Tuesday, June 29, 2010

The Gifts of the Dragons

The Gifts of the Dragons
Leadership (Zambia)
Friday, 04 June 2010 08:41
www.leadershiponline.co.za/articles/other/634-the-gifts-of-the-dragons

Friend or foe, my China?

Dragons are everywhere, but they are not the same. To some, they bring
destruction; to others, good fortune. The absolutely evil Western dragon
familiar to fans of Tolkien and Wagner spends its waking hours amassing
and guarding treasure and terrorising the population of whatever country
is unfortunate enough to accommodate it.

In Asia, on the other hand, dragons are regarded as divine beings
associated with abundance, prosperity and good fortune, so much so that
Asian rulers would claim dragon ancestry (Hirohito traced his 125
generations back to Princess Fruitful Jewel, daughter of a Dragon King
of the Sea) and the Chinese referred to themselves as Lung Tik Chuan Ren
(�Descendents of the Dragon�); to be called �dragon face� was a supreme
compliment.

According to a West African legend, the Creator God Nana-Buluku made a
dragon called Aido-Hwedo which acted as co-creator of the world, flying
around with the Creator in its mouth and fertilising the planet with its
dung (the larger piles formed mountains).

Should significance be attached to African dragons bearing a closer
family resemblance to the dragons of Asia than those of the West?

Will China�s involvement bring destruction or good fortune?

In Western-oriented media, China�s image leaves much to be desired. To
be blunt, it is seen as pursuing its own interests and turning a blind
eye to the doings of the kleptocrats that seem to run half the
continent, supplying cellular networks, railways and football stadiums
with equal aplomb while the population quietly gets on with the business
of being oppressed in a myriad forms.

Reports and rumours from Zimbabwe � ranging from a Chinese minister
singing �Happy Birthday� in flawless Shona in honour of a beaming Robert
Mugabe, to the construction of a secret runway in the controversial
Chiadza diamond fields to facilitate arms deals � do little to endear
the Asian superpower to outraged Mail & Guardian readers; China�s
insatiable thirst for oil (it is Angola�s number-one trading partner)
has entrenched the grip on power of Angolan President Jos� Dos Santos
and his cronies in that far from democratic land; and so on.

What else do you expect? China pessimists will shrug. Although the Asian
giant ranks third among the world�s economies, it has lagged behind in
certain respects that the West considers de rigueur for any civilised
nation.

In his book China 2020, Michael Santoro points out that the legacy of
Chairman Mao has left an indelible stamp on Chinese society: a
government that does not function under the rule of law, a questionable
approach to human rights, endemic corruption, and widespread pollution.

Then there is the repressive stance on regional autonomy, censorship and
a hypersensitivity to criticism that borders on paranoia and is
increasingly finding expression in a burgeoning nationalism.

How could such a country possibly aid Africa?

Of course, the Chinese see things somewhat differently. China optimists
like to contrast the bloodthirsty history of European involvement in
Africa with its epic litany of slavery, genocide and railways, with
China�s open-handed Africa policy, a �strategic partnership� based on
�mutual benefit, reciprocity and common prosperity�.

In theory, it is a win-win situation. The formula for Chinese operations
in Africa can be summarised as a form of barter agreement, with
infrastructure development offered in exchange for raw materials.

In the case of the Congo, copper serves as a paradigm. In 2008, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and China agreed to swap some 10
million tonnes of copper ore for mine and civic infrastructure to the
value of US$9 billion. This �deal of the century� was structured to
achieve three goals:

First, as part of its strategy to ensure it has the resources to fuel
its titanic growth, China saw a golden opportunity to secure a mother
lode of copper and cobalt.

Second, DRC President Joseph Kabila was galvanised by the opportunity to
show the beleaguered citizens of his war-ravaged country that their
government indeed was making progress with reconstruction. The timing
was fortuitous; general elections are due to be held in the DRC this year.

Third, the deal offered the chronically indebted DRC to wriggle out of
the corner in which it was placed by its obligation, imposed by the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), to focus on repaying its debts and
reform its fiscal and financial regime instead of spending funds on
social and infrastructure development, which is what the country
desperately requires.

The DRC is a �Highly Indebted Poor Country� that owes some $11bn in
foreign debt incurred under the kleptocratic President of then Zaire,
Mobutu Sese Seko; of that, the IMF is owed $6bn.

IMF policy is based firmly on ensuring that the creditors it represents
(the so-called �Paris Club�) get their money back; it uses the hope of
debt relief as a carrot to ensure the interest payments continue to come
in.

In this context, the Chinese offer was a lifeline that would enable the
DRC to carry out vital infrastructure investment while continuing to
service its debt to the IMF (the DRC paid $170 million in interest in
2009, in the teeth of the global recession). As a popular Congolese
expression goes, �You can�t put a highway in your Swiss bank account.�

However, the IMF was far from pleased.

Claiming that the loan would overexpose the DRC to potential foreign
debt, it threatened that unless the loan were halved, it would take
steps to ensure that the DRC�s debt would not be written off.

The DRC capitulated; the Western dragon maintained its stranglehold.

As Gregory Mthembu-Salter from the South African Institute of
International Affairs told the Ghana Business News, �The IMF�s
opposition to the deal represents an attempt by the West to counter
China�s investments in Africa.�

The credibility of this claim is strengthened by the IMF�s silence at
the time of the Tenke Fungurume contract in 2005 during the transitional
period before the DRC�s first presidential election in 2006.

At the time, with the assistance of the United States government � which
ignored a World Bank moratorium on new mineral contract negotiations in
the DRC � Western business interests finagled a deal in terms of which
the DRC reduced the fee for an area approximately double that of the
Chinese concession from $250m to $50m and shrank its own share in the
concession from 45% to 17.5%.

Considering that the Chinese deal of 2008 included a $350-million
signing bonus and 32% DRC share, it is difficult to believe that the
IMF�s prime consideration in intervening was the financial welfare of
the DRC.

A key difference in China�s Africa strategy is that it emerges from its
own experience.

As pointed out by long-time China watcher Deborah Brautigam, author of
The Dragon�s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa, China was in a
similar position to Africa today: hungry for technology and
infrastructure but short on foreign exchange. So it leveraged its oil,
coal and other minerals to get a $10-billion loan from Japan, paying for
Japanese technology and infrastructure with oil and coal shipments.

Six major railway, port and hydropower projects were financed in this
way beginning 1980 � the first of many projects in the building of the
transport corridors and energy complexes that have underpinned and
accompanied China�s well-documented but always startling rise to
economic prominence.

The analogy is clear: Africa can emulate China � with China�s help.

Since 2004, that help has amounted to similar technology-for-resources
barter deals � or resource-backed infrastructure loans � in seven
African countries, including roads, railways, hospitals, schools and
water systems for Angolan oil; hydropower in the Republic of the Congo
and Ghana for oil and cocoa beans respectively, and transport corridors
in Nigeria.

The market-rate loans are issued mostly by the Export-Import Bank of
China (China Eximbank) under terms usually more favourable than Western
deals. China�s massive foreign exchange reserves allow it to lend at
highly competitive rates.

For example, Angola has received three loans with interest charged at
the LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) plus 1.25-1.75%; other
commercial lenders, such as Standard Chartered, charged LIBOR plus at
least 2.5% for repayment in a shorter period, with no grace period.

Looking to the future, China intends facilitating the construction of
seven special trade and economic co-operation zones in Nigeria, Egypt,
Ethiopia, Mauritius, Zambia and Algeria. China itself has more than 100
special economic zones, which played an important role in the early
stages of its development. These zones can help the least developed
countries of Africa increase the standard of their infrastructure,
services and institutions within a limited focus area.

Experience also has taught Beijing that such zones must be sustainable.
In the past, Chinese projects would be turned over to host governments
that allowed them to fall apart once the Chinese teams left. Now it is
required that Chinese companies take responsibility for the design,
construction and management of zones.

Start-up costs are subsidised partially by the state.

The $5-billion venture capital China Africa Development Fund has equity
shares in three of the zones: a $1-billion small and medium enterprise
fund is intended to assist African businesses establish themselves in
the special zones.

