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23.3 News 393-394Jw NATURE|Vol 440|23 March 2006 NEWS SPECIAL REPORT S. TORFINN/PANOS S. Up to 50,000 people will lose their homes to the Merowe dam. Tide of censure for African dams A wave of Chinese-built dams in Africa, particularly the Merowe project in Sudan, could have devastating consequences for local communities. Jim Gilesreports. On the arid plains that surround the Nile Thayer Scudder, an anthropologist at the Cali- to 10,000 families will be affected, and four north of Khartoum in Sudan, a huge dam fornia Institute of Technology in Pasadena, resettlement schemes are under way. A project is slowly taking shape. The billion-dollar who has spent decades studying hydropower of this scale in Europe or North America would Merowe project will more than double the projects. “If governments don’t care, or are cor- have required years of independent study amount of electricity that Sudan can produce, rupt, why will the Chinese engineers worry?” before being given the go-ahead, say dam and is just one of a dozen new dam projects The surge of large dam projects that began experts. But the first environmental-impact being built across Africa using Chinese money in the 1960s caused many lessons to be learned assessment was completed in 2002, just a year and expertise. the hard way. Projects in China, India, North before construction began. But scientists and environmentalists who America and elsewhere caused serious down- Contrary to rules for dam projects adhered have studied the dam say that poor local peo- stream erosion through the removal of sedi- to by other big funders such as the World ple will suffer because necessary precautions ment, and the majority of resettled people Bank, the assessment was conducted, not by are not being taken. According to the first suffered a decline in quality of life (see ‘Lessons independent experts, but by Lahmeyer Inter- independent review of the dam plans, a copy to learn’, overleaf). Hydrologists say that thor- national, the German company acting as engi- of which has been seen by Nature, inadequate ough assessments of the impact, good design neering consultants for the project. The thought has been given to the environmental and well-funded resettlement programmes assessment, which was never formally pub- and social consequences of flooding hundreds can minimize the impact of new dams. lished in Sudan, also fails to tackle key issues. of square kilometres of land. That is far from It falls well short of international standards, unusual when it comes to Chinese investment Large scale say researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of in Africa, environmental groups allege. They But although several national governments and Aquatic Science and Technology in Kastan- say that China, which has a dire domestic envi- the World Bank have earned praise for imple- ienbaum, who will publish their review of the ronmental record, is repeating the mistakes of menting some of these ideas, experts say China assessment on 23 March. previous big dam projects, and that rural has not followed suit. At Merowe, for example, Sediment accumulating behind the dam African communities will pay the price. where commercial electricity production is is one such issue, says Cristian Teodoru, a geol- “Chinese companies will ignore social and scheduled to begin next year, a 7-kilometre- ogist at the institute who produced the review. environmental impacts to the extent that local long, 65-metre-high wall will trap more than This will affect farmers downstream who rely governments are willing to ignore them,” says 10 million cubic metres of water. Land belonging on nutrients in the sediment to fertilize their 393 ©2006 Nature PublishingGroup NEWS NATURE|Vol 440|23 March 2006 involvement with Merowe or other African Lessons to learn dams. But Jia JinSheng, vice-president of the China Institute of Water Resources and •The Aswan High Dam in Hydropower Research in Beijing, confirms Egypt, built across the Nile that his country is winning contracts in theBOLSTAD/PANOS T. during the 1960s, caused region. He says Chinese firms can undercut severe erosion downstream. rivals in Europe and North America by around Sediment that would normally a third, and finish construction more quickly. have replenished the area He adds that environmental and social issues remained trapped behind the have become more important in China in the dam, and salt water from the Mediterranean eventually past five years, but that ultimately responsibil- inundated parts of the delta. ity rests with the host nation: “It’s the business •Few recent hydropower of the owners and local government,” he says. projects have been as controversial as China’s Three Local responsibility Gorges Dam (pictured). The Those parties are often ill-equipped to provide US$25-billion dam, which will than half a million people. Indian government has several the necessary safeguards, says Ute Collier, an