Fishermen's boats on the Mekong River in northern Laos. There are already 30 existing dams along the river, and an additional 134 hydropower projects are planned for the lower Mekong. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Aug 29 2014 (IPS)

Large-scale dams are likely having a detrimental impact on water quality and biodiversity around the world, according to a new study that tracks and correlates data from thousands of projects.

Focusing on the 50 most substantial river basins, researchers with International Rivers, a watchdog group, compiled and compared available data from some 6,000 of the world’s estimated 50,000 large dams. Eighty percent of the time, they found, the presence of large dams, typically those over 15 metres high, came along with findings of poor water quality, including high levels of mercury and trapped sedimentation.“The evidence we’ve compiled of planetary-scale impacts from river change is strong enough to warrant a major international focus on understanding the thresholds for river change in the world’s major basins." -- Jason Rainey

While the investigators are careful to note that the correlations do not necessarily indicate causal relationships, the say the data suggest a clear, global pattern. They are now calling for an intergovernmental panel of experts tasked with coming up with a systemic method by which to assess and monitor the health of the world’s river basins.

“[R]iver fragmentation due to decades of dam-building is highly correlated with poor water quality and low biodiversity,” International Rivers said Tuesday in unveiling the State of the World’s Rivers, an online database detailing the findings. “Many of the world’s great river basins have been dammed to the point of serious decline.”

The group points to the Tigris-Euphrates basin, today home to 39 dams and one of the systems that has been most “fragmented” as a result. The effect appears to have been a vast decrease in the region’s traditional marshes, including the salt-tolerant flora that helped sustain the coastal areas, as well as a drop in soil fertility.

The State of the World project tracks the spread of dam-building alongside data on biodiversity and water-quality metrics in the river basins affected. While the project is using only previously published data, organisers say the effort is the first time that these disparate data sets have been overlaid in order to find broader trends.

“By and large most governments, particularly in the developing world, do not have the capacity to track this type of data, so in that sense they’re flying blind in setting policy around dam construction,” Zachary Hurwitz, the project’s coordinator, told IPS.

“We can do a much better job at observing [dam-affected] resettled populations, but most governments don’t have the capacity to do continuous biodiversity monitoring. Yet from our perspective, those data are what you really need in order to have a conversation around energy planning.”

Dam-building boom

Today, four of the five most fragmented river systems are in South and East Asia, according to the new data. But four others in the top 10 are in Europe and North America, home to some of the most extensive dam systems, especially the United States.

For all the debate in development circles in recent years about dam-building in developing countries, the new data suggests that two of the world’s poorest continents, Africa and South America, remain relatively less affected by large-scale damming than other parts of the world.

Of course, both Africa and South America have enormous hydropower potential and increasingly problematic power crunches, and many of the countries in these continents are moving quickly to capitalise on their river energy.

According to estimates from International Rivers, Brazil alone is currently planning to build more than 650 dams of all sizes. The country is also home to some of the highest numbers of species that would be threatened by such moves.

Not only are Brazil, China and India busy building dams at home, but companies from these countries are also increasingly selling such services to other developing countries.

“Precisely those basins that are least fragmented are currently being targeted for a great expansion of dam-building,” Hurwitz says. “But if we look at the experience and data from areas of high historical dam-building – the Mississippi basin the United States, the Danube basin in Europe – those worrying trends are likely to be repeated in the least-fragmented basins if this proliferation of dam-building continues.”

Advocates are expressing particularly concern over the confluence of the new strengthened focus on dam-building and the potential impact of climate change on freshwater biodiversity. International Rivers is calling for an intergovernmental panel to assess the state of the world’s river basins, aimed at developing metrics for systemic assessment and best practices for river preservation.

“The evidence we’ve compiled of planetary-scale impacts from river change is strong enough to warrant a major international focus on understanding the thresholds for river change in the world’s major basins, and for the planet as a whole system,” Jason Rainey, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.

Economic burden

Particularly for increasingly energy-starved developing countries, concerns around large-scale dam-building go beyond environmental or even social considerations.

Energy access remains a central consideration in any set of development metrics, and lack of energy is an inherent drag on issues as disparate as education and industry. Further, concerns around climate change have re-energised what had been flagging interest in large dam projects, epitomised by last year’s decision by the World Bank to refocus on such projects.

Yet there remains fervent debate around whether this is the best way to go, particularly for developing countries. Large dams typically cost several billion dollars and require extensive planning to complete, and in the past these plans have been blamed for overwhelming fragile economies.

A new touchstone in this debate came out earlier this year, in a widely cited study from researchers at Oxford University. Looking at nearly 250 large dams dating back as far as the 1920s, they found pervasive cost and time overruns.

“We find overwhelming evidence that budgets are systematically biased below actual costs of large hydropower dams,” the authors wrote in the paper’s abstract.

