agency, but International Rivers says internal memos from the local staff of ICMBio “expressed direct opposition to the proposal”.
“According to them, the reduction of protected areas, in the absence of socio-economic and environmental assessments of impacts and risks, is likely to cause tremendous damage to the region’s biodiversity, including endemic and endangered species, and to the livelihoods of local populations,” said International Rivers in a statement.
Brazil is in the midst of a dam-building spree in the Amazon — some 60 hydroelectric projects are planned for the region, including the massive Belo Monte dam on the Xingu river. Brazilian construction firms are also actively pursuing projects on Amazon tributaries in neighboring countries, including Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador.
Brazil says the dams represent a source of clean, renewable energy, but critics maintain the dams displace local people, disrupt fisheries, and flood large tracts of forest, contributing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 16, 2012 | Agriculture, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy
By Dominic Brown
The Lower Omo Valley in south-western Ethiopia is a vast and rugged region of mountains and valleys, inhabited largely by nomadic agro-pastoralist tribes numbering some 200,000 people. Many live a simple existence, living in straw thatched huts and have little contact with the outside world. But the Ethiopian government’s new found appetite for large-scale sugar production threatens the very existence of many of these tribes.
Nearly 300,000 hectares of land in the Omo and Mago National Parks, which comprises much of the Lower Omo Valley, has been earmarked for the Kuraz Sugar Development programme. Backed by large-scale investment from Indian companies, the programme aims to help increase overall sugar production in Ethiopia to 2.3 million tonnes by 2015, with the goal of achieving a 2.5 per cent global share by 2017.
Whilst revenues from the sugar plantations will undoubtedly fill the coffers of central government, the forced relocation of tribes from their traditional lands is already having catastrophic consequences. The permanent damage to a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site is also raising alarm amongst environmentalists.
“We stand to lose everything,” one tribal leader explained, tears welling in his eyes, as he stood surrounded by his villagers. “Our traditional hunting grounds, the land we use for grazing our cattle, our homes. Everything will be gone. We will be left with nothing. We need the outside world to help us.”
Early in 2011, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi spoke of the importance of the project to the country’s economy, outlined in the government’s Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP). “In the coming five years there will be a very big irrigation project and related agricultural development in this zone. Even though this area is known as backward in terms of civilisation, it will become an example of rapid development.”
This “rapid development” has come at a price. There have been almost inevitable human rights abuses inflicted upon those resisting relocation since the Kuraz Sugar Development programme began last June. A report [PDF] by the Oakland Institute, a US-based think-tank, details how Ethiopian Defence Forces “arrive at Omo Valley villages (and in particular Bodi, Mursi and Suri villages) questioning villagers about their perspectives on the sugar plantations. Villagers are expected to voice immediate support, otherwise beatings (including the use of tasers), abuse and general intimidation occurs”.
Other allegations of abuse to have leaked out include the rape of male tribesmen, as well as of women and children by Ethiopian soldiers. Dozens of villagers from the region also remain in detention after voicing opposition to the development plans.
Violent clashes between the Ethiopian army and tribes from the region are on the rise. A local human rights worker told me of their fears of an escalation in the crisis to civil war. “Many tribes are saying they will fight back rather than be moved off their traditional lands to make way for these plantations. They are living in fear but feel they have nothing to lose by fighting back.”
Roadblocks are now in place in many parts of the Lower Omo Valley, limiting accessibility and ensuring the relocations remain out of the spotlight. Tribal rights NGO Survival International is leading calls for a freeze on plantation building and for a halt to the evictions. They have been campaigning to draw more attention to the deteriorating situation in the region since the Ethiopian government announced plans for the Gib III Dam [PDF] – Africa’s tallest, and one that is scheduled for completion later this year.
When completed, it threatens to destroy a fragile environment and the livelihoods of the tribes, which are closely linked to the river and its annual flood. Up to 500,000 people – including tribes in neighbouring Kenya – rely on the waters and adjacent lands of the Omo River and Lake Turkana, most of which lies in Kenya. The Karo people, now estimated to number just 1,500 along the eastern banks of the Omo River, face extinction. Already suffering from dwindling fish stocks as a result of the dam, the reduced river levels have also harmed their crop yields.
