ABSTRACT The multiple impacts of a major hydrodam development project on Ethiopia’s Omo River are examined through a resource use and natural system analysis focused on the half million indigenous people whose lives would be radically changed by the dam’s downstream environmental consequences. The author warns of an impending human rights and ecological catastrophe that is being minimized by the governments of the three nation states that border the Omo and Lake Turkana basins. The very real threat of mass starvation and armed conflict in the border region of Kenya, Ethiopia and South Sudan is attributed to government and development agency inaction and indifference to the impacts of the dam project. Despite ample data to the contrary, development banks, industrial firms and governmental agencies have produced reports and plans that minimize the impacts and exaggerate the benefits. This interdisciplinary report serves as a critique of this process as it examines well funded and ostensibly authoritative studies that use limnological data, biological data, hydrology, and geology to make a case for the dam, while the author expands on the analysis using field data, socioeconomic studies and ecological as well as geological studies to call the wisdom of the project into question. The author has several decades of experience in the area, has published a monograph and articles on the Lower Omo Basin, and is currently engaged in cooperative research within the broader transborder region. PREFATORY NOTE At stake with the planned Gibe III hydrodam on Ethiopia's Omo River is the political choice to either provide for the survival of hundreds of thousands of Sub-Saharan Africa's most impoverished and marginalized indigenous people and maintain the fragile peace in one of the world's most volatile border areas, or to bring mass starvation and death to these people, with the very high likelihood of unleashing regional armed conflict reaching across the borders of all three nations. More than 500,000 indigenous people depend on the lower Omo River and Lake Turkana for their survival. The environments of both of these major bodies of water would be radically altered by the planned Gibe III dam, in turn causing destruction of the regions key survival systems. Friends and enemies alike among these indigenous people face a unitary future: either survival or devastation. All evidence points to the reality that it will be the latter if the Gibe III dam is completed. This report is based on long-term, field-based research and experience in the region by the author, investigations by the South Omo/North Turkana Research Project, and input from professional researchers and public policy individuals associated with the Africa Resources Working Group. _______ The Omo River is a transborder river flowing southward from its source waters in the highlands of Ethiopia through broad, aridic lowlands to terminate at Kenya's Lake Turkana, which derives 90 per cent of its waters from the river. Access to Omo River and Lake Turkana pasturage, planting, and fish resources is a matter of life and death for more than a half million indigenous people from multiple ethnic groups. Pushed by their determination to serve the goals of generating economic growth calculated at the national level, as well as revenue generation for the government and investors through the export of hydroelectricity, the Ethiopian government and international development banks have pursued the development of the Gibe III dam without regard for the catastrophic-level social and environmental consequences it will produce. 3 __________ Completion of the dam in Ethiopia would radically reduce the Omo River’s downstream flow (by at least 60-70 percent) and cause major retreat of Kenya’s Lake Turkana. This precipitous loss of water would destroy the last remaining survival means of pastoralists, agropastoralists, and fishers living along the Lower Omo River and around Lake Turkana. A extremely large number of people would face famine, disease, and death. Nearly unprecedented in scale of destruction, this human disaster would simultaneously bring war to the entire region, especially in view of the arms trafficking connected to the conflict in South Sudan and the widespread weaponry among the region’s inhabitants. The Gibe III dam is already under construction, and is a uniquely risky venture, in itself. It is located in a major seismic area of the world and subject to 20 per cent risk of 7 or 8 point earthquakes within the next 50 years, according to the U.S. Geological Service and the United Nations. Even a more moderate earthquake, coupled with highly plausible landslides and sediment buildup in the reservoir, could cause dam collapse, producing devastating human and environmental destruction on a scale far surpassing the worst such event in human history. ******** No environmental or socioeconomic