Dams

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

By Agence France-Presse Energy-hungry Cambodia on Friday gave the green light to a multi-million dollar hydropower dam backed by companies from China and Vietnam that activists say will affect thousands of people. The Hydro Power Lower Sesan 2 project will invest $781.5 million to build a 400-megawatt hydroelectric dam on a tributary of the Mekong River in northern Stung Treng province, according to a government statement. The government did not name the Chinese and Vietnamese firms involved, but said solutions had been reached for affected villagers. ...

By Mongabay 200 indigenous men and women are blockading shipments of construction materials to a dam site in Malaysian Borneo to protest the impact of the hydroelectric project on their traditional forest home, reports the Bruno Manser Fund (BMF), a Switzerland-based group that campaigns on behalf of forest people of Sarawak. According to the NGO, on the morning of September 26, 200 Penan and Kenyah set up a blockade on the road used by trucks to deliver supplies to Murum dam, a controversial project being built by China’s Three Gorges Corporation. The protesters say they will maintain the road block until Sarawak Energy, the agency behind the dam, meets with them and agrees to their demands relating to involuntary resettlement and their traditional land rights. The dam would flood up to 250 square kilometers of rainforest and farmland, affecting some 1,400 people, says BMF, which adds that the communities fear a repeat of the nearby Bakun dam. ...

By Fabiola Ortiz / Inter Press Service The Sete Quedas or “seven waterfalls” on the Teles Pires River, which runs through the Amazon rainforest states of Mato Grosso and Pará in central Brazil, are a spiritual oasis venerated by several indigenous groups. But the 20-metre-high rocky falls are to be covered by a reservoir created by a hydroelectric dam that is to flood an area of 95 square km. “It’s a sacred area, our creator and mother. And the ‘pajé’ (shaman) says it is where the fish lay their eggs,” João Kayabi, 52, told IPS by phone from the area. He is the chief of Kururuzinho village, home to 106 members of the Kayabi community, who speak a Tupí-Guaraní language. ...

By Lawrence Del Gigante / Inter-Press Service “While each project proposed in Cambodia comes with a different set of impacts, large dams are likely to widen the gap between the rich and the poor, increase malnourishment levels and lead to an environmentally unsustainable future,” Ame Trandem, South East Asia programme director for International Rivers, told IPS. Four dam projects have been approved so far in Cambodia, with one already operational. All are being developed by Chinese companies on build-operate-transfer agreements, according to Trandem. ...

By Emilio Godoy / Inter-Press Service Small-scale hydroelectric dams with a capacity of under 30 MW are seen by the authorities in Mexico as an important alternative for generating energy. But local communities reject them on the argument that they would cause social, economic and environmental damages. On the front line of the struggle are communities in the southern states of Puebla, Tabasco, Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas, where there is great potential to harness hydro energy with small dams. ...

By Prak Chan Thul / Reuters Cambodian villagers demonstrated on Friday against a controversial Lao hydropower dam that activists say is being built in defiance of an agreement to assess its potentially damaging impact on millions of people first. About 200 villagers whose livelihoods depend on the Mekong River urged a halt to the Thai-led construction of the $3.5 billion Xayaburi dam, which has angered Cambodia’s government and triggered a rare rebuke by Laos’s biggest ally, Vietnam. ...

By Fabiola Gutierrez and Chris Kraul / Los Angeles Times Plans to build a $3.2-billion complex of dams that would have flooded thousands of acres in the bio-diverse Patagonia region in southern Chile have been put on indefinite hold in the face of ongoing protests against the project. The five dams of the so-called HidroAysen project would increase Chile’s electricity capacity by 15% upon completion in 2020. But it also would have flooded 12,500 acres of pristine territory that is increasingly popular as an eco-tourism destination. ...