Read more from Intercontinental Cry: http://intercontinentalcry.org/ethiopias-tribes-cry-for-help/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 15, 2012 | Obstruction & Occupation, Repression at Home
By Polinizaciones
ESMAD (riot police) in Huila, Colombia began the forced removal of the fisher-people, campesinos, miners, day laborers and others who have been blocking the diverting of the Magdalena River for the Quimbo Dam early Tuesday morning. The diverting of the river was being blocked by a peaceful occupation of the area known as Domingo Arias. The ESMAD used tear gas, pepper spray and brutal force to corral the people protecting the Yuma/Guacahayo/Magdalena River. At least six people have been injured, including Asoquimbo member Luis Carlos Trujillo who lost an eye.
Since noon Monday, ESMAD blocked the entrance to the Paso del Colegio Bridge to all traffic except the Quimbo´s constant traffic of workers, engineers and machinery. The President of Asoquimbo, Elsa Ardila, members of regional organizations, Local, National, International Press as well as Observers from the International Observatory for Peace were not permitted to enter, effectively creating a black out of what the State was doing in the area. Only after some journalists did an interview on the air stating they were being kept out and blasting the message from a car, media with documentation from the Ministry of Communication were allowed to enter. Meanwhile, independent journalist and human rights observers were denied entry.
During the ordeal elders, children and expecting mothers were not spared from the baton strikes, punches, kicks and shoves with shields of the ESMAD. One child was removed from their parents and later was returned only after. The people, who were forcibly removed, were taken out in six Chivas (local rural buses) that rushed past those outside and the groups of people were not permitted to interact Those removed were taken back to the towns closest to their community. In the last two Chivas, the fisherman of Hobo forced the drivers to stop and jumped out to unite with those who had been blocked out.The people occupying the banks of the river were within 30 meters of the shore, which is an area that is legally permitted to the inhabitants of the country as a public area to inhabit freely. When the ESMAD came at everyone with violence, the Defenders of the River held hands and stood in the water. Tear gas and violence were then used to force people out. The Mayor of the Municipality of Paicol, Norberto Palomino Ríos, supporting the National Government and Emgesa, issued the order for the forced removal of about 200 affected people in the area.
While the local autonomous environmental organization CAM pronounced in a meeting with the Minister of Interior last week they would be present for the forced removal, no one ever showed. Both the Vice Ministers of Environmental and the Interior refused to give any statements to Miller Dussan of Asoquimbo, during the removal while being blocked from entering the site. Meanwhile the Ombudsman from the Paicol Mayor’s Office road in the boats used by Emgesa workers and watched the removal from the construction site across the river.
Currently the affected people of the Quimbo Dam are healing themselves to move forward with the necessary actions to Defend the Yuma-Guacahayo-Magdalena River.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 14, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Indigenous Autonomy
By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay
Last October indigenous groups, local people, and domestic NGOs formed the Save Sarawak’s Rivers Network to fight the planned construction of a dozen dams in the Malaysian state on the island of Borneo. The coalition opposes the dam-building plans, known as the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) initiative, due to its impacts on indigenous and river communities, the destruction of pristine rainforest, and the degradation of the state’s rivers.
“At the moment, there is no coordinated effort by the indigenous communities and civil societies to campaign against the construction of these destructive mega-dam projects. Therefore there is an urgent need to initiate a state, national and international campaign against these mega-dams,” Save Sarawak’s Rivers Network’s chairperson, Peter Kallang, said in a press conference this week as reported by Free Malaysia Today. He noted that of paramount importance was to reach out to those directly impacted by the dams.
Five foreign NGOs from the U.S. and EU have also announced support of the nascent coalition, including The Bruno Manser Fund, International Rivers, Borneo Project, Rainforest Action Network (US) and the Rainforest Foundation Norway.After long delays and cost overruns, one of the dozen dams has already been completed, the 2,400 megawatt Bakun dam. The dam displaced around 10,000 indigenous people and flooded 70,000 hectares of rainforest.
While the Sarawak government has argued that the dams are needed to power the state, the Bakun dam alone produces more than double the power used by Sarawak at peak times. The additional power is likely to go to a planned aluminum smelter run by Cahaya Mata Sarawak (CMS) and Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto. Another dam, the 900 megawatt Murum dam, is currently under construction.