In contrast to the US, where Congress recently has banned the financing
of any activities that could shift American jobs overseas, China is
pushing its industries toward Africa so that it can climb the value
chain at home. Polluting industries are no longer welcome in Chinese
cities; the Chinese workforce is expecting its wages and benefits to
rise. So the pollution, low wages and long working hours hitherto
associated with Chinese industry will be replicated in the African zones.

Nonetheless, this is an excellent opportunity for Africa to follow China
into the world rather than continue as a raw materials supplier.

President of the Republic of Zambia Rupiah Banda was quoted by China
Economic Net as saying, �Chinese investors are the real helping hands
for us, and their contribution to Africa�s economic development is
evident.�

According to Rwandan President Paul Kagame, �The Chinese bring what
Africa needs: investment and money for governments and companies. China
is investing in infrastructure and building roads�, whereas the West�s
involvement �has not brought Africa forward.

�Western firms have, to a large extent, polluted Africa and they are
still doing so. Think of the dumping of nuclear waste in the Ivory Coast
or the fact that Somalia is being used as a garbage can by European
firms,� he said.

South Africa is no exception to the trend. As of 1 April, China�s status
as South Africa�s leading trading partner was augmented with the signing
of deals worth R2.3bn for products such as mohair, bulk wine, wool,
frozen fish, copper, manganese, granite blocks, ferrochrome and lobster.

But what about that nagging issue of the rule of law? Should we be happy
doing business with such a partner? What about guanxi, the indispensable
but obscure Chinese form of business networking? Will it not merely
encourage South African tenderpreneurs to take things to the next level?

Deborah Brautigam told Leadership: �As China has transitioned toward a
market economy, it has been simultaneously developing the rule of law,
primarily for commercial matters. But China does not have an independent
or well-trained judiciary, and that makes it difficult to have the kind
of checks and balances that characterise a place like South Africa.

�This is all changing very rapidly, but it is not correct to say that
�the principle that nobody is above the law does not apply�.

The principle exists: everyone is expected to obey the laws, although
these laws are not the same kind of laws that we have: no press freedom,
for example.

�But in practice, as South Africans also know, it is hard for powerful
people to be successfully prosecuted by those beneath them.

�Guanxi simply means �connections� or �relationship�. It has good, bad
and neutral connotations. It should be seen primarily as the phenomenon
where a significant number of people report that they got their current
jobs through their personal network of �connections� or though knowing
someone. It emphasises that relationships and knowing people are really
key to business and professional life (this part is common sense),� she
said.

�But with regard to getting contracts or succeeding in tenders, guanxi
can foster corruption or cronyism. (Guanxi does not really apply to
nepotism, as guanxi is not about family connections, but non-family
connections.)

�To the extent that the tenderpreneur phenomenon comes from nepotism or
cronyism (playing favourites), it seems to be the same kind of thing.
But when the tenderpreneurs come from BEE policies, that would not be
guanxi but something else,� added Brautigam.

Greg Penfold
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international dam projects.

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SA's polluted reservoir draws lawsuit

WATER POLLUTION
Govt offers Hartebeespoort water assurances as lobby prepares to sue

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/govt-offers-hartebeespoort-water-assurances-as-lobby-prepares-to-sue-2010-06-28

By: Loni Prinsloo
28th June 2010


Plans by a lobby group to lay criminal charges, owing to an alleged
lack of progress in attempts to remedy water pollution at the
Hartebeespoort Dam, north of Pretoria, were described as "unfortunate"
by South Africa's Department of Water Affairs (DWA) on Monday, which
insisted that progress is being made.

A group known as the Environment and Conservation Association is
reportedly preparing to bring criminal charges against Water and
Environmental Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica and President Jacob
Zuma for their failure to uphold section 24 of the Constitution, which
requires the government to protect water resources.

But acting DWA DG Nobu Ngele said that the Harties Metsi Ame
Remediation Plan, which was implemented by the department in 2006 to
tackle the challenges of water pollution at the dam, as well as the
effects of illegal waste discharges, was making progress.

She, thus, called on stakeholders to work with government to deal with
the problem rather than taking up an adversarial stance.

Ngele said that several short- and medium-term actions had either been
taken or were under way to deal with the pollution.

The first phase of the programme had focused on removing exotic
sediment, establishing shoreline and wetland conditions in the dam
and, the introduction of biological and mechanical harvesting of algae
and hyacinths.

"Progress is being monitored by two ecological surveys that show that
the fish composition in the dam has already improved since the
implementation of this programme."

A second phase had extended the focus to the broader catchment impacts
and included improved storm water management, as well as the
protection and remediation of wetlands and in-stream river habitats
with more stringent standards of compliance and enforcement.

Ngele said that the department's enforcement unit continued to take
legal steps against officials that neglected their duties and the
Madibeng Municipality, in particular, for allowing sewage from its
wastewater treatment plant to pollute the Hartbeespoort dam.

The DWA had also allocated R500 000 to the Madibeng Municipality to
enhance institutional capacity to deal with the problem.

It had allocated a further R27-million for a bulk water project, which
included the expansion of the water purification works to meet current
demand in the area.

Ngele pointed out that DWA also expected a technical assistant and
engineer to be deployed by its emergency response facility to the
Madibeng Municipality to assist with the implementation of their water
services projects.

"The issue of pollution in the country's water source is complex," she
said, arguing, too, that the current challenges afflicting the dam
were historic in nature and has been in the making for more than 80
years.

But the environmental lobby group insisted that their stance was
necessary, owing to the fact that government had failed, for years, to
take action against polluters, including mining companies.

It has been reported that the organisaiton plans to open a docket
would before the end of this month.


Edited by: Mariaan Webb
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Sunday, June 27, 2010

New pipeline of IFI dam projects

Apologies for cross-postings...

 

Attached please find a list of key new proposed World Bank, IFC, AsDB, IDB and AfDB water and power projects from March through May 2010. It includes proposed new hydropower projects in Indonesia, Nepal and Pakistan, in addition to a series of renewable energy, energy efficiency, rural electrification and energy policy projects throughout the world.

The list does not include most oil, gas, mining or water supply and sanitation projects. It focuses on the power sector and irrigation projects - particularly projects involving dams or alternatives to dams - although some exceptions are included.

 

Pipeline projects are also listed on International Rivers' website on the specific MDB pages under "Follow the Money":

www.internationalrivers.org/en/follow-money

 

Please let us know if you have any feedback on this document or suggestions for improving its usefulness.

 

Best regards,

 

Shannon Lawrence

International Rivers

shannon@internationalrivers.org

Laos hydropower project on Mekong faces opposition [The Nation, 27.6.10]

Laos hydropower project on Mekong faces opposition

By Pongphon Sarnsamak, The Nation, June 27, 2010

A civic group has opposed the Laos government's plan to build the Xayaburi hydropower plant, the first dam in the Lower Mekong River's mainstream, as more than 40 villages in Laos will be adversely affected and need to be relocated.

Pianporn Deetes from Save the River Coalition said the Xayaburi Dam will affect more than 40 villages along the mekong River, from Louangprabang province to Xayaburi province.

This dam will also affect the incubation of freshwater tropical fish such as giant catfish and other aquatic life as the construction will destroy the islets and boulders where the mekong giant catfish lay their eggs.

She said the river run-off Xayaburi Dam is the first dam that will be built in the Lower mekong River's mainstream.

The dam will produce 1,260 megawatts of power. The plan to build this hydropower dam was initiated by the Laos government. Thai company Ch Karnchang will invest Bt90 billion in its construction. The total project cost is expected to exceed Bt100 billion.

According to the report entitled "MRC Sea for hydropower on the mekong Mainstream inception Report Vol II", the inundated area of the Xayaburi dam will cover 49 square kilometres and the length of the reservoir will be 90km.

Construction will take seven and a half years. About 10 villages, 391 households, and 2,130 people will need to be relocated.

Electricity generated from the plant will be sold to the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat) in 2019.

Meanwhile, local villagers living along the river voiced concern that the dam construction should not affect their original livelihood.

A villager, who did not want to be named and lives near the Xayaburi site, said he had not been given much information about the impact of the dam.