impact assessment has been conducted for the actual impact zone of the planned Gibe III dam, which includes the transborder region, by the Ethiopian government or the international development banks financing the project. The assessments that have been offered were produced three years after construction began, and are both fragmentary in the extreme and pervaded by major omissions and misrepresentations, even fabrications. These failings are not merely shortcomings; they are invalid as appraisals of one of the most consequential developments in recent times. All indications are that the Ethiopian government and international development banks and global commercial investors have operated with the precondition of approval of the Gibe III dam mega-project, despite the blatant absence of adequate assessment. Meanwhile, the Ethiopian government has already begun forcibly evicting thousands of indigenous villagers from their riverine lands, replacing them with private commercial and government agribusiness plantations with large-scale irrigation systems (including major canal construction), which a Gibe III dam would facilitate. These developments were never identified in Ethiopian government planning or foreign advisory documents. These evicted villagers have been forced back into the ecologically degraded upland plains, without sufficient livestock to sustain them, or into the modern Omo Delta region, which is already crowded, with tens of thousands of Dasanech living there as agropastoralists, agriculturalists and fishers. 4 Major water diversion from the Omo River is already underway, impacting the Omo River's inflow to Kenya's Lake Turkana and the of indigenous peoples who depend on the Omo Delta and Lake Turkana waters for fishing, agriculture and livestock-raising. Government corruption and political repression are rife throughout the Ethiopian region. Villagers are frightened for their lives, objection to eviction is brutally suppressed, and opposition to the dam is impossible to discuss openly among indigenous communities, let alone with the government. Non-government affiliated villagers universally deny that they have been consulted by the government regarding the development, despite government assurances to the contrary. Scarcity of water resources has already been identified as a potential major source of international conflict in the coming century. Protest among Kenya's indigenous people is growing, with far more informationa and awareness of the planned development than exists in Ethiopia. It remains unclear how the Kenyan government will respond to its own indigenous people and their survival needs. _________ 5 Fig. 1. Location Map of Proposed Gibe III Dam and Impact Area N (To Gibe III Dam) GIBE III DAM M u Omo River i River Chaii SOUTH r SUDAN ETHIOPIA e r ILEMI v e i Mursi v TRIANGLE i R R 050KM o o m g KENYA O a SOUTH M Suri Kibish River SUDAN Kibish Kara NyangaKorastom ETHIOPIA Mt r e v Toposa i Toposa R Hamar o ILEMI m O Turmi TRIANGLE Omorate Dasanech Turkana Todenyang Modern Omo Delta Lokitaung Ileret Dasanech NORTH KENYA ISLAND Koobi Fora Lake Turkana Alia Bay Turkana Ferguson’s KENYA Gulf Gabbra Kalokol CENTRAL ISLAND Moite C. Carr Lodwar Eliye Springs R ed r Sea e ERITREA YEMEN v i R SUDAN l den e El MoMololo Gulf of A w k r u SOMALIA u Loiyangalani T ETHIOPIA T SOUTH LORIU ISLAND SOUTH PLATEAU SUDAN Rendilllle UGANDA KENYA Indian Kerio River Ocean 50 km Turkana Photo Page 1. Turkana Herders and Fishers in the Lake Turkana Region. Photo Page 2. Dasanech and Nyangatom Herders, Planters and Fishers along the Lower Omo River. VOICES FROM THE TRANSBORDER REGION “In the time of our fathers and grandfathers, our land was the land of good grass and it was big [gesturing to the horizon]! The grass was tall for our cows and we moved our herds apart when danger came. Wild animals were everywhere. The river (Omo) gave us what we needed – water and also grass for our animals then. Our life was good… But look at our land now! It is bare and you can find our dying animals everywhere – by the thousands. Look at those carcasses! Our fathers and grandfathers did not know this hunger – they did not know this life. We have had to bring our villages to the river to find grass for our animals and to plant so we can feed our children. The poorest of us are even fishing. Now we are afraid that we will lose our river waters because growing our crops is the only way we can stay alive. What is happening to our land – do you know? Because we are afraid for our children and for their children.” (Dasanech male elder, West bank of the modern Omo River delta, in Ethiopia) “When I was young, we had much land [gestures to the West and the North]. Now much of the lands have been taken from us and they let others into our lands. Our land now has no grass except for short times when the rains come and even then the grass goes away quickly.