“The outside view suggests that in most countries large hydropower dams will be too costly … and take too long to build to deliver a positive risk-adjusted return unless suitable risk management measures … can be affordably provided.”

Instead, the researchers encouraged policymakers in developing countries to focus on “agile energy alternatives” that can be built more quickly.

On the other side of this debate, the findings were attacked by the International Commission on Large Dams, a Paris-based NGO, for focusing on an unrepresentative set of extremely large dams. The group’s president, Adama Nombre, also questioned the climate impact of the researchers’ preferred alternative options.

“What would be those alternatives?” Nombre asked. “Fossil fuel plants consuming coal or gas. Without explicitly saying it, the authors use a purely financial reasoning to bring us toward a carbon-emitting electric system.”

Edited by: Kitty Stapp

The writer can be reached at cbiron@ips.org

The Inga III dam would be the first in a series of hydroelectric installations along the Congo River, collectively referred to as the Grand Inga project. Credit: alaindg/GNU license

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Feb 11 2014 (IPS)

Watchdog groups here are warning that a deal has been struck that would see Chinese investors fund a massive, contentious dam on the Congo River, the first phase of a project that could eventually be the largest hydroelectric project in the world.

Discussions around the Inga III dam proposal, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have been taking place in some form for decades. They have picked up speed over the past year, however, under the auspices of the World Bank, the Washington-based development funder.“Handing the project over to a private investor will make it even less likely the country’s poor people would benefit from the project.” -- Peter Bosshard

On Tuesday, the bank’s board of directors were to have voted on an initial 73-million-dollar loan for the project, to be offered through the International Development Association (IDA), the institution’s programme for the world’s poorest countries. Last week, however, that vote was abruptly postponed.

Now, civil society groups are reporting that the project may be going forward instead under the World Bank’s private-sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), with the backing of Chinese investors. Yet critics, who have long worried about the local social and environmental impact of the Inga project, worry that greater involvement by the private sector will result in skewed prioritisation of beneficiaries.

“Handing the project over to a private investor will make it even less likely the country’s poor people would benefit from the project,” Peter Bosshard, policy director for International Rivers, an advocacy group, said Monday.

“The IFC deal was arranged behind closed doors without any accountability to the DRC parliament, the World Bank’s board of directors, or civil society … Non-transparent deals such as the Inga 3 Dam are the best recipe for deepening corruption in the DRC. They will not strengthen the public accountability that is necessary for social and economic development.”

Citing multiple sources within the bank, Bosshard says the decision to change the Inga III funding modality appears to have been made between high-level officials from the World Bank, the IFC and USAID, the U.S. government’s main foreign-aid arm, reportedly bypassing the bank’s board of directors. Thus far, none of these institutions have publicly confirmed any deal.

“The World Bank Group is fully committed to supporting the Inga III hydropower project, which has the potential to improve the lives of millions of Africans,” a bank spokesperson told IPS in a statement. “We postponed presenting to our Board a Technical Assistance package related to the design of the project’s operation, but the project has not been cancelled, and our commitment to Inga III is unchanged.”

Primary beneficiaries

As currently envisioned, the Inga III dam would be the first in a series of hydroelectric installations along the Congo River, collectively referred to as the Grand Inga project. This would include a single 145 metre dam, which would flood an area known as the Bundi Valley, home to around 30,000 people.

The full project could provide up to 40,000 megawatts of electricity, a power potential that has been eyed hungrily by the rest of the continent for decades. While DRC’s chaotic governance has stymied forward progress on the project for years, the Grand Inga vision received an important boost last year when the South African government agreed to purchase a substantial amount of power produced by Inga III.

The 12-billion-dollar dam is now supposed to be built by 2020 and, according to Congolese government estimates from November, would produce around 4,800 MW of electricity. Of this, 2,500 MW would go to South Africa while another 1,300 MW would be earmarked for use by mines and related industry in the province of Katanga.

“There is little indication that the dam development schemes underway would address the issue of access to electricity for the population at-large; industrial users stand to be the primary beneficiaries,” Maurice Carney, executive director of Friends of the Congo, an advocacy group here, told IPS.

“Only 10 percent of Congo’s population has access to electricity and the situation is even worse for rural population, where only 1 percent has access to electricity. For a country like the DRC that is endowed with a plethora of alternative energy options, smaller-scale renewable energy technologies would be the best way forward.”

Carney and others are calling for a cumulative assessment of the Grand Inga scheme, to include study of all social and environmental impacts. Indeed, these have been longstanding concerns, but now some development advocates worry that greater private sector involvement in the Inga III project will further exacerbate such issues.