He said staff from a Thai construction company had surveyed the site and asked the villagers to move to another location.

The villagers were told that the company will build their houses at another location and will also construct road, provide water supply and electricity.

Additionally, villagers who own teak farms will be paid 150,000 kip (Bt600) per teak as compensation.

The villagers were also worried that the construction of the dam might affect fisheries and fish migration in the mekong River.

A villager said the company staff had told them that they will build a fish ladder. Additionally, the company's staff also told them that they will build a special channel to facilitate passage for boats.

This village is more than 150 years old, with most of the villagers making their money from fish harvesting and agricultural plantation.

"We will not move to the other location until the construction of our new houses are finished," a 50-year-old villager said.

Another 47-year-old villager said he does not want to move to the other location due to sentimental attachment for the present village.

He said his village was located near the mekong River and he could harvest fish to earn his livelihood. If he moves to the other location, he is not sure what he could do to earn his livelihood.

About 780 people live in his village. All of them have to move to the other location when the dam construction starts. Most of the villagers in his village are farmers and fishermen.

"Villagers are now worried about their future as they do not want to move to the other location," he said

However, Pianporn added that the proposal to build the Xayaburi Dam will be put in the Procedures for Notification, Prior Consultation and Agreement, which states that if a country is to build hydropower dams on a mekong tributary, it must notify the Joint Committee of the mekong River Commission (MRC).

Then Ch Karnchang will submit the feasibility and impact assessment report to the Laos government, which would forward this report to MRC members.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/2010/06/27/national/Laos-hydropower-project-on-Mekong-faces-opposition-30132499.html

Friday, June 25, 2010

Battle for the Nile /Guardian

Battle for the Nile as rivals lay claim to Africa's great river

With crises of population and resources upstream, there is now
deadlock over who owns the Nile

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/25/battle-nile-africa-river-resources

* Xan Rice in Jinja, Lake Victoria
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 June 2010 21.24 BST


White Nile With crises of population and resources the inhabitants of
the Nile face a battle for ownership. Photograph: Kazuyoshi Nomachi/
Corbis

Simon Kitra's back garden looks out over the world's second-largest
freshwater lake. His front lawn opens onto the world's longest river.
If the 20-year-old Ugandan fisherman needs reminding of where his tiny
island is, he can look up to the pink obelisk on the hillside, marking
where the British explorer John Hanning Speke, sextant in hand, stood
in 1862 to ascertain the point where Lake Victoria begins to empty �
the source of the Nile.

The water that sustains Kitra � he drinks it, bathes in it, and eats
and sells the fish which swim in it � slips gently and quietly past
his canoe on its three-month, 3,470-mile journey to the Mediterranean.
But at night, when he listens to his radio before casting his nets,
news of the Nile's future is all anger and recriminations, stretching
from its most remote headwaters in Burundi all the way to Egypt.

For a decade the nine states in the Nile basin have been negotiating
on how best to share and protect the river in a time of changing
climates, environmental threats and exploding populations. Now, with
an agreement put on the table, talks have broken down in acrimony. On
one side are the seven states that supply virtually all the Nile's
flow. On the other are Egypt and Sudan, whose desert climates make the
Nile's water their lifeblood. "This is serious," said Henriette
Ndombe, executive director of the intergovernmental Nile Basin
Initiative , established in 1999 to oversee the negotiation process
and enhance co-operation. "This could be the beginning of a conflict."

The sticking point between the two groups is a question going back to
colonial times: who owns the Nile's water? Kitra's answer � "It is for
all of us" � might seem obvious. But Egypt and Sudan claim to have the
law on their side. Treaties in 1929 and 1959, when Britain controlled
much of the region, granted the two states "full utilisation of the
Nile waters" � and the power to veto any water development projects in
the catchment area in east Africa. The upstream states, including
Ethiopia, source of the Blue Nile, which merges with the White Nile at
Khartoum, and supplies 86% of the river's eventual flow, were
allocated nothing.

However debatable its claim under international law, Egypt strongly
defends it, sometimes with threats of military action. For decades it
had an engineer posted at Uganda's Owen Falls dam on the Nile, close
to Kitra's island, monitoring the outflow.

But in a sign of the growing discord, Uganda stopped supplying the
engineer with data two years ago, according to Callist Tindimugaya,
its commissioner for water resources regulation. And when Egypt and
Sudan refused to sign the agreement in April on "equitable and
reasonable" use of the Nile unless it protected their "historic
rights" the other states lost patience. Isaac Musumba, Uganda's state
minister for regional affairs, and its Nile representative, said: "We
were saying: 'This is crazy! You cannot claim these rights without
obligations'." Minelik Alemu Getahun, one of Ethiopia's negotiators,
said all the upstream states saw the move by Egypt (Sudan has a more
passive role) as "tantamount to an insult".

Ugandans endorse this stance. Ronald Kassamba, 24, scything grass
along the banks of the Nile near Jinja, 50 miles from the capital
Kampala, said: "Egypt is being very unfair. We have the source, so we
should also be able to use the water."

Convinced that from their point of view there was no purpose in more
talks, Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Tanzania signed a "River Nile
Basin Co-operative Framework" agreement in May. Kenya followed, and
Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo look likely to do so �
causing alarm and anger in Egypt. When parliaments in six states
ratify the deal, a permanent commission to decide on water allocation
will be set up � without the two states that need the river most.

Opposition by the upstream states to the colonial treaties is not new.
Ethiopia was never colonised, and rejected the 1959 bilateral
agreement that gave Egypt three-quarters of the Nile's annual flow
(55.5bn cubic metres) and Sudan a quarter, even before it was signed.
Most of the east African states also refused to recognise it, and
earlier Nile treaties agreed by Britain on their behalf, when they
became independent in the 1960s.

A combination of factors, including instability, poor governance,
financial constraints and the availability of other water sources,
meant the matter remained dormant. It was in the 1990s that various
governments seriously started to consider using their Nile Basin
waters to generate energy and irrigate crops. But when funding
applications were made to the World Bank and others, problems arose.
"Our development partners would always ask what other countries on the
Nile were saying," said John Rao Nyaoro, Kenya's director of water
resources. "We needed a clearing house for these projects," which will
be a function of the Nile commission.

Officials in Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia, which all have significant,
if increasingly unreliable, rainfall, do acknowledge Egypt's huge
dependence on the Nile and its right to a large part of its flow. But
they say it is unreasonable to ask them to leave a valuable resource
untouched, as the demand increases due to the changing climate and,
especially, population growth. Egypt's population of 79 million is
expected to reach 122 million by 2050, according to the Population
Reference Bureau . But in the upstream states the growth is even
faster. There are 83 million Ethiopians today, but in 40 years there
will be 150 million. In Uganda, where the average number of children
per woman is 6.7, one of the highest in the world, the population is
due to more than triple over the same period to 97 million. For
Uganda, the priority for now is electricity, and it wants to build
more dams.

Ethiopia has begun a hydropower development, opening a dam at Lake
Tana, the Blue Nile's source, and is in talks with Egypt and Sudan to
build several more dams on the river. The electricity will be shared
among the states � the mutual benefit envisaged when the Nile Basin
Initiative was established. But Ethiopia also plans large irrigation
schemes, which it says are essential for food. Tanzania has also
talked of tapping Lake Victoria to supply dry villages in its north-
west.

Under the agreement signed by five countries, each state's share of
the Nile Basin water will depend on variables such as population,
contribution to the river's flow, climate, social and economic needs,
and, crucially, current and potential uses of the water � a factor
which will heavily favour Egypt and Sudan.

The disputed article, in which Egypt and Sudan want their historic
rights guaranteed and the other governments prefer to a clause where
each nation agrees "not to significantly affect the water security of
any country" � has been left out of the agreement, for further
discussion.

This, the upstream states hope, leaves the door open for Egypt and
Sudan to join them before the one-year signing period closes.

"Diplomacy will help us navigate this issue," said Musumba, the
Ugandan minister, playing down any talk of conflict.

"What it is Egypt going to do � bomb us all?"

