Ethiopia, the dam of the discord
at risk the lives of 500 thousand people
The project of a dam in Ethiopia risks jeopardizing the survival of five hundred thousand people. The dramatic complaint comes from Survival International , an NGO active in Africa that has decided to launch a vast global campaign. The work, which is called “Gibe III”, should rise in 2012 in the Omo Valley, right along the border with Sudan.

The project concerns us closely because it was entrusted to Salini builders, an Italian engineering company that created another hydroelectric plant, the Gilgel Gibe II, partially collapsed last February a few days after it was inaugurated by Foreign Minister Franco Frattini during the Ethiopian stop on his tour of the African continent. “The realization of this dam – supports Survival international – would end up destroying an ecologically very fragile environment, as well as all the subsistence economies linked to the Omo river and to the natural cycles of its floods”.

The purpose of the dam, 240 meters high, is to supply electricity to many regions of the area and to collect water in a 150-kilometer basin that will serve to irrigate the nearby lands, already destined for international companies for large-scale cultivation, including hydrocarbons. But there is no doubt that such an imposing dam would end up altering the course of the river and unbalancing the alternation of the floods that flood the neighboring lands allowing the sowing and crops.

“It is much worse – they observe at Survival International – this huge dam interrupts the flooding of the river and could have catastrophic consequences on the lives of all the peoples of the valley, already long strained by the progressive loss of control and access to their food, the security of half a million people depends on a variety of sustenance techniques that alternate and complement each other with changing climatic conditions: from the cultivation of sorghum, maize, beans in floodplains along the banks of the Omo ; from fishing, to pastoralism practiced in the savannahs, to the pastures generated by the floods “.

According to the studies carried out, the decrease in fish could bring to the end a small tribe of hunter-gatherers: the Kwegus. “Six members of the same tribe – the NGO remembers – including two children, have already died of hunger from the lack of rain and floods”. According to the complaint, the project would have been developed by the central government. The local populations were not even consulted, they would have learned of the work only after the fact. The Omo River is the main tributary of Lake Turkana in Kenya. Both have an archaeological and environmental importance and have been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In a note, yesterday, Salini announces that “it will defend itself in every seat from further unmotivated and defamatory attacks that cause very serious damage not only to the company and to the dignity of its technicians and workers, but also and above all to the development of the whole Horn of Africa “. With the Gibe projects, the Italian company continues, “it will be possible to guarantee as much renewable and clean energy as two medium-sized nuclear power plants could produce and with this allow the sustainable development of one of the most depressed areas of the planet”.

Survival International appealed to the Ethiopian government requesting the suspension of the project. But he also asked potential financiers – African Development Bank, European Investment Bank, World Bank and Italian Development Cooperation – not to support it. “For the tribes of the Omo Valley,” said Stephen Corry, general director of Survival, “the Gibe III dam will be a cataclysm of great proportions. They will lose their lands and all their livelihoods. Despite this disaster, very few know what is about to happen “.

(March 23, 2010)