“We have questions about whether the scheme can deliver any development at all in the hands of the private sector,” Joshua Klemm, manager of the Africa programme at the Bank Information Center, a watchdog group here that focuses on the World Bank, told IPS.

“For good or bad, if this project belongs to the Congolese government, there’s at least some hope to expand electricity access in the country. That would go out the window if we’re talking about a purely private sector project.”

Duelling U.S. stances

As the Inga III project picked up momentum in recent months, USAID too expressed its interest in the proposal. The agency’s administrator, Rajiv Shah, visited the Inga III dam site in mid-December, and stated that the proposal could be added to a new, large-scale initiative by the United States to significantly increase electrification across Africa.

Although USAID was unable to comment for this story by deadline, any involvement by the agency in brokering a deal with the IFC would be interesting. Just last month, the U.S. Congress passed a landmark new law requiring the U.S. Treasury to formally vote against multilateral funding for large-scale hydroelectric projects in developing countries.

The new provisions, contained in a huge appropriations bill funding the federal government, impact both on bilateral U.S. funding through agencies such as USAID, as well as on the significant contributions that the United States provides to multilateral development institutions, particularly the World Bank. (The U.S. Treasury was unable to comment by deadline.)

“Under the [appropriations] language, the United States will have to oppose the Inga III dam at the IFC as much as it would have had to do this if it were an IDA project,” International Rivers’ Bosshard told IPS. “There’s no difference there, but it is ironic that the USAID administrator would have pushed the deal.”

Washington will be barred from offering any bilateral assistance that could facilitate certain rights abuses, extractive industries or industrial logging in primary tropical forests. Credit: Bigstock

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jan 28 2014 (IPS)

Development activists and rights watchdogs are applauding a surprise strengthening of environmental and human rights policies governing U.S. development funding and overseas financial assistance.

Under the new provisions, the United States will be required to vote against multilateral funding for large-scale hydroelectric projects in developing countries, as well as push for redress of rights violations resulting from development initiatives by international financial institutions.“We’ve watched donor agencies such as USAID turning a blind eye to blatant human rights allegations in these areas." -- Anuradha Mittal

In addition, Washington will be barred from offering any bilateral assistance that could facilitate certain rights abuses, extractive industries or industrial logging in primary tropical forests.

The new mandates constitute just a tiny part of a massive bill, signed into law on Jan. 17, that funds the federal government through the end of this financial year. But supporters say the provisions could have both direct implications for specific situations and pending projects as well as longer-lasting impacts on development funding and approaches.

“The U.S. Congress has taken an important step toward bridging the gap between U.S. government policy on development finance and its human rights policy in requiring the U.S. government to press international financial institutions to provide compensation or otherwise remedy human right violations linked to their projects,” Jessica Evans, a Washington-based researcher on international financial institutions at Human Rights Watch, told IPS.

The new provisions, reportedly sponsored by Senator Patrick Leahy, will impact both on bilateral U.S. funding through agencies such as USAID, as well as on the significant contributions that the United States provides to multilateral development institutions, particularly the World Bank.

U.S. representatives will now be required to vote against multilateral funding for the construction of major hydroelectric projects, likely defined as anything over 15 metres high. Large dams have been criticised by development experts for decades, given their often inevitable impact on local communities and environmental systems.

However, the World Bank recently unveiled a new institutional strategy that may include a prominent focus on big dams. Thus, the Leahy provisions could prove to be an impediment to the Washington-based development funder’s vision.

“I applaud the U.S. Congress for directing the U.S. Treasury to oppose the financing of large dam projects through the World Bank and other financial institutions,” Deborah Moore, a former commissioner on the World Commission on Dams and current chair of the board of International Rivers, a global watchdog group, said in a statement.

“I think the message now is clear: there are better options for meeting communities’ needs for electricity that are cheaper and sustainable.”

International Rivers says the new law will require the United States to oppose current and pending hydro projects on the Indus and Congo rivers, as well as in Guyana, Laos and Togo.

The appropriations bill also requires that the U.S. push multilateral funders, particularly the World Bank, to incorporate new external oversight and evaluation mechanisms for each project they undertake, to ensure that stipulated safeguards are being followed.

According to a statement released to the media and published over the weekend, the World Bank is currently analysing the scope of the new provisions. Yet future U.S. funding for the bank could now be contingent on this new requirement.

“The overall sentiment in provisions calling for stricter oversight and urging [World Bank President Jim Kim] to look outside the World Bank walls to better address the issues plaguing the institution is at the core of civil society advocacy,” Josh Lichtenstein, director of campaigns for the Bank Information Center (BIC), a watchdog group here, told IPS.

“We welcome the use of the legislative process to send strong messages to the [international financial institutions], particularly in pushing them to adopt policies and procedures that are better in line with highest international standards and in implementing stricter oversight to ensure those standards are upheld.”