Water treaties

Agreements over the Nile's water date back to the late 19th century
when Britain, which controlled Egypt and Sudan, signed deals with
other colonial powers and with Ethiopia to guarantee the river's
unimpeded flow. But, in 1929, a bilateral treaty went further. Egypt,
which by then enjoyed nominal independence, and Britain, acting on
behalf of Sudan and its other colonies around Lake Victoria, signed an
agreement on water rights. It reserved the entire dry season flow of
the Nile for Egypt and allowed Cairo to veto any water development
project in the Nile basin .

In 1959, Egypt and the newly independent Sudan signed a deal that gave
them "full utilisation of the Nile waters". Using the river's annual
average flow of 84bn cubic metres of water, it was agreed that Egypt
had the right to use 55.5bn cubic metres a year, with Sudan's share at
18.5bn cubic metres. The other 10bn cubic metres was reserved for
seepage losses and evaporation in Lake Nasser, behind the Aswan dam.
Upstream countries were not allocated a share.
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Big Hydro Falls Behind

(For a graph of hydro vs other renewables, and further analysis, see http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/5576)

Big Hydro Falls Behind
Patrick McCully
June 22, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patrick-mccully/big-hydro-falls-behind_b_621861.html

The big hydro industry always used to consider the "new renewables" as Mickey Mouse technologies that could never match the billions of kilowatt hours humming through the lines linked up to the world's megadams.

But times have changed. Big Hydro is learning that lots of small projects can add up to a lot more juice than a small number of very big ones.

In 2002, new installations of wind power worldwide exceeded the capacity of new big hydro for the first time ever. Wind power engineers installed more megawatts than their big hydro competitors three times over the following six years. And in 2009, it looks like wind power blew (so to speak) big hydro right out of the water.

Solar installations are rising even faster than wind, but from a much lower level. Solar installers added nearly half as many panels in 2009 as the year before, making solar the world's fastest growing power source.

The 2009, wind and solar numbers come from BP's recently released "Statistical Review of World Energy 2010." (The "Cost of Energy" blog notes that the review provides "a veritable gusher of data and an undersea volcano of graphs, all summarized in a blowout of an Excel spreadsheet.")

British Petroleum's review doesn't provide large hydro data and no 2009 data are available elsewhere. But data on trends in new big hydro capacity from the last decade suggests that 2009 wind installations were likely at least a quarter more than big hydro -- and that the dammers will never again get close to wind power's annual additions.

Of course, the dam builders have been steadily blocking more and more rivers every year for more than a century, so today hydropower still generates a lot more electricity each year than the wind or sun. But the trend is definitely in favor of the new renewables rather the old and often non-renewable (big hydro with reservoirs is not renewable because reservoirs eventually get clogged with sediments).

Indeed, the percentage of the world's electricity generated by hydropower has fallen over the past decade from 19% in the 1990s to around 16% today. (This declining hydrodependency means that the world's energy supply is slowly becoming less vulnerable to climate-change induced droughts).

The fact that wind is now a bigger and more dynamic industry than hydro is more than just symbolic of the times a changin'. It means that the new renewables industries will increasingly have more economic and political clout and that the lobbying power of Big Hydro will steadily wane. (It also means that the new renewables industries will also inevitably be able to wield their power in self-interested ways that are detrimental to the greater good. Wind and solar executives can no doubt be just as corrupt and greedy as can their hydro counterparts. But the technologies that they push will not be as inherently destructive as river-wrecking and community-evicting and often greenhouse gas belching big dams).

Of course, by far the biggest part of our non-renewable electricity comes from CO2-spewing coal. It is no exaggeration to call coal the great enemy of humanity and life as we know it. So thank goodness that the era of big coal, like the era of big river-wrecking hydro, may be gradually coming to an end. Some solar industry executives believe their technology will be generating electricity as cheaply as coal plants in a few years time - and even the always-conservative International Energy Agency predicts solar as being cost-competitive within a decade.

Given that the financial cost of big-dam hydroelectricity is in the same ballpark as coal, solar is also going to soon be competitive with big hydro dams. And given that it can easily take 7-10 years for the planning and construction of a megadam, it means that dams currently in the planning phase could find themselves financially obsolete from their first day of operation.

The energy revolution is happening. We just need to do all we can to make it happen as quickly as possible.

[A graphic and spreadsheet and some more analysis of the data behind this blog is available on my International Rivers blog: http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/5576]

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Thursday, June 24, 2010

Letter to World Bank re Vishnugad-Pipalkoti Project

Date: Thu, Jun 24, 2010
Subject: Letter from villagers affected by Vishugad Pipalkoti Project

(Translation of the letter attached)

The President                                                                                            
And Executive directors
World Bank
Washington D.C.
United States of America

Subject:  Stay on loan provided by World Bank to Vishnugad-Pipalkoti (440 MW) Hydro-Electric Power Project in Chamoli, Uttarakhand, India  as it would otherwise violate world Bank’s own guidelines

Dear Sirs,

We are the people affected by the above mention project. It has come to our knowledge that in June 2010 in the World Bank’s directors’ meeting it was considered granting a loan for the Vishnugad-Pipalkoti HEP (440 MW) in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, India. We want to bring to your notice that till today the relevant documents such as Environment Impact Assessment report and Environment Management Plan have not been made available to the project affected people in the regional language, which is Hindi.

All the recent studies regarding the project have been done in English and discussed behind closed doors. Only a mere brief of the proceedings was given to a few people. World Bank distributed thousands of rupees to NGO’s to influence the people’s opinion but didnot get documents translated and printed in Hindi or conduct free and impartial public hearings or to explain about the project .

Even in meetings called by the World Bank there has only been discussion on the Rehabilitation and Resettlement Policy, while no information about the impact of the project on people’s lives and livelihood was given. Under such conditions it is meaningless to discuss rehabilitation. 
We demand from you:

1. Before anything else the Environment Impact Assessment Report and Management Plan of the Tehri Hyrdo Development Corporation presented to the World Bank be made available to all affected villages in Hindi. This is to be disseminated to the villages by Independent people’s organizations like Kalpavriksh.
2. Following this, with at least one month’s notice, a Public Hearing be held by an Independent panel. The recommendations of this panel based on the Public Hearing must be binding on the project executors as well as the Bank.
3. After completing the above stated process World Bank may think of providing technical and financial help to this project.
4. We do not want to destroy our future like Tehri Dam Project affected people.

From village Jaisal
Tara Dutt
Durga Prasad
Gangaram
Prakash Chandra
Sarveshwer Prasad
Suresh Chandra
Chandravallabh, Headmen of Village Jaisal
Santosh
Devendra
ShriKrishna
Mohan Prasad
Govind Prasad Kulsari
Harish
Kaliram

From Village Durgapur
Bhajanlal
Umadevi
Devendra Lal
Munni Devi
Manoj Kumar
Mrs. Rukmani Devi, Durgapur
Mrs. Roshni Devi, Durgapur
Mrs. Deveshvari Devi, Durgapur
Nandi Devi 
Naval Kishor Gairola, Member AreaPanchayat Hatt, Jaisal, Durgapur,   Baula 

New risk analysis: Africa water most precious

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE65N02220100624?sp=true

Africa's water most precarious, Iceland best-study
Thu Jun 24, 2010 5:42am GMT


By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

ATHENS (Reuters) - African nations led by Somalia, Mauritania and
Sudan have the most precarious water supplies in the world while
Iceland has the best, according to a survey on Thursday that aims to
alert companies to investment risks.

The ranking, compiled by British-based risk consultancy Maplecroft,
said climate change and a rising world population meant that stresses
on supplies would be of increasing concern in coming decades for uses
from farming to industry.

A "water security risk index" of 165 nations found African and Asian
nations had the most vulnerable supplies, judged by factors including
access to drinking water, per capita demand and dependence on rivers
that first flow through other nations.

Somalia, where just 30 percent of the population has clean drinking
water, topped the list above Mauritania, Sudan, Niger, Iraq,
Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkmenistan and Syria.

GLACIERS, MONSOONS

At the other end of the scale, rain-soaked Iceland had the most secure
supplies, slightly better than Norway and New Zealand.