“The construction of the dams will not bring development to the people directly affected but it does bring severe and permanent damages to the whole environment and to the community at large,” Kallang said. “Development for the people must be for the immediate and above all, long term good of all the people and not just a few, who own shares in power generation and big corporations.”
Proponents of dam building have argued that they are “green” energy sources. However dams built in the tropics have been shown to release massive amounts of the methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide, due to rotting vegetation trapped in the reservoir. A study last year found that a dam in Laos was still a significant source of greenhouse gases a decade after being built, emitting between 1.2 and 3.2 gigagrams of carbon annually. Another dam, however, was no longer a source of emissions after 40 years.
Save Sarawak Rivers will be holding a conference this week in Miri, including the presentation of papers by eight key speakers.
by deepgreenresistance | Dec 1, 2011 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Climate Change
By Lori Pottinger
The ongoing COP17 climate meeting in Durban, South Africa is themed “saving tomorrow today.” Yet a global dam boom being promoted by dam proponents — including dozens of megadams proposed for Africa’s major rivers — could make a mockery of this vision, by endangering rivers and the ecosystems we all depend on. While we clearly need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, a climate-smart energy path doesn’t sacrifice one important natural resource to save another. We need healthy rivers just as urgently as we do a healthy atmosphere.
A new 3-D Google Earth video illustrates three key reasons that large dams are the wrong response to climate change:
- River flows are increasingly unpredictable. Large dams have always been based on the assumption that future stream-flow patterns will mirror those of the past, but this is no longer true. Climate change has begun to significantly and unpredictably change precipitation patterns. More frequent droughts will make many hydropower projects uneconomic. More extreme rainfall will increase the risk of dam failures and catastrophic flood releases.
- Healthy rivers are critical for supporting life on Earth. Big dams make it harder for people and ecosystems downstream of dams to adapt to climate change by reducing water quality and quantity, drying up forests and wetlands, flooding productive land, and destroying fisheries.
- Dam reservoirs emit greenhouse gases. In the tropics, dam reservoirs are a globally significant source of one of the most potent gases, methane. Meanwhile, free-flowing rivers play a crucial role in helping trap carbon.
The Google Earth tour visualizes what we call “hydrodependency” in Africa, where new dams are being built without any analysis of how climate change could affect their economic viability or their safety. Africa cannot afford dried-up reservoirs or dam collapses on top of the already high costs of adapting to a changing climate.
The tour also takes you on a fly-through of the “Roof of the World,” the Himalaya mountain range, where the climate is changing faster than anywhere else. These mountains’ mighty glaciers are the source of many major Asian rivers, and they are melting fast — yet hundreds of dams are planned here.
Dams in glacier-fed river basins are likely to be subject to much higher flows at first. Heavier storms and more frequent floods will jeopardize their safety. So many dams are planned for Himalayan rivers that one dam burst could result in a domino effect of dam failures. This will be followed by drought, as the glaciers dry up. Neither is conducive to a large dam boom.
Finally, the tour takes you to the mighty Amazon, where a contentious dam boom pits indigenous people against a development-hungry government and the Brazilian dam industry. Here, you’ll sink beneath the depths of one of the world’s dirtiest reservoirs, to learn how big dams (especially in the tropics) can be significant sources of greenhouse gases.
There are better solutions. Climate change poses huge challenges and there are no quick fixes. But we cannot sacrifice the planet’s arteries to save its lungs. There are better solutions to solving energy poverty and water management that don’t involve damming the world’s rivers.
For instance, instead of building dirty dams, Brazil could produce half the energy it consumes today by investing in energy efficiency, solar systems, wind turbines, and retrofitting old dams.
In Africa, developing decentralized renewables such as solar, wind and geothermal is a better and faster way to end energy poverty for the millions of Africans who live far away from the grid, and avoids the risk of more failed investments.
Instead of damming the major Himalayan rivers and putting millions of people at risk of dam failures, engineering a more efficient grid in India could save a quarter of the country’s electricity. Decentralized solar and wind systems are a more realistic way to bring electricity to remote mountain communities.
A global dam boom poses huge risks to the natural support systems that we all depend on, and will make it harder for all life on Earth to adapt to a warming world. Instead of damming more of the world’s rivers, it is both possible and practical to develop climate-safe energy and water supply systems that improve lives, share the development wealth, and help us weather the coming storm.
From Huffington Post