Official acknowledgement

Other provisions within the new appropriations bill mandate actions regarding specific ongoing or pending projects that have garnered criticisms over rights abuses, particularly in Cambodia, Guatemala and Ethiopia.

In 2010 in Cambodia, families in northern Phnom Penh were illegally evicted from their lands for a major development project that included filling a large lake, Boeung Kak, with sand. Cambodia is a World Bank client, and the evictions directly contravened bank standards.

In Guatemala, the construction of a large hydroelectric dam on the ChixoyRiver during the early 1980s displaced 3,500 indigenous peoples, leading to tensions that resulted in the massacre or rights abuses of some 400 people. That project was partially funded by the World Bank.

Under the new legislation, the U.S. representative at the World Bank (and, in the case of the Chixoy dam, the Inter-American Development Bank) will now be required to offer regular updates on progress on reparations and redress surrounding both of these situations.

“We began to work for reparations in 1995 and today we heard the great news,” Carlos Chen Osorio, director for the Coordination of Affected Communities by the Chixoy Hydroelectric Plant, an advocacy group, said in a statement. “We feel that we are not alone and are very grateful to all those that have committed to work on this.”

In Ethiopia, meanwhile, the United States itself has come under criticism for helping to bankroll a major government development project that has included forcibly moving pastoralists from traditional lands in the Lower Omo and Gambella regions, to be settled in villages. The new law now disallows U.S. monies from either directly or indirectly funding forced displacement in these areas.

“We’ve watched donor agencies such as USAID turning a blind eye to blatant human rights allegations in these areas,” Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute, a watchdog group that has carried out multiple investigations on forced displacements in Ethiopia, told IPS. (USAID did not respond to request for comment by deadline.)

“It’s a real relief now to see the U.S. Congress offering true acknowledgement that these reports of forced evictions are not mere allegations,” she continues. “Now that they’ve taken a stand, however, we need to ensure that this is not just language but rather is fully implemented.”

Indeed, civil society interest will now focus on how U.S. and international agencies implement these new provisions. While U.S. law offers a new opportunity to mitigate adverse impacts of development funding, it is unclear the extent to which that tool will be used.

“While we celebrate this achievement, we are cautious in our expectations,” BIC’s Lichtenstein says, “as unscripted and unfunded mandates, at their best, often indicate the start of serious discussion and better coordination, rather than systematic change.

The ethnic communities living along Ethiopia’s Omo River and depend on annual flooding to practice flood retreat cultivation for their survival and livelihood. Credit: Ed McKenna/IPS

By Ed McKenna
OMO VALLEY, Ethiopia, Nov 11 2013 (IPS)

As the construction of a major transmission line to export electricity generated from one of Ethiopia’s major hydropower projects gets underway, there are growing concerns that pastoralist communities living in the region are under threat.

The Gibe III dam, which will generate 1,800 megawatts (MW), is being built in southwest Ethiopia on the Omo River at a cost of 1.7 billion dollars. It is expected to earn the government over 400 million dollars annually from power exports. On completion in 2015 it will be the world’s fourth-largest dam."We are being told to stop moving with our cattle, to stop wearing our traditional dress and to sell our cattle. Cattle and movement is everything to the Mursi.” -- Mursi elder

But the dam is expected to debilitate the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of indigenous communities in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley and those living around Kenya’s Lake Turkana who depend on the Omo River.

The Bodi, Daasanach, Kara, Mursi, Kwegu and Nyangatom ethnic communities who live along the Omo River depend on its annual flooding to practice flood-retreat cultivation for their survival and livelihoods.

But the semi-nomadic Mursi ethnic community are being resettled as part of the Ethiopian government’s villagisation programme to make room for a large sugar plantation, which will turn roaming pastoralists into sedentary farmers. The hundreds of kilometres of irrigation canals currently being dug to divert the Omo River’s waters to feed these large plantations will make it impossible for the indigenous communities to live as they have always done.

“We are being told that our land is private property. We are very worried about our survival as we are being forced to move where there is no water, grass or crops,” a Mursi community member told IPS.

The Omo Valley is set to become a powerhouse of large commercial farming irrigated by the Gibe III dam. To date 445,000 hectares have been allocated to Malaysian, Indian and other foreign companies to grow sugar, biofuels, cereals and other crops.

“The Gibe III will worsen poverty for the most vulnerable. The government already has trouble managing hunger and poverty [among] its citizenry. By taking over land and water resources in the Omo Valley, it is creating a new class of ‘internal refugees’ who will no longer be self-sufficient,” Lori Pottinger from environmental NGO International Rivers told IPS.