"With climate change there is going to be a greater strain on limited
water resources in many nations," Anna Moss, author of the study, told
Reuters.

Shifts in monsoon rains and melting of glaciers, for instance, could
disrupt supplies with the potential to cause cross-border conflicts.
Construction of hydropower dams or more irrigation, for instance, can
disrupt supplies downriver.

The study said irrigation accounted for 70 percent of freshwater
consumption across the globe. Industry uses another 22 percent.

It said that companies including Anglo American, Rio Tinto, Bristol-
Myers Squibb, Marks & Spencer, Coca-Cola or Devon Energy were among
those seeking to reduce water use.

Water stress was not only a problem in poor nations. Nations such as
the United States and Australia have regions that are at risk.

"Countries in Europe, such as Bulgaria, Belgium and Spain, have issues
with water stress," Moss said. Bulgaria ranked 47 on the list, Belgium
50, Spain 68, Australia 95 and the United States 104.

� Thomson Reuters 2010 All rights reserved
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Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Ecuador: Chinese Mega Loan for Dam Draws Fire

Chinese Mega Loan for Dam Draws Fire
By Gonzalo Ortiz
QUITO, Jun 22, 2010 (IPS) www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51914

The opposition and experts in Ecuador are questioning a 1.68 billion
dollar loan from China to finance 85 percent of the construction and
equipment of the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric dam.

Work on the dam, to be built by China's state-run Sinohydro Corp. --
described as the world's largest builder of hydropower plants -- is set to
begin in July.

The 15-year financing deal with China's Eximbank, which carries a 6.9
percent interest rate, was signed Jun. 2 in Beijing by the ministers of
finance and strategic sectors, Patricio Rivera and Jorge Glas.

Glas described the credit as "the largest that China has loaned to any
countries in South America's Pacific coast region."

The remaining 15 percent of financing for the nearly two billion dollar
dam -- the most costly infrastructure project carried out in Ecuador --
will come from this country: 300 million dollars over the next six months.

The two governments reported that Eximbank is also interested in financing
the Sopladora hydroelectric plant downriver from the Paute complex in
southeast Ecuador, with a new 600 million dollar credit. Like the Coca Codo
Sinclair dam, the plant would also be built by a Chinese company.

If the deal for the Sopladora plant goes through as expected, the Asian
giant will be financing nearly 60 percent of the public works projects in
the energy sector currently underway in Ecuador.

There is no precedent for such a large share of investment by a foreign
country in any sector of the local economy.

Although the labourers building the dams will be Ecuadorean, a contingent
of Chinese engineers and other technical specialists is expected to arrive
for work on the plants, and the turbines and other equipment will come from
China.

The Coca Codo Sinclair dam is to be completed in 2016, when it will cover
35 percent of the country's energy needs, Glas said.

The dam will help reduce gasoil and bunker subsidies, which currently
amount to one billion dollars, and will eliminate the need to import
electricity from Colombia and Peru.

The Coca Codo Sinclair dam, to be situated in the foothills of the Andes
in the Amazon rainforest some 75 km east of Quito, will be built on the
Coca river, which flows into the Napo, a tributary of the Amazon river, at
a big bend (or "codo") where the water level plunges 600 metres.

But the loan and the plant, which according to the administration of
left-wing President Rafael Correa will have an installed capacity of 1,500
MW, has drawn criticism on both technical and financial points.

"The installed capacity projected by the government has been exaggerated
and does not have a sound technical basis," Jesús Játiva, who holds a PhD
in electrical engineering, told IPS.

Játiva, a professor at the National Polytechnic School, pointed out that
the former power utility INECEL studied the potential of the area and
concluded in 1992 that the capacity would be 859 MW.

"The prefeasibility study completed by the Italian firm Electroconsul in
2008," which served as the basis for the government to report a projected
potential of 1,500 MW, "is not based on hydrological studies," Játiva said.

In response to the criticism, the government asked the Mexican state
electricity company CFE for a report on the Italian study. The Mexican
study, which the Correa administration received in January, found that the
optimum potential of the new dam would be 1,200 MW.

But on Jun. 14, the government published a new "supplementary" document in
which the CFE amended its earlier projection upwards to 1,500 MW.

Játiva said the method of calculation used was theoretical: "In order to
project 153 million dollars in fossil fuel savings between 2016 and 2020,
the installed capacity has been raised, as if the water flow rate in the
Coca river could be increased by decree.

"That difference of 36,000 litres per second is an invention, because
there are no studies showing that, and the minimum ecological flow required
to keep the river alive would be compromised," Játiva said. "The economic
explanation is neither technically nor environmentally sound."

Roque Sevilla, a local businessman and environmentalist, said it is only
common sense to design a hydroelectric plant for a lower flow velocity
rather than the peaks that occur during the rainy period, because otherwise
there would be underutilised capacity.

Ecuador has been suffering longer and longer periods of drought, which has
affected the Paute plant, also in the eastern foothills of the Andes,
leading to electricity rationing from last November to January.

"The Coca dam is very necessary, according to the potential estimated by
INECEL," Játiva said, "but the flows are not the same now; we have longer
periods of low water followed by sudden increases in flow rate, which means
continuous supplies for a project that has been blown out of proportion
could not be guaranteed."

In the meantime, María de la Paz Vela, an economist with the Multiplica
consultancy, told IPS that multilateral lenders can offer 20-year loans at
interest rates of between four and five percent for similar infrastructure
projects.

For his part, former Ecuadorean vice president León Roldós (1981-1984)
maintained that the loan is illegal, because it finances a "turn-key
contract" without "definitive studies or detail engineering," which he said
is expressly prohibited by law.

Another contradiction, Roldós argued, is that although it is a fixed price
contract, the financing deal is based on price indexing -- adjusting
amounts by the change over time in prices -- for materials and labour power
"using a more generous formula than the one normally used for Ecuador's
public procurements."

In an article published last week by the El Comercio newspaper, the former
vice president said the dam was "severely overpriced," because the 1.98
billion dollar price tag is 400 million dollars higher than the cost
projected in 2008.

In an interview with the state-run online paper El Ciudadano, Minister
Glas acknowledged that the cost of the project was increased because of its
turn-key nature, but said this was justified because of the fuel savings
that will result from the reduction in the need for power from
thermoelectric plants.

"Besides the criticism, I would like to hear someone say somewhere that
the project will cover 35 percent of energy demand in Ecuador and that we
will be releasing four million tons less of CO2 (carbon dioxide) a year
into the atmosphere," the minister said.

That savings will probably represent "around 100 million dollars in carbon
certificates," he added. (END)
________________________________________________

This is International Rivers' mailing list on China's global footprint, and particularly Chinese investment in
international dam projects.

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Big Hydro Falls Behind

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patrick-mccully/big-hydro-falls-behind_b_621861.html

Big Hydro Falls Behind

The big hydro industry always used to consider the "new renewables" as
Mickey Mouse technologies that could never match the billions of kilowatt
hours humming through the lines linked up to world's megadams.

But times have changed. Big Hydro is learning that lots of small projects
can add up to a lot more juice than a small number of very big ones.

In 2002, new installations of wind power exceeded the capacity of new big
hydro for the first time ever. Wind power engineers installed more
megawatts than their big hydro competitors three times over the following
six years. And in 2009, it looks like wind power blew (so to speak) big
hydro right out of the water.

Solar installations are rising even faster than wind, but from a much
lower level. Solar installers added nearly half as many panels in 2009 as
the year before, making solar the world's fastest growing power source.

The 2009 wind and solar numbers come from BP's recently released
"Statistical Review of World Energy 2010." (The "Cost of Energy" blog
notes that the review provides "a veritable gusher of data and an undersea
volcano of graphs, all summarized in a blowout of an Excel spreadsheet.")

British Petroleum's review doesn't provide large hydro data and no 2009
data are available elsewhere. But data on trends in new big hydro capacity
from the last decade suggests that 2009 wind installations were likely at
least a quarter more than big hydro - and that the dammers will never
again get close to wind power's annual additions.