create a lake 600 kilometres •The author Arundhati Roy major dams under construction expert on dams at the WWF in Godalming, long and is due for completion has led a high-profile campaign and in planning, but Roy and near London. Collier published a report on at the end of the decade, drew against dam building in India, in others say previous projects hydropower in Africa on 6 March in associa- particular criticism over the particular the Narmada Dam caused severe damage to local tion with UK charities WaterAid and Oxfam. forcible resettlement of more Project in central India. The ecosystems and communities. She backs the potential of hydropower, point- ing out that around a third of the continent has fields during the annual floods. “This issue senior environmental adviser at Hydro-Québec, no access to electricity. But she says that only a is not even mentioned in the report,” says an energy company in Montreal, Canada. few African countries, such as Zambia and Teodoru. The future of downstream ecosys- Critics of Merowe say the project also looks South Africa, have the political will and infra- tems gets similarly short shrift. Teodoru says set to repeat perhaps the most severe social mis- structure to ensure that hydropower is imple- that the water column at the front of the dam take of previous dam schemes, which have seen mented responsibly. Elsewhere, she says, will contain layers of anoxic water, which, if the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of funders with low environmental standards, sent through the turbines and released, could resettled people suffer. Mutaz Musa Abdalla such as China, or the Arab banks that are also harm aquatic life below the dam — another Salim, director of financing at the Merowe Dam contributing to the Merowe project, can oper- point the assessment fails to acknowledge. Project Implementation Unit in Khartoum, ate almost unchecked. Egon Failer, an executive director at Lah- denies this. He points out that 35% of the 10,000 Pressure could potentially come from the meyer in Bad Vilbel, defends the report, saying affected families have been resettled and third group involved in dam building: the that it was an early-stage document and that US$700 million will eventually be spent on new commercial firms that run the projects. But the final design addresses some of the prob- homes, clinics and other facili- Collier says that some West- lems that Teodoru identified. Dam gates will, ties. But when staff at the Inter- “If African governments ern companies seem happy for example, be opened to flush out sediment national Rivers Network, an don’t care, or are corrupt, to work on such projects. As in July when the floods arrive and stir up water environmental group in Berke- well as Lahmeyer, two other in the reservoir. He adds that the centre of the ley, California, which part- why will the Chinese European firms are involved turbine inlet is just 12 metres below the dam funded the Swiss study, visited engineers worry?” in Merowe: the Swiss com- surface, so that oxygen levels will be high the resettlement sites in Febru- pany ABB, which sells equip- enough not to harm downstream ecosystems. ary 2005, they catalogued many problems. The ment for electricity sub- stations, and Alstom group say sanitation was already poor owing to in France, which is supplying turbines and Inaccessible cramped conditions in the new towns, and that generators. “Companies should operate in the But details of the final design have never been soil quality was in some places too low to sup- same way as they do at home,” says Collier. published, and scientists working for Lah- port agriculture. Salim angrily denied these “But that is often not the case.” meyer were required to sign confidentiality assertions when Natureput them to him. On the issue of resettlement, for example, agreements that prevent them from talking to Experts are concerned that the problems Lahmeyer seems to have set aside its own reser- the media, making it impossible for researchers identified at Merowe will affect other Chinese- vations about the project. The company’s 2002 and environmental groups to assess Failer’s built dams. Press reports suggest that China is assessment acknowledged that, with just over a assertions. Teodoru points out that even considering, or has already started work on, at year to go before construction, there was no 12 metres below the surface oxygen levels least a dozen dam projects in Africa. These agreed plan on how to resettle the 50,000 peo- could be dangerously low. Water levels will also projects tie in with investments in many other ple involved and that prospects of “smoothly” fluctuate during the year, and could leave the African projects, some in countries with poor resettling at least one group — members of the base of the turbine twice as deep as Failer indi- human-rights records, in a strategy that West- Shaigiya tribe — were “doubtful”.
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