Top global financiers, including the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB), have committed 1.2 billion dollars to a 1,070 km high-voltage line that will run from Wolayta-Sodo in Ethiopia to Suswa, 100 km northwest of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. The transmission line, powered by Ethiopia’s Gibe III, will connect the country’s electrical grid with Kenya and will have a capacity to carry 2,000 MW between the two countries.

According to the AfDB, it will promote renewable power generation, regional cooperation, and will ensure access to reliable and affordable energy to around 870,000 households by 2018.

Although the latest U.N. Development Programme Human Development report ranks Ethiopia 173^rd out of 187 countries, Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous country, is one of the continent’s fastest-growing economies.

According to Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, Ethiopia’s economy is set to maintain a growth rate of 11 percent in 2014. Fully exploiting its massive water resources to generate a hydropower potential of up to 45,000 MW in order to sell surplus electricity to its neighbours is central to Ethiopia’s Growth and Transformation plan, a five-year plan to develop the country’s economy.

The Horn of Africa nation currently generates 2,000 MW from six hydroelectric dams and invests more of its resources in hydropower than any other country in Africa – one third of its total GNP of about 77 billion dollars.

According to a World Bank report published in 2010, only 17 percent of Ethiopia’s 84.7 million people had access to electricity at the time of the report. By 2018, 100 percent of the population will have access to power, according to state power provider Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCO).

“We are helping mitigate climate risk of fossil fuel consumption and also reduce rampant deforestation rates in Ethiopia. Hydropower will benefit our development,” Miheret Debebe, chief executive officer of EEPCO, told IPS.

The Ethiopian government insists that the welfare of pastoralist communities being resettled is a priority and that they will benefit from developments in the Omo Valley. “We are working hard to safeguard them and help them to adapt to the changing conditions,” government spokesperson Shimeles Kemal told IPS.

However, there are concerns that ethnic groups like the Mursi are not being consulted about their changing future. “If we resist resettlement we will be arrested,” a Mursi elder told IPS.

“We fear for the future. Our way of life is under threat. We are being told to stop moving with our cattle, to stop wearing our traditional dress and to sell our cattle. Cattle and movement is everything to the Mursi.”

The importance of ensuring that benefits from Ethiopia’s national development projects do not come at a price of endangering the lives of hundreds of thousands pastoralists is critical said Ben Braga, president of the World Water Council. Braga decried governments that failed to compensate communities like the Mursi as displacement of surrounding communities is always an inevitable consequence of major dams that need plenty of advanced planning to avoid emergencies.

“How can we compensate these people so that the majority of the country can benefit from electricity? There is a need for better compensatory mechanisms to ensure that benefits are shared and that all stakeholders are included in consultations prior to construction,” he told IPS.

A farmer looks out at a flooded paddy field in Laos. Credit: E Souk/IPS

By Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau
BANGKOK, Jun 20 2013 (IPS)

The future of food security in the Mekong region lies at a crossroads, as several development ventures, including the Xayaburi Hydropower Project, threaten to alter fish migration routes, disrupt the flow of sediments and nutrients downstream, and endanger millions whose livelihoods depend on the Mekong River basin’s resources.

Running through China, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Laos, Thailand and Cambodia to the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, this is Asia’s seventh longest transboundary river.

An estimated 60 million people live within the lush river basin, and nearly 80 percent depend on the Lower Mekong’s waters and intricate network of tributaries as a major source of food.

But if all goes according to plan, 88 dams will obstruct the river’s natural course by 2030. Seven have already been completed in the Upper Mekong basin in China, with an estimated twenty more either planned or underway in the northwest Qinghai province, the southwestern region of Yunnan and Tibet.

Construction of the 3.5-billion-dollar Xayaburi Dam on the Lower Mekong in northern Laos is the first of eleven planned dam projects on the main stem of the Mekong River, with nine allocated for Laos and two in Cambodia.

Construction began in 2010 and as of last month the project was 10 percent complete.

At best these development projects will alter the traditional patterns of life here; at worst, they will devastate ecosystems that have thrived for centuries.

Over 850 freshwater fish species call the Mekong home, and several times a year this rich water channel is transformed into a major migration route, with one third of the species travelling over 1,000 kilometres to feed and breed, making the Mekong River basin one of the world’s most productive inland fisheries.

Large-scale water infrastructure development projects such as hydropower dams have already damaged the floodplains in the Lower Mekong and in the Tonlé Sap Lake in Cambodia, affecting water quality and quantity, lowering aquatic productivity, causing agricultural land loss and a 42-percent decline in fish supplies.

This spells danger in a region where fish accounts for 50 to 80 percent of daily consumption and micronutrient intake, Ame Trandem, Southeast Asia programme director for the non-profit International Rivers, told IPS.

Locating alternative protein sources such as livestock and poultry is no easy task and would require 63 percent more pasture lands and more than 17 percent more water.