Of course the dam builders have been steadily blocking more and more
rivers every year for more than a century so today hydropower still
generates a lot more electricity each year than the wind or sun. But the
trend is definitely in favor of the new renewables rather the old and
often non-renewable (big hydro with reservoirs is not renewable because
reservoirs eventually get clogged with sediments).

Indeed the percentage of the world's electricity generated by hydropower
has fallen over the past decade from 19% in the 1990s to around 16% today.
(This declining hydrodependency means that the world's energy supply is
slowly becoming less vulnerable to climate-change induced droughts).

The fact that wind is now a bigger and more dynamic industry than hydro is
more than just symbolic of the times a changin'. It means that the new
renewables industries will increasingly have more economic and political
clout and that the lobbying power of Big Hydro will steadily wane. (It
also means that the new renewables industries will also inevitably be able
to wield their power in self-interested ways that are detrimental to the
greater good. Wind and solar executives can no doubt be just as corrupt
and greedy as can their hydro counterparts. But the technologies that they
push will not be as inherently destructive as river-wrecking and
community-evicting - and often greenhouse gas belching - big dams).

Of course by far the biggest part of our non-renewable electricity comes
from CO2-spewing coal. It is no exaggeration to call coal the great enemy
of humanity and life as we know it. So thank goodness that the era of big
coal, like the era of big river-wrecking hydro, may be gradually coming to
an end. Some solar industry executives believe their technology will be
generating electricity as cheaply as coal plants in a few years time - and
even the always-conservative International Energy Agency predicts solar as
being cost-competitive within a decade.

Given that the financial cost of big-dam hydroelectricity is in the same
ballpark as coal, solar is also going to soon be competitive with big
hydro dams. And given that it can easily take 7-10 years for the planning
and construction of a megadam, it means that dams currently in the
planning phase could find themselves financially obsolete from their first
day of operation.

The energy revolution is happening. We just need to do all we can to make
it happen as quickly as possible.
________________________________________________

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Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Ongoing Suspension of HidroAysen Confirms Project Infeasibility

Estimad@s defensores de la Patagonia,

I have just posted a new blog with big news about HidroAys�n
requesting another suspension to their environmental review (http://
www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/5564). The efforts of people all
around the world who are organizing for the protection of Chile's and
South America's rivers are making it possible to slow down these
enormous and misguided development projects. Read the latest news
from the Patagonia campaign in my new blog (http://
www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/5564).

For the rivers,

Gary

***
Gary Graham Hughes
Patagonia Campaign--Latin America Program
International Rivers
http://internationalrivers.org/patagonia
Email: gary@internationalrivers.org
***
________________________________________________

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Searching for Solutions to Global Warming in Africa

http://www.observer.com/2010/opinion/searching-solutions-global-warming-africa#

Searching for Solutions to Global Warming in Africa

By Joe Conason

June 22, 2010 | 5:10 p.m

Dar es Salaam, TANZANIA-What would the wealthy nations of the West
(and their rising rivals in the East) do if they actually wanted to
prevent catastrophic warming? Here in Africa, the obvious answer is
that they would find the ways and means to discourage deforestation-
the ruinous practice of clear-cutting for timber, charcoal and arable
land that accounts for at least 20 percent of the atmospheric carbon
burden. Save the trees, and you might just save the planet.

In theory, this ought to be a simple enough task to accomplish, with
sufficient motivation and money. But in practice, the incentives
created by Western policy are so perverse, according to Tanzania
president Jakaya Kikwete, that they reward clear-cutting not once but
twice over. So he told Bill Clinton, who is visiting Africa this week
to oversee the Clinton Foundation's work on health care and renewable
energy.

The need for food and fuel, let alone cash, is immediate in poor
countries; the threat of climate change is not.

As Mr. Kikwete explained the problem, it has become possible to open
forests to loggers for profit and then receive carbon-credit subsidies
as a reward for replanting the raped forest. Stupid is too kind a word
for this.

The Tanzanian leader expressed frustration, too, with the imperial
style that persists in Western efforts to preserve forest land. The
agencies that certify projects for carbon credit are overwhelmingly
foreign, with personnel parachuted in to perform inspections. While it
is essential to verify every carbon credit, the parachute inspection
is not, as they say, a sustainable model.

More than a third of Tanzania's land is still protected forest in
national parks and reserves, unlike neighboring Kenya, for example,
where deforestation is proceeding rapidly. Its president is plainly
proud of his nation's greenness and trying to preserve that legacy.

But the economic pressures on the leaders and people of poor countries
are enormous-almost unimaginable. The need for food and fuel, let
alone cash, is immediate; the threat of climate change is not.

A glimmering hint of a solution can be found in a rural village called
Kitere, hundreds of miles south of the capital. There a local health
clinic assisted by the foundation-a clinic that is really a
rudimentary hospital, serving thousands of people-is improving its
services with solar electrification. Using photovoltaic panels,
batteries and AC conversion equipment made in the United States, the
clinic now produces enough of its own clean energy to operate lights
(instead of dirty kerosene lamps), refrigeration for medicines and a
laptop computer. Much of the clinic's operation is still outdated by
American standards, but its electrification has greatly increased its
capacity to treat illness and save lives.

Across Tanzania, with Mr. Clinton's help and advice, more than 50
clinics have installed solar arrays at very low cost. These small
beacons of progress point toward a much larger and more comprehensive
renewable development program-a wise bargain, not an act of charity.
Our capital and technology, deeply discounted, in exchange for their
forest land. The world's poor countries proposed roughly the same idea
at the Copenhagen climate summit last December, only to be rebuffed by
the wealthy because of the cost.

Yet that is the deal that must be done someday soon to avoid climate
disaster. For a fraction of the world's military spending, it could be
a Green New Deal that creates new industries, advances new
technologies and revives our economy-much like the spending on World
War II boosted America into prosperity. It is a proposition that we
can no longer afford to refuse.

jconason@observer.com
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Eskom: Don't Dam the Zambezi!

This sign-on letter has just been sent to the head of SA's Eskom.

----------------------------------------------------------

http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/5559

Eskom: Don�t Dam the Zambezi!
June 21, 2010
To: Brian Dames
Chief Executive Officer, Eskom

By e-mail: brian.dames@eskom.co.za

CC: President of South Africa, Mr Jacob Zuma (president@po.gov.za)
President of Mozambique, Mr Armando Guebuza by (www.presidencia.gov.mz
)

This year is the 10th anniversary of the World Commission on Dams�
groundbreaking work to create higher standards for dam projects �
standards intended to avoid undue harm to our rivers and those who
depend on them. South Africa was the home for the Commission (�WCD�),
and has been at the forefront in adopting the WCD�s recommendations.

Yet Eskom�s potential involvement in the controversial Mphanda Nkuwa
Dam in Mozambique threatens to undo that legacy. The proposed dam
will create lasting social and environmental problems, and compound
the damage to the Zambezi River caused by Cahora Bassa Dam � another
destructive hydro project whose electricity primarily benefits Eskom,
but whose costs are borne by Mozambique.

More than that, Mphanda Nkuwa is a risky investment in a time of
climate change. Southern Africa�s rivers will become less predictable
in a warming climate. The dam could prove to be a white elephant if
extended droughts make it an unreliable source of electricity.

The Lower Zambezi is vital to the national economy in Mozambique.
Under natural flow conditions, its waters support extensive flood-
recession agricultural systems, productive freshwater fisheries,
coastal prawn fisheries, and healthy habitat for wildlife. Over the
past 50 years of river regulation, these systems have all declined
precipitously. The Zambezi is now one of the most heavily dammed
rivers in Africa.

Mphanda Nkuwa will make it more difficult to adopt better management
at existing dams to resolve the river�s problems.

Mphanda Nkuwa Dam�s electricity will fuel industries in South Africa,
but in Mozambique it will cause daily mini-floods that will worsen the
situation of an already impoverished population. Approximately 100,000
people risk losing their livelihoods, but only a fraction of them
will be compensated. This type of project, which sacrifices the lives
of the poor and does lasting damage to the environment on which we all
depend, should have no place in South Africa�s energy portfolio.

Eskom over time has had various �confidential� agreements with the
Mozambican government on the dam. Now it may soon sign a power
purchase agreement on the project, which is key to the project going
forward. We urge Eskom to rethink its involvement in this
unsustainable project.

Our organizations lobby for clean energy for South Africa and
Mozambique. Our research has shown that South Africa has the potential
to quickly reduce its own electricity consumption by an amount
equivalent to 3 to 5 times Mozambique�s entire consumption. Indeed,
South Africa could save 3,000 MW in the next four years (and much more
in the long run) by making existing system more efficient.

A large proportion of South Africa's and Mozambique's electricity
benefits a single company, BHP Billiton, which receives power at US
$0.015 (i.e. 1.5 cents) per kiloWatt hour, by far the cheapest price
in the world. This is due to apartheid-era deals which cost Eskom $1.3
billion in losses in 2009. They are being renegotiated, but secretly,
and a similar price is anticipated to result.

South Africa also has huge potential for clean, renewable energy. It
is time to move more quickly to develop these resources, and to stop
relying on destructive mega-coal and mega-hydro plants.

Africa�s biggest utility should be setting standards for an African
development renaissance that is sustainable, and socially and
environmentally just. Mphanda Nkuwa does not meet those standards.

Signed by:

JA! Justica Ambiental, Friends of the Earth Mozambique

South Africa
groundWork, Friends of the Earth, South Africa
Biowatch South Africa
South Africa Water Caucus
Centre for Civil Society Environmental Justice Project (University of
KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa)
Port Elizabeth Renewable Energy Centre
South Durban Community Environmental Alliance
Ecodoc Africa

Africa
African Rivers Network (Pan African)
Citizens for Justice-(CFJ), Friends of the Earth Malawi
Friends of the Earth Ghana
National Association of Professional Environmentalist (Uganda)
Kulali Development Foundation (Zambia)
Basilwizi (Zimbawe)
Survivors of Lesotho Dams (Lesotho)
Transformation Resource Centre (Lesotho)
Society for Water and Public Health Protection (Nigeria)
Environmental Rights Action (Nigeria)

International Rivers (USA)
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Saturday, June 19, 2010

''Cracks" in China's Three Gorges dam

Friday, 12 April, 2002, 06:43 GMT 07:43 UK
"Cracks" in China's Three Gorges dam

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1925172.stm

A senior Chinese official says cracks have appeared in the controversial Three Gorges hydroelectric dam being built on the Yangtze river.

Qian Zhengying, the former minister of water resources who heads an expert group on the dam, returned from a week-long inspection of the project demanding that the cracks be "repaired fastidiously", according to the state-controlled China Daily.

There have been consistent rumours that the 185-metre-high (605 feet) dam, which entails the removal of entire villages to higher ground, is being shoddily constructed, amid reports of endemic corruption in the project.

But the China Daily report represents an usually frank admission that the dam has serious shortcomings and some leaders are now critical of the project.

"During the past three years, concrete placement in the project has not been first class, causing a variety of related accidents and drawbacks, though the concrete process has improved compared with previous years," Ms Qian was quoted as saying.

The cracks measure a maximum 1.25 millimetres across and 2.5 metres deep, according to China Daily.

The paper said cracks had also been found in the project's permanent ship-locks and ship-lifts.

Costly project

The Chinese Government's prestige project is hugely costly - officially it is expected to cost at least US$24bn but unofficial estimates say it could cost at least three times that amount.

It has been bedevilled by corruption. In 2000, 97 officials were convicted of embezzlement from the dam fund.

Activists have criticised the enforced resettlement of those whose homes lay in the 600 kilometre-long (375 miles) area, which will form the Three Gorges reservoir and the loss of many historic buildings and artefacts that will be drowned.

The dam is intended to control China's notorious flooding problem. But engineers have questioned whether the dam will be effective, citing problems with sedimentation and the construction itself.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1925172.stm

Friday, June 18, 2010

The Forgotten Downstream Victims of Large Dams

The Forgotten Downstream Victims of Large Dams
By Peter Bosshard
The Huffington Post, June 18, 2010
www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-bosshard/the-forgotten-downstream_b_616796.html?view=print

An estimated 472 million people have likely been negatively impacted by
the downstream impacts of large dams. This is the main finding of a
scientific study which was just published by a group of eminent global
freshwater experts. The study documents the impacts which dams have had on
some of the world's most productive ecosystems, and recommend measures
which can prevent the further loss of floodplains that sustain unique
ecosystems and millions of people.

In the 1970s, Kharochan was a bustling town in Pakistan's Indus Delta. The
local farmers grew rice, peas, coconuts, mango and guava on their rich
soils. From the nearby harbor Sokhi Bandar -- the "Port of the Prosperous"
-- traders exported silk, rice and wood. When I visited in 2006, no traces
of prosperity were left in Kharochan. The port had been swallowed by the
sea, and the groundwater had become saline in large parts of the delta. A
white crust of salt covered the earth, and turned Kharochan's fertile
fields into parched land. More than half the region's population lived
below the poverty line, and thousands had left their homes for the
sprawling city of Karachi.

The Indus Delta has not been struck by a natural disaster. Its plight is
human-made. The Indus -- the world's tenth-largest river in terms of the
water it carries -- has been plugged by 19 dams and is being sucked dry by
43 large canals. The Indus no longer reaches the sea in most years, and its
sediments no longer replenish the delta. As a consequence, Pakistani
experts told me, 8,800 square kilometers of agricultural land have been
lost to the sea since dam building began.

The fate of the people who are being displaced for dams in places like
Pakistan, China, Brazil and India have haunted the public imagination for
decades. In contrast, the people and ecosystems who suffer under the
downstream impacts of large dams have often been ignored. A new scientific
paper in the academic online journal Water Alternatives provides an
in-depth look at the downstream impacts of large dams. The paper was
prepared by a group of researchers around Brian Richter and Carmen Revenga
of The Nature Conservancy's Global Freshwater Program, Sandra Postel of the
Global Water Policy Project, Thayer Scudder, a former member of the World
Commission on Dams, and Bernhard Lehner of McGill University.

Rivers, floodplains and deltas feed hundreds of millions of people by
sustaining fisheries, flood recession agriculture, and dry-season grazing
land. As the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment has found, floodplains are
among the most productive ecosystems on Earth. Rivers and floodplains also
nurture riverine and mangrove forests, recharge groundwater resources, and
provide the silt which protects deltas from being eaten away by coastal
erosion.

Today about 50,000 large dams block the arteries of the planet. They have
stopped fish from migrating, withheld nutrients from floodplain ecosystems
and agriculture, dried up wells and riverine forests, and left deltas
exposed to saltwater intrusion and erosion. The new paper presents numerous
case studies for these impacts. After the Tucurui Dam was built on the
Tocantins in Brazil, the fish catch immediately fell by 60 percent,
affecting tens of thousands of people. The fish yields in the wetlands of
Cameroon's Logone River fell by 90 percent after the Maga Dam was built.
Similar impacts have been documented for dams on Ghana's Volta, Thailand's
Mun and West Africa's Senegal River.

An estimated 40-80 million people have been displaced by dams. Reservoir
refugees are usually entitled to compensation for their losses. Most
downstream-impacted people don't have any such rights. The people who were
displaced by the World Bank's Tarbela Dam in Pakistan received new homes on
the banks of the reservoir and financial compensation. Yet the people who
lost their homes to the sea because of the dam's downstream impacts cannot
claim any compensation under Pakistan's laws or the World Bank's safeguard
policies. The Bank argues that the degradation of the Indus Delta is "part
of the bargain struck in order to support large numbers of people in the
Indus Basin." In other words, some people have to suffer so that others can
prosper.

Dams contribute to about 12-16 percent of the world's food production, and
generate 19 percent of the world's electricity. As in the case of Pakistan,
dam builders have often maintained that these benefits compensate for the
losses of downstream communities. Yet downstream impacts can extend far
beyond the reach of reservoir fisheries and irrigation, and can outweigh
the benefits of dams. The new study presents case studies for this. While
large, deep reservoirs yield an average of 10-50 kilogram fish per hectare
and year, floodplain fisheries yield an average of 200-2000 kilogram per
hectare and year. Scientific studies have also found that even without
considering the cost of building a dam, the economic value of floodplains
may be higher than the value of irrigated land.

As part of their research, the authors of the new paper created a database
of case studies about the downstream impacts of dams. Their database covers
more than 120 rivers in at least 70 countries. The researchers created a
separate database of all rivers which have at least one tenth of their
annual water discharge stored by the world's 7,000 largest dams. By using a
geographic information system, they calculated that the downstream impacts
of dams on these rivers have probably negatively affected at least 472
million people. Of these, 400 million live in Asia. By cross-referencing
their calculation with specific case studies, they found that their
estimate is likely to be conservative.

Richter and his co-authors conclude "that dam development projects aimed
at reducing poverty or improving economic opportunities are benefiting many
but are also deepening poverty and hunger for others. The failure to
adequately account for these impacts precludes an honest rendering of the
net costs and benefits of dams." They argue that "a sizeable proportion of
the human population is being fed by the natural productivity of river
ecosystems," and "that it does not make sense to continue to damage these
natural life-support systems when far less destructive approaches to dam
development are readily available."

The authors put forward a series of practical recommendations that could
help to take downstream impacts of large dams into account. They make the
case for an integrated planning approach to whole river basins, to prevent
dams from being built in the wrong places. Integrated river basin planning
takes social, environmental and economic costs and benefits into account,
and includes the evaluation of rivers' current benefits through
participatory assessments. The authors also call for dam design and
operational plans which strike an optimum balance between economic, social
and environmental benefits -- for example, through providing adequate
environmental flows -- and which are continuously monitored and adapted.

A successful example for the authors' approach is the relicensing
agreement between a power company, the Penobscot Indian Nation and
environmental NGOs regarding hydropower plants on the Penobscot River in
the Northeastern US. Under this agreement, two dams will be removed and the
fish passage on another dam was improved. Even so, the total power
generation from the dams on the river will be maintained or slightly
increased through the rehabilitation of the remaining power plants.

From a personal perspective I will add that it is no longer acceptable to
sacrifice the interests of one population group for the benefit of another
in a supposed "bargain" struck by powerful elites. Like other affected
people, downstream-impacted communities should have the right to
participate in the decision-making process over projects that affect them,
and should be entitled to full compensation of their losses if indeed a dam
is built. If all costs and benefits of water and energy options are
considered in a balanced assessment, less destructive solutions than large
dams will be found in many cases.


Brian D. Richter, Sandra Postel, Carmen Revenga, Thayer Scudder, Bernhard
Lehner, Allegra Churchill, Morgan Chow: Lost in development's shadow, The
downstream human consequences of dams, in: Water Alternatives 3(2), June
2010: pp. 14-42
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World Bank clings to fossil fuels, stumbles on clean energy

World Bank clings to fossil fuels, stumbles on clean energy
Bretton Woods Project, 17 June 2010, update 71
www.brettonwoodsproject.org/art-566379

Despite recent attempts to restyle itself as a green institution, the
World Bank's energy lending suggests that it remains wedded to fossil
fuels. Meanwhile, independent evaluators and civil society groups have
raised serious concerns about the developmental benefits of the Bank's
approach to energy efficiency and renewables.

Analysis published in April by US NGO the Bank Information Center (BIC)
showed that the World Bank Group's (WBG) finance for fossil fuels had
climbed higher than ever, to $4.7 billion in the first ten months of
financial year (FY) 2010 (see Update 69). This represents a major leap from
the previous record of $3.1 billion in the whole of FY2008. The Bank has
provided $6.5 billion for coal since FY2007, largely in middle-income
countries – roughly equivalent to commitments to its Climate Investment
Funds (CIFs, see Update 71).

In April, the Bank produced a progress report on its Strategic Framework
for Development and Climate Change (SFDCC, Update 71). The Bank claimed
that the increased share of fossil fuels compared to renewables or energy
efficiency in FY2010 "is in large part due to the impact of the [financial]
crisis on the ability of African countries to finance their conventional
energy development programmes, necessitating WBG support to coal power
projects in Botswana and South Africa." However, an April briefing by three
European NGOs observes that this justification is an opportunistic revision
of the Bank's argument for fossil fuel lending before the financial crisis,
which claimed that developments would go ahead regardless, so Bank
involvement was desirable in order to raise social and environmental
standards.

Though the Bank's progress report argued that support for coal was
becoming more selective thanks to the use of the SFDCC environmental and
developmental criteria, civil society groups warned that these had not been
applied to the Bank's loan for coal in South Africa in April (see Update
70).

The report also forecast that the Bank's future support for coal would be
limited. Yet in an online discussion at the end of May, the Bank's climate
change team manager, Kseniya Lvovsky insisted that "fossil fuels will
remain an important part of the energy mix in both developed and developing
countries for some time."

These indications threaten to undermine attempts to transform the Bank's
energy portfolio, enshrined in the SFDCC target for half of Bank energy
lending to go to 'low carbon' investments by 2011, as well as targets set
by donor governments. A May briefing by UK NGO the Bretton Woods Project
warns that misleading categorisation of clean energy lending – for example,
including large hydropower and upgrades to fossil fuel plants in the low
carbon figure – undercuts the credibility of these targets. It also points
out that 40 per cent of the Bank's reported finance for renewable energy
over the last six years comes from carbon finance and the Global
Environment Facility, in addition to money from the CIFs, even though
carbon finance comprises funding streams set up independently of the Bank's
own funding, while the GEF and CIFs are different institutions, with the
Bank only administering the funds. It concludes that there is a pressing
need for a far more rigorous and transparent approach, with independent
monitoring. US NGO Center for American Progress, in a March report, also
urged greater transparency, including around the selection of investments
and what alternatives are explored. It called for a clear, independently
audited annual report on energy financing across the World Bank Group.

The Bank's sustained investment in fossil fuels prompted a broad coalition
of over 100 civil society groups to urge donor governments to withhold
contributions to the general capital increase (see Update 71), "unless the
Bank Group ends support for all dirty energy projects that do not have
energy access for the poor as their sole purpose."

The Bank's attachment to fossil fuels appears out of step with other
international institutions. A February IMF staff position note argues that
fossil fuel subsidies are rising, costly and inequitable. It calls for
reform strategies which, coupled with policies to protect low-income
groups, would have financial benefits and could reduce greenhouse emissions
by approximately 15 per cent in the long term. Though the Bank denies that
its finance is a form of subsidy, critics argue that all its capital is
provided from public funds, all its lending is guaranteed by member
governments, and its fossil fuel finance is often channelled to
commercially viable projects that are not in need of concessional finance.
Low-carbon own goals

Questions also hover over the effectiveness of the Bank's support for
low-carbon development. An April report by the Washington-based World
Resources Institute identified a set of policies, regulations and
institutional capacities in the electricity sector that enable investment
in sustainable energy, and examined whether they were reflected in
multilateral development banks' relevant loans between 2006 and 2008. The
World Bank performed worse than other institutions, particularly on
supporting long-term integrated energy planning, capacity building and
promoting stakeholder engagement. Two thirds of its loans addressed less
than half of the enabling factors.

In May, the Bank's Independent Evaluation Group reported on the energy
efficiency programme run in China since 2006 by the International Finance
Corporation, the Bank's private sector arm. The programme failed to achieve
some of its key aims, including: promoting a switch from coal to gas;
benefiting small and medium companies; and building partners' capacities,
to ensure the programme's sustainability. At one of the two partner
commercial banks, energy efficiency finance actually increased less than at
comparable, non-participating banks.

A similar lack of focus dogs the Bank-managed Clean Technology Fund's
investment in a large-scale solar power project across the Middle East and
North Africa region. There are concerns that the project will place further
strain on the region's already scarce water resources, while engagement
with regional civil society has been sorely lacking. Despite unmet energy
needs in the host countries, BIC warns that a proportion of the power
produced will be exported to Europe, suggesting that "the major raison
d'etre for the concentrated solar power programme is to help Europeans
reach their emission goals."

In April, 11 NGOs, including BIC, Greenpeace and Hivos, submitted a model
energy strategy to the Bank's ongoing consultation. It proposes phasