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The dam report on tribal peoples that was damned by the media

Dams and people
Insecure future A Karo man in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government is building Gibe III on the Omo river. It will be Africa’s tallest dam and is part of a series of five dams. The tribes of the Lower Omo Valley, including the Karos, rely on the Omo River to survive in what is an extremely inhospitable environment. During the annual flood, the river deposits fertile silt along its banks, in
which the tribes are able to grow vital food crops. Some tribes
graze their cattle along the riverbanks, as for much of the year there is little grass elsewhere. Survival International / Eric Lafforgue

When skewed concepts of development are the watchwords of the day, it is more than likely that voices against this twisted sense of development don't see the light of day. So when a group that fights for tribal people around the world releases a report on dams, it is damned and made to disappear into the back hole of the news world.

That is what happened to happened to the report "Serious Damage: Tribal peoples and large dams" that was released last week by Survival International. The report exposes the untold cost of obtaining "green" electricity from large hydroelectric dams. The impact on tribal people is profound. One Amazonian tribe, the Enawene Nawe, has learnt that Brazilian authorities plan to build 29 dams on its rivers. Across the Amazon, the territories of five uncontacted tribes will be affected.

It is has been a decade since the World Commission on Dams (WCD) recognised that large dam projects "have led to the impoverishment and suffering of millions," and established firm standards and guidelines for future dams, which included projects being "guided by "tribal peoples' free, prior and informed consent to projects affecting them. The WCD, created by the World Bank and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to investigate the effects of dams, was formed in 1998. Its report, published in 2000, found that, "Large dams have had serious impacts on the lives, livelihoods,cultures and spiritual existence of indigenous and tribal peoples."

The large dam overdrive, propelled by a lobby that projects the industry as a panacea to climate change, is threatening the livelihoods and survival of tribal groups around the world. And the World Bank alone is pouring $11bn into 211 hydropower projects worldwide. The Bank's funding of damn projects have increased 50 per cent since 1997. More than 60 per cent of all population displacement endorsed by the World Bank is for dam projects, and the Bank’s review of these projects over ten years found that the number of people actually evicted was 47 per cent higher than the planning estimates. Numbers of tribal peoples don't really matter, after all.

The Survival report reminds us, "Among the most marginalised and underrepresented peoples anywhere, tribal peoples are least able to raise concerns when projects go wrong or their rights are ignored and violated. The governments of many countries, including most countries in Africa, do not recognise tribal and indigenous peoples as distinct. Without this recognition and the corollary protection in law, international dam companies (invited and supported by governments) are more easily able to bypass tribal peoples’ rights and operate on their land with impunity."

Survival makes its recommendations:

  1. All hydroelectric dams on tribal peoples’ land should be halted unless and until the tribes have given their free, prior and informed consent to the project.
  2. No new hydroelectric dams should be developed where they affect tribal peoples’ territories unless and until the tribes’ collective land ownership rights have been recognized and they have been fully and independently consulted, and have freely given their consent.
  3. In the case of isolated or uncontacted tribes, where consultation is not possible, there should be no development of hydroelectric dams on their territories.
  4. Where hydropower projects are designed to provide energy to industrial and largescale agricultural projects, the tribes of the region must be fully consulted and have given their free, prior and informed consent to the industrialisation programme before the hydroelectric dams are approved.
  5. Companies and financial investors must only become involved in a hydroelectric dam project if they are satisfied that the project enjoys the broad and prior consent of the tribal peoples it will affect and that their land rights have been recognised.

Footnotes:

  1. Barely 20-odd news establishments around the world carried an item based on the release of this report. In India, only sify.com published a creed released by Asia News International, datelined London.
  2. You can download the Survival International report and see for yourself what the organisation has to say. Its campaigners are available for interview.
 
 
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  • Subir Ghosh is a Kolkata-based independent journalist-writer-researcher. He writes on environment, cinema, conflict, the Northeast, fashion, crony capitalism and corruption.
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