“Cambodia is the largest fish eating country in the world. Get rid of the fish and you’re going to have serious problems because there is not enough livestock in Cambodia and Laos to compensate for the loss,” Trandem said.

With a total population of over 16 million, the Mekong Delta is known as the ‘rice bowl’ of Vietnam. It nurtures vast paddy fields that are responsible for 50 percent of national rice production and 70 percent of exports.

This low-lying delta depends on a natural cycle of floods and tides, with which Vietnamese farmers have long synchronised their planting and harvesting calendars.

Now, experts like Geoffrey Blate, senior advisor of landscape conservation and climate change for the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Greater Mekong Programme in Thailand, say this delicate ecosystem is vulnerable to changes brought on by global warming and mega development projects.

Rising sea levels and salt water intrusion have already put Vietnamese communities in the Mekong Delta on red alert, “while sediment losses caused by upstream dams will exacerbate these problems. In addition, the increased precipitation and heavier downpours anticipated from climate change may also substantially alter flood regimes in the Delta,” Blate told IPS.

If all the dams are built, experts estimate that 220,000 to 440,000 tonnes of white fish would disappear from the local diet, causing hunger and leading to a rapid decline in rice production.

Electricity over sustainability?

Citing a shortage of energy, Thailand’s leading state-owned utility corporation, EGAT, signed an agreement to purchase 95 percent of the Xayaburi dam’s anticipated 1,285 megawatts (MW) of electricity.

Six Thai commercial banks comprise the financial muscle of the project, while construction is in the hands of Thailand’s CH. Karnchang Public Company Limited, with some support from the Laotian government.

But energy experts like Chuenchom Sangarasri Greacen, author of Thailand’s Alternative Power Development Plan, have poked holes in the claim that the dam is required to meet growing energy needs.

Thailand is a net importer of electricity, but a lot of it is utilised wastefully, she told IPS, adding that countries like Laos and Cambodia have a much more immediate need for electricity: the World Bank estimates that only 84 percent of the population in Laos and 26 percent in Cambodia have access to electricity, compared to 99.3 percent in Thailand.

But instead of developing their own generation capacities, these governments have chosen export projects that profit corporations over people.

“Thailand is creating a lot of environmental, social and food issues for local communities by extending its grid to draw power from beyond our borders,” Greacen said.

Already, 333 families from villages like Houay Souy in north-central Laos, who were moved to make way for the dam, are feeling the first hints of greater suffering to come.

Once a self-sufficient community that generated revenues via gold panning and cultivated their own riverbank gardens to produce rice, fruits and vegetables, villagers are now finding themselves without jobs, very little money and not enough food.

“The villagers’ primary source of food was fishing and agriculture. In their new location, about 17 km away from their old homes, they were given small plots of agricultural land but not enough for their daily consumption needs,” said Trandem.

“Ch. Karnchang never compensated them for lost fisheries, fruit trees or the riverbank gardens that were washed away. Their new homes were built with poor quality wood, which was quickly eaten into by termites, so what little compensation they did receive went to fixing their new homes,” she added.

These families, numbering about five members per household, are now barely surviving on 10 dollars per month and symbolise the gap between so-called poverty alleviation programmes and their impact on the ground.

“The Laos government claims that dams will generate revenue but in reality…projects like Xayaburi basically export benefits and profits away from the host country while smaller projects that are more economically sustainable are being ignored,” says Greacen.

She believes the Laotian government should explore small-scale renewable energy projects like biomass and micro-hydro plants that would attract local investment and directly serve local populations.

Blate also suggested building diversion canals for smaller dams, rather than obstructing the main stem of the Mekong River.

A group of environmentalists, gender activists and international finance watchdogs are calling on the U.S. government to support calls for the World Bank to step back from a new programmatic focus on large-scale infrastructure, which critics say does little to help alleviate poverty.

The call comes just ahead of a major funding meeting, to be held Mar. 20-21 in Paris, of donors to the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank’s fund for the world’s poorest countries. In a background briefing released earlier this month outlining priorities for the IDA meeting, the bank includes a new thematic proposal to fund large-scale infrastructural projects.Almost 100 percent of jobs went to men, not only in building the coal plants and mines but even office jobs, while women lost jobs.

In discussing examples of what it calls regional transformational initiatives, referring to large projects with cross-border scope, the brief notes proposals for large, multi-billion-dollar dams in Africa and South Asia, among others.

“Based on decades of experience, we believe that the complex regional projects that IDA proposes risk undermining important goals of [the current IDA negotiations], including Inclusive Growth, Gender Equality, and Climate Resilience,” states a letter, signed by six U.S.-based advocacy organisations and policy experts and sent to the U.S. Treasury on Monday, a copy of which was seen by IPS.

“We recommend that IDA members drop the special theme of Regional Transformational Initiatives, and that IDA shift its focus on infrastructure solutions that are more effective at addressing the energy needs of the poor and at fostering inclusive growth, gender equality and climate resilience.”

The letter also calls on the U.S. government to “support such a shift in the negotiations”.

Although the World Bank was unable to offer comment by IPS’s deadline, in its briefing paper bank officials note that recent years have seen an increased international push towards these large-scale regional projects. This includes a major policy initiative unveiled at the Group of 20 (G20) countries summit in Mexico last year, itself based on a paper written in part by bank researchers.

“The focus on regional transformational projects arises from the recognition that they have the potential to catalyze very large-scale benefits to improve access to infrastructure services beyond borders and promote joint action to tackle shared challenges,” the bank states, reporting that a World Bank programme has raised three billion dollars for such projects in recent years.

“In particular, it reflects the recognition that the infrastructure deficit in IDA countries is a basic impediment to development and that regional solutions are needed given the large financing requirements necessary.”

The World Bank estimates that electricity-related investment requirements in sub-Saharan Africa alone will triple over the next two decades, to nearly 14 billion dollars.

Back in fashion

For critics, much of the current concern revolves around past experiences in which large, centralised projects were the focal points of international development and poverty-alleviation efforts, including by the World Bank.

“For us, this issue goes back to the 1950s through 1970s, an era when governments hoped for a silver bullet that, in one fell swoop, would allow them to modernise economies,” Peter Bosshard, policy director for International Rivers, an advocacy group and a signatory of the new letter, told IPS.

“After a while, however, people realised that these projects were too complex, and were forced to rely on outside technologies, management and knowhow. In addition to often huge time and cost overruns, the benefits remained below expectations – they didn’t trickle down to the poor – even while social and environmental impacts were greater than anticipated.”

The letter points out, for instance, that while multilateral donors have invested billions of dollars in two dams and electrification projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo, today only six percent of the population has access to electricity.

“Now, for reasons the World Bank doesn’t quite address, these big regional projects have come back into fashion,” Bosshard says. “In other documents, bank staff members have suggested that it’s simply cheaper and easier for the institution to push out, say, a single large loan for a big dam rather than dozens of smaller loans for dozens of smaller projects.”

The letter to the U.S. Treasury notes that large-scale infrastructure projects in the past have failed to create a “significant” number of jobs for locals. (The Treasury declined to comment for this story.)

Yet even when jobs are created, some investigations have suggested that the projects have an inordinately negative impact on women.

“Our studies found a very specific pattern surrounding these projects: almost 100 percent of jobs went to men, not only in building the coal plants and mines but even office jobs, while women lost jobs,” Elaine Zuckerman, president of Gender Action, a Washington advocacy group and a signatory of the new letter, told IPS. She says her office has studied the effects of four World Bank-financed oil-and-gas pipelines.

“Smallholder women, who make up 80 percent of farmers in developing countries, lose their land to bank-financed associated infrastructure,” she continues. “So men get the jobs and women lose access to their income. A good number are even forced to turn to sex work to make a living – we found elevated HIV levels in the aftermath of each of these projects.”

Strengthening climate resilience

Since the last spate of interest in large-scale infrastructural interventions, two important changes have taken place. First are concerns over climate change and a new focus on fostering “climate resilience”, particularly in developing countries; second, small-scale, non-centralised alternative power sources have become significantly more affordable.

“Diversified solutions are increasingly more appropriate because they mean diversifying the risks of a changing climate, while these big centralised projects actually increase climate vulnerability,” International Rivers’ Bosshard says.

“IDA has all of these other important goals, including strengthening climate resilience, but this large infrastructure proposal undermines each of those.”

Still, many of these new technologies face ongoing problems in accessing both credit and trained technical personnel. Bosshard and others suggest this would be a place where World Bank financing could be critical, offering support to “public guarantee schemes, technical assistance programs and a redesign of tax and other incentives that could remove these bottlenecks.”

The IDA negotiations are scheduled to continue to a second round in June, after which each country will be expected to announce individual funding pledges.

Fishermen's boats on the Mekong River in northern Laos, where the building of a controversial dam is planned. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Nov 6 2012 (IPS)

The U.S. government is directly cautioning the Laotian government following Monday’s announcement that the latter will move forward with contentious construction plans for a massive hydroelectric dam on the Mekong River.

“The extent and severity of impacts from the Xayaburi dam on an ecosystem that provides food security and livelihoods for millions are still unknown,” warned the U.S. State Department on Tuesday. “We are concerned that construction is proceeding before impact studies have been completed.”

The 3.5-billion-dollar Xayaburi dam has long been opposed by environmentalists, downstream communities and legal scholars, while the World Bank recently announced sanctions against a Finnish company that approved a disputed environmental assessment in favour of the project.

A major 2011 report by the pan-regional Mekong River Commission expressed concern over several areas in need of further review, and the Laotian government has stated that it would proceed on the Xayaburi project only once those concerns were ameliorated.

However, at the current summit of the inter-regional Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in the Laotian capital, Vientiane, the government made a surprise announcement that it would be moving forward immediately, with groundbreaking at the dam site slated for Wednesday.

“We would hope that senior government officials and heads of state at the Asia-Europe Meeting would express in the strongest possible terms their objections to the Lao government proceeding with the project,” Aviva Imhof, campaigns director with International Rivers, an environment watchdog, told IPS.

“In addition, we would hope that donors to Laos’s electricity and infrastructure sectors, such as the Asian Development Bank and the Japanese government, would reconsider their ongoing development assistance to a government that refuses to comply with its international obligations.”

Tuesday’s statement from the U.S. State Department was unusually direct, cautioning that the United States’ “own experience has made us acutely aware of the economic, social and environmental impacts that large infrastructure can have over the long-term”.

While the U.S. does not say that it opposes the project outright, the State Department highlights that the Mekong River Commission’s members, based in Vientiane, have yet to reach consensus on whether the project should continue. The government urged its Laotian counterpart to “uphold its pledge to work with its neighbours in addressing remaining questions regarding Xayaburi”.

The statement comes a year after a unanimous resolution was passed by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee “calling for the protection of the Mekong River Basin and for delaying mainstream dam construction along the river”.

First of a ‘cascade’

As currently planned, the Xayaburi project would consist of a 1,260 megawatt hydroelectric installation northwest of Vientiane. While there are already three operational dams (with two more under construction) on the narrow northern section of the Mekong that falls within China, the Xayaburi would be the first such project after the river enters the plains and becomes the wide, slow-moving waterway that is central to the lives of tens of millions of Southeast Asians.

Most likely, the dam’s construction would also ease the way for the dozen additional dams that the Mekong River Commission says are currently under consideration along the river.

Under regional agreements, none of these can go forward without consent from the rest of the affected countries. Yet despite a 2011 decision among those countries that additional work was necessary before the Xayaburi project should be allowed to proceed, the Laotian government has quietly continued to oversee extensive and expensive groundwork.

“Laos said it would cooperate with neighbouring countries, but this was never genuine,” Ame Trandem, Southeast Asia programme director for International Rivers, said Tuesday. “The international community should not let the Lao government get away with such a blatant violation of international law.”

Trandem is calling on Western donors as well as the governments of Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia to take a “firm stand” against the recent decision.

“The Xayaburi Dam is the first of a cascade of devastating mainstream dams that will severely undermine the region’s development efforts,” she said.

“The food security and jobs of millions of people in the region are now on the line. None of Vietnam and Cambodia’s environmental and social concerns have been taken seriously. Laos has never even collected basic information about the ways that people depend on the river, so how can it say that there will be no impacts?”

Speaking with journalists on Monday, Viraphonh Viravong, the Laotian deputy minister of energy and mining, brushed aside such criticism, saying simply that his government had “addressed most of the concerns”. Construction on an initial diversionary dam should be finished by the middle of next year.

23,000 megawatts

Laos today is a nominally socialist country ruled by one military-backed party, and it remains one of the poorest and least developed countries in Asia. Yet its hydroelectric potential – which the World Bank estimates at 23,000 megawatts, just a tiny percentage of which has thus far been developed – has long been seen as the country’s most significant opportunity to fund its own development.

For this reason, the longstanding opposition to the Xayaburi project has undoubtedly frustrated the country’s political leadership. The dam’s construction is being bankrolled by a Thai company, and current plans would have almost all of its 1,260 megawatts be sold directly to Thailand.

Yet despite the substantial profits projected for the Laotian government, several studies have highlighted significant economic and social costs, including hundreds of millions of dollars in projected lost agricultural and fishery opportunities all the way to the river’s mouth in Vietnam.

Potentially affected communities have put together several petitions to the governments in Vientiane and Bangkok, asking that the Xayaburi project be halted. The Mekong River Commission has gone still farther, suggesting in 2010 that all dam work on the river be subjected to a moratorium of at least a decade, to allow for greater study of the potential impact of such work.

In 2011, the Laotian government hired a Finnish company, the Pöyry Group, to ascertain whether the Xayaburi proposal complied with the Mekong River Commission’s requirements. To the surprise of many observers, the company found that the project was in compliance and advised the government to continue – though it also suggested dozens of additional surveys and studies.

In August, the World Bank announced that it was sanctioning the Pöyry Group for impropriety (though not specifically for its work in Laos). Nonetheless, critics warn that the Laotian government is now proceeding based almost solely on the problematic Pöyry assessment.