For the eight different tribes of Ethiopia’s Omo valley region, the Gibe III dam and related sugar plantations project have already proved devastating. The dam has enabled local authorities to syphon off water from the Omo river to irrigate vast sugar plantations.
Forcibly evicted from their land, many of the country’s tribespeople have lost not only their homes but an entire way of life. The dam has ended the natural flood they depended on for flood retreat agriculture as well as depriving them of access to the river for fishing and for growing their crops.
Survival has received disturbing reports that tribal peoples are suffering from hunger and continue to suffer abuse and harassment if they speak out about the situation. Many communities are under pressure to relocate to government villages, a policy that most oppose.
The dam is also causing problems for the thousands of tribal peoples in northern Kenya who live around Lake Turkana and who fish its waters for their livelihood.
According to Ikal Ang’elei, director of the NGO Friends of Lake Turkana which has campaigned for years against the Gibe III dam: “The lives of local communities now hang in the balance given that their main sources of livelihood are facing extinction. This decision by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee should serve as a notice to Ethiopia to cancel any further dams planned on the Omo River.”
As early as 2010, one such expert predicted that the dam would reduce the lake’s inflow by some 50% and would cause the lake’s depth to drop to a mere 10 meters. “The result could be another Aral Sea disaster in the making,” he warned.
The World Heritage Centre Committee now recognises that the dam has led to “overall rapid decline in water levels” and has meant that seasonal fluctuations have been “heavily disrupted.” As a result, the Committee agrees that “the disruption of the natural flooding regime is likely to have a negative impact on the fish population in Lake Turkana, which may in turn affect the balance of the ecosystem, the livelihoods of the local fishing communities and the floodplains, which support herbivore species.”
UNESCO’s decision follows several years of lobbying by indigenous and international organizations.
The Omo Valley tribes did not give their free, prior and informed consent to the Gibe III dam project, a fact that Survival International highlighted in its submission to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Despite the mounting evidence of the serious impacts of Gibe III on tribal peoples in Ethiopia and Kenya, the Ethiopian government is currently building another dam on the Omo river called Koysha, or Gibe 4.
The Tabasará River, one of the largest in Panama and the source of life for the indigenous Ngäbe-Buglé people, was emptied to carry out maintenance work on the Barro Blanco Hydroelectric Dam last week, leaving thousands and thousands of the more than 30 varieties of fish and crustaceans to perish in the mud.
Ricardo Miranda, general coordinator of the 10 de Abril Movement representing the affected communities, standing in the mud and rubble just upstream of the dam, picked up a half-meter-long catfish, holding it up for the camera.
“I would like to take the opportunity to denounce the Generadora del Istmo SA (GENISA), the owner of the Barro Blanco Project,” he told a local cameraman who uploaded it to YouTube. “I also denounce the FMO Bank of the Netherlands and the DEG Bank of Germany, for financing a project like this, which has caused irreversible damage to the environment.”
Initial reports of the death of fish and photos that were sent last week from the Ngäbe community of Kiad were initially singled out as false, Miranda said in a telephone interview on Thursday.The Ministry of the Environment of Panama, MiAmbiente, sent personnel to investigate the death of fish on Sunday, May 13. The agency confirmed in a press release that there had been a fish die-off and that the company had reported the need to lower the water level for maintenance work.
The inspectors of MiAmbiente see the devastation, apparently from the platform of the dam. (Ministry of the Environment)
Miranda, who grew up in the Tabasará River along with his family, now lives on the other side of the Ngäbe-Buglé district, but went to the river as soon as he heard the news. Upon arrival he found thousands of fish dying in the sun. Coyotes ate the dying fish and one person picked up some to carry. The river had been virtually emptied, leaving the riparian population exposed to a vast expanse of mud, according to Miranda, who observed only a few puddles of muddy water just above the dam.
MiAmbiente promised in its press release on Monday that “the surveillance of the site will be maintained in order to guarantee compliance with the regulations that apply to these events and that actions have been taken to guarantee the normal development of natural resources in the zone.”
Five Ngäbe-Buglé communities live along the river and have fought constantly against the dam since it was proposed for the first time. When the river flooded, it destroyed its food forest and the cocoa and coffee crops it depended on for sustenance. Thick mosquito clouds, previously unknown in the area, became common. Fishing became much more difficult, but it was still possible. Now, with the death of fish, they are left without a source of protein, said Miranda. In addition, the river, which also depend on water, is surrounded by 18 hectares of deep mud, and reaching the river to cross to the nearest town has become an almost impossible situation.
The residents of the Ngäbe community of Kiad observe the fish that die in the river in front of their homes. The access to the river has become a daily calvary for the community, which must cross it to leave their village. (Photo: Movement 10 April)
The government offered to pay the communities to relocate, but the Kiad community in particular has refused to accept – on the one hand for its principles, but on the other hand because the adjacent area and the community itself is a sacred site, which It houses several collections of prehistoric petroglyphs that have been the site of ceremonial meetings where the Ngäbe-Buglé people have traditionally connected with their ancestors.
“Obviously when you see this situation, you feel a very great impotence because all this is what we warned,” said Miranda, dismayed. “Then when we enter and see an ecological disaster at the mercy of the presence of the government and a company whose only interest is to profit, causing irreversible damage and death, both to animals and people, because here it is attempting against the feeding of the same inhabitants of the communities that live on this. ”
The Ngäbe leader, Weni Bagama, observes the damage to her community of Kiad and its surroundings by the floods caused by the Barro Blanco dam in February 2017. (Photo: Tracy L. Barnett)
The emptying of the river occurred in the final days of the public comment period for the draft report of the Environmental and Social Compliance Unit (SECU) established to monitor activities related to UNDP. The researchers concluded that UNDP violated its own protocols in the dialogue process that aimed to defuse the conflict surrounding the Barro Blanco dam. The projects (mainly a series of round tables held in 2015 and 2016 and a program to support reforms within the main government agency in charge of the Barro Blanco project) were financed at a cost of more than $ 66 million dollars.
The report was a response to the formal complaint filed on August 22, 2017 by the April 10 Movement, which represents the communities affected by the project. A final report will be issued when receiving and analyzing public comments.
Residents of the affected community of Kiad, one of the five indigenous communities of Ngäbe Buglé inundated by the dam, reviewed the report on their mobile phones from the muddy bank of their sacred Tabasará river. Since the floodgates were closed more than a year ago and destroyed the agricultural base of the community and many homes, residents have had great problems sustaining life.
“We have already read the report and, in general terms, we agree,” said one of the leaders of the April 10 Movement, Adelaida Miranda (Weni Bagama, by her name Ngäbe). “The report makes analysis completely on how the processes went, and investigated. That report is not only an office report but those people came to the area and did interviews, they saw the situation of the reservoir and then they issued that in the report. We are satisfied, of course this does not solve everything, but at least we agree where SECU admits that the United Nations did not fulfill the role it had to play. ”
The results of the draft SECU report included the following:
• The UNDP Country Office in Panama did not apply the required environmental and social assessment procedures to the projects in question.
• UNDP did not prepare a stakeholder analysis and participation plan before the roundtable, as required for UNDP commitments to Indigenous Peoples – commitments that present moderate (and probably significant) risks to communities.
• UNDP did not comply with the due diligence, transparency, consultation / consent and rights of indigenous peoples requirements after the Roundtable Dialogue concluded around June 2015. UNDP, for example, did not ensure consistency with the warnings and conclusions of the UN Special Rapporteur. including warnings that inadequate consultation and consent processes were the source of most of the problems related to the respect and protection of indigenous rights, and the necessary measures to guarantee respect for those rights.
Dr. Donaldo Sousa, president of the Association for Environmental Rights in Panama City, said that the draft report seems to validate the demand presented by his association in 2016, against all those involved in the Barro Blanco hydroelectric project, including the company, government and non-government officials such as UNDP, which was the first and only criminal complaint against a hydroelectric dam project in Panama to date.
“This report clearly demonstrates that this complaint that we introduced was well founded and this project should have been suspended as a precautionary measure because of the damage it was going to cause, and they did not do so. The problem was that he had the support of international organizations as important as UNDP, it is logical that there is an element that has been decisive in this case; but corruption and impunity that exists in this case has also been decisive. And the economic interests that have been put forward once more, destroying the environment and above all impacting in a violent way the communities that live there. ”
For Weni Bagama and her family, each day has become an odyssey, but they have no intention of giving up.
“We are still fighting,” said Bagama. “We ask the United Nations for an apology and we also ask the national authority to cancel that project, because right now we are walking around here seeing the disaster that has caused the emptying …. We have not waived the cancellation of that project. We are still fighting, because the fight is not over. ”
Ngäbe leader Weni Bagama (right) was among those arrested during protests at the Barro Blanco dam. (Photo: Oscar Sogandares)
Featured image: A girl stands alone in a flooded home in the Palifitas neighborhood of Invasão dos Padres, Altamira. The neighborhood has now been completely destroyed by the Belo Monte dam. The area where the community once stood is being turned into a public park by the Norte Energia consortium which built and operates Belo Monte. Photo by Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Alexia Foundation
The future of Brazil’s mega-dam construction program is unclear, with one part of the Temer government declaring it an end, while another says the program should go on. More clear is the ongoing harm being done by the giant hydroelectric projects already completed to the environment, indigenous and traditional communities.
A case in point: the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam and reservoir, located on the Amazon’s Xingu River, and the third largest such project in the world.
Photographer Aaron Vincent Elkaim and I spent three months in the Brazilian Amazon, between November 2016 and January 2017, documenting Belo Monte after it became operational.
We were based in Altamira, a once small Amazonian city that saw explosive growth when the Brazilian government decided to build the controversial six-billion-dollar mega-dam.
The dam was built in a record three years, despite widespread outrage and protests from locals, along with the environmental, indigenous and international community. Major public figures including rock star Sting, filmmaker James Cameron, and politician and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger waged a high-profile media campaign against the project, but even these lobbying efforts weren’t enough to change the direction of the Dilma Rousseff administration, which was ruling Brazil at the time.
Ana De Francisco, an Altamira-based anthropologist and her son Thomas, visit the Belo Monte Dam in 2016. De Fransisco works for the regional office of the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), an influential Brazilian NGO focusing on environmental and human rights issues. She has been doing research for her PhD on the displacement of ribeirinho (traditional riverine) communities in the Xingu region. Photo by Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Alexia Foundation
Ultimately at least 20,000 people were displaced by the dam, according to NGO and environmental watchdog, International Rivers, though the local nonprofit, Xingu Vivo, puts the number at 50,000. Eventually, the project succeeded in staunching the once mighty Xingu, a major tributary to the Amazon and lifeblood to thousands of indigenous and forest-dwelling communities.
Altamira, which lies just downstream from the dam, was transformed overnight becoming a raucous boomtown: the population shot up from 100,000 to 160,000 in just two years. Hotels, restaurants and housing sprang up. So did brothels. According to one widely circulated anecdote, there was so much demand for sex workers in Altamira at the time, that prostitutes asked local representatives of Norte Energia, the consortium building the dam, to stagger monthly pay checks to their employees, so as not to overwhelm escorts on payday.
The boom didn’t last. The end of construction in 2015 signaled an exodus; 50,000 workers left, jobs vanished, violence surged in the city, as did a major health crisis that overwhelmed the local hospital when raw sewage backed up behind the dam.
Boys climb a tree flooded by the Xingu River in 2014. Today, one-third of the city of Altamira has been permanently flooded by the Belo Monte Dam that displaced more than 20,000 people, destroying indigenous and ribeirinho (river-dwelling) traditional communities. The effects were so severe that Norte Energia, the company behind the dam, has been required to carry out a six-year study to measure the environmental and social impacts of Belo Monte and to determine if indigenous and fishing communities can continue to live downriver from the dam. Photo by Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Alexia Foundation
When Aaron and I arrived in Altamira in 2016, the city still held some charm. Families strolled a popular boulevard skirting the Xingu River in the evening, and restaurants stayed open until late. But Aaron, having spent two years in the region before me, saw a different Altamira. He described the city I was seeing as “hollow,” and noted the disappearance of vibrant communities of ribeirinhos, “river people,” who had lived for generations by fishing at the riverside, and had been displaced by the dam. Many were relocated by the Norte Energia consortium to cookie-cutter suburban homes on the edge of town, far from the river and their fishing livelihood, and without access to public transportation.
Ana de Francisco, an Altamira-based anthropologist and expert on ribeirinhocommunities, estimates that as many as 5,000 of these families were displaced.
Belo Monte was no Three Gorges Dam – the Chinese project that displaced over a million people in 2009 – but it did wreak havoc; destroying communities and traditional ways of life, while also damaging the Xingu’s aquatic ecosystem, which has unique fish and turtle species.
A map showing the Belo Monte mega-dam and reservoir where it bisects a big bend in the Xingu River hangs on the wall of a home in Ilha da Fazenda, a small fishing village a few kilometers from the dam. According to village leader Otavio Cardoso Juruna, an indigenous Juruna, around 40 families live in Ilha da Fazenda, which was founded in 1940. Ilha da Fazenda is a mixed village of indigenous and non-indigenous residents. Residents complain that although they were negatively affected by the dam like others in the region, they were not compensated because they were not designated as an “indigenous village.” There is no potable water, sanitation or healthcare in Ilha da Fazenda, and locals were forced to stop fishing after the dam reduced the river’s flow by 80 percent and massively depleted fish stocks. Otavia said villagers were forming an organization to negotiate for compensation due to the planned Belo Sun goldmine, the region’s next mega-development project. Photo by Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Alexia Foundation
Featured image: Munduruku warriors gather at the São Manoel hydroelectric dam site. Courtesy Caio Mota/Centro Popular do Audiovisual/Forum Teles Pires via internationalrivers.org
Munduruku await for government to comply with their promises or they will return to halt construction again
Indigenous activists shut down construction of a massive dam project in Brazil for four days in July and received assurances from officials that their demands for halting construction of the dam, prior consultation, land rights and return of sacred funerary urns would be met.
The Munduruku activists had occupied the São Manoel hydroelectric dam site on the Teles Pires River that borders the states of Pará and Mato Grosso in the Brazilian Amazon. The São Manoel project is part of a larger effort to create a complex of five hydroelectric facilities in Brazil.
Lead by women warriors, a group of 200 Munduku men, women and children occupied the site on Sunday, July 16. The Munduruku and their allies stated that the project had already destroyed sites sacred to the Munduruku and other Indigenous Peoples. They chose to occupy the site to halt construction after previous protests and outreach failed to stop the project or cause the officials to return funerary urns which had been stolen during the building process.
The activists agreed to leave after a meeting with representatives from FUNAI, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (MPF), and the São Manoel and Teles Pires dam consortiums on July 19. The officials agreed to meet the demands presented by the Munduruku.
On July 21, Munduruku leaders announced that they would leave. “We Munduruku are returning to our villages, with the protection of the spirits of our ancestors. FUNAI [Brazil’s federal agency for Indigenous issues] has heard our demands and the companies made a commitment to our agenda. We will continue our movement. If they do not fulfill the commitment they made, FUNAI and the company can expect our return,” according to the Munduruku press statement titled We Are Made of the Sacred.
The list of demands that the government and corporate officials acceded to include the following:
The completion of land titling for the Munduruku territories of Sawre Muybu, Pontal dos Isolados, Sawre Jaybu and Sawre Apompu.
Independent studies on the socio-environmental and cultural impacts of dams on the Teles Pires River, with active participation of indigenous communities and experts indicated by them.
That any approval of the São Manoel dam be based on the rule of law and independent technical evaluations of impacts on rivers, fish and the livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples.
That the mitigation and compensation plans for the Teles Pires and São Manoel hydroelectric dam projects be revised to guarantee transparency and full participation of Indigenous Peoples.
That future projects protect the collective historical and cultural heritage of Indigenous Peoples of the Teles Pires, and that funeral urns be returned to a sacred site, determined by the Munduruku people, for permanent storage and protection.
Guarantee of Free, Prior and Informed Consent, in accordance with the Munduruku consultation protocol, for future proposed projects that directly or indirectly impact upon Indigenous Peoples.
At dawn on Sunday, July 16th, 200 representatives of the indigenous Munduruku nation occupied the main work camp of the São Manoel hydroelectric dam on the Teles Pires River in the Brazilian Amazon, paralyzing the project. Led by Munduruku women warriors, the occupiers presented a series of demands to dam developers and Brazilian government authorities, including the right to consultation, land titling, and respect for their cultural and spiritual sites. They also demanded that developers repair the grave environmental destruction inflicted by dams on the Teles Pires.
In an open letter, the Munduruku state: “Our sacred places [such as the Sete Quedas waterfall and burial grounds] were violated and destroyed. Our ancestors are crying… The Teles Pires and Tapajós Rivers are dying. Our rights, guaranteed by the Federal Constitution, which came to exist after much indigenous blood was spilled, are being violated.”
The letter emphasizes that construction of the São Manoel and Teles Pires hydroelectric dams, both located in close proximity to indigenous territories occupied by the Munduruku, Kayabi and Apiaka tribes, constitute a gross violation of the right of indigenous peoples to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), guaranteed by International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, to which Brazil is a signatory. In an effort to support FPIC implementation, in 2014 the Munduruku published a ‘protocol’ in which they laid out guidelines for an appropriate process of prior consultation and consent for proposed projects that would affect their livelihoods and rights. Though they formally presented it to the Brazilian government in 2015, they have yet to receive a reply.
Together with the destruction of the Sete Quedas waterfalls – a site considered to be the center of cosmology for the region’s three indigenous peoples – dams on the Teles Pires River also led to the removal of funerary urns and archeological artefacts on Munduruku burial grounds. Long a major concern of Munduruku leadership, the return of these items is among the principal demands of the occupation.
“I am deeply saddened to be witnessing the destruction of our sacred sites,” said Maria Leusa Kabá Munduruku, one of the principal leaders of the occupation. “We women need to have great strength to cure the pains we are feeling here.”
Now entering its third day, the occupation of the São Manoel dam was conceived by Munduruku women who identified the need to take bold action to stop the ongoing destruction of indigenous rights and territories in the Tapajós River basin.
“After we heard the Munduruku women, it was decided that we would gather peacefully at the São Manoel work camp, motivated by our pain,” says the Munduruku statement. “We are not here to invade. The only invader is the government and the companies responsible for the dams being built on the Teles Pires…. We know that our struggle is legitimate… We ask that our demands be met and will not leave here until they are.”
In response to the indigenous mobilization and work stoppage at São Manoel, members of the dam’s consortium, EESM – composed of the Brazilian affiliate of the China Three Gorges Corporation (CTG); Portugal’s EDP Energias do Brasil; and Furnas, a state-run energy company – filed suit in federal court to end the occupation. The Munduruku countered with a second statement, attesting to their determination to engage in dialogue and to remain on site, resisting efforts to intimidate them. “We only need for our demands to be attended to. Our protest is peaceful and therefore the intervention of the national guard or federal police is not necessary.”
In its only proactive response to Munduruku demands, the government agreed to send the president of the indigenous agency, FUNAI, to visit the occupation site. The Munduruku are skeptical, however, particularly given that FUNAI’s current president, Franklimberg Ribeiro de Freitas, is a highly controversial appointee of Brazil’s right-wing Social Christian Party, which has proved antagonistic to indigenous rights. “It is not enough for him to come here with false promises,” read a Munduruku statement. “We want concrete responses to our needs.”
“Far from the limelight of high-profile, controversial projects like Belo Monte, the São Manoel and Teles Pires dams have involved a series of human rights violations and environmental illegalities since their inception,” said Brent Millikan of International Rivers – Brazil. “The consequences of this steamrolling of the rule of law have included the destruction of sacred sites and devastating downstream impacts on water quality, freshwater ecosystems and fisheries that are essential for the livelihoods of indigenous peoples.”
“The Munduruku occupation demonstrates the extent to which Brazil’s indigenous and traditional peoples must go to make themselves heard,” said Christian Poirier of Amazon Watch. “This a struggle for cultural survival in opposition to a disastrous pattern of environmental destruction and rights violations endemic to Brazil’s Amazon dam-building program.”
The São Manoel and Teles Pires dams are part of a complex of four large hydroelectric projects simultaneously under construction on the Teles Pires River, a major tributary of the Tapajós River in the Brazilian Amazon. The dams were planned by the state-run energy company Eletrobras and the Energy Planning Institute (EPE), both affiliated with the Brazilian Ministry of Mines and Energy. The socio-environmental risks of this dam cascade in the Amazon, including violation of indigenous rights, were systematically underestimated or simply ignored. Environmental licenses and public funding from Brazil’s National Development Bank (BNDES) were approved under intense political pressure.
Investors such as CTG and Iberdrola, a Spanish pension fund, repeatedly ignored warning signs of the projects’ legal, financial and reputational risks. Recently, the CTG-led São Manoel consortium informed indigenous peoples of the Teles Pires River that the closing of floodgates and filling of the dam’s reservoir would begin in August, despite the fact that no such license has been issued by IBAMA, the federal environmental agency. Although dam construction began in 2014, a plan to mitigate and compensate impacts of the São Manoel dam, which should have preceded construction, has yet to receive final approval from FUNAI and indigenous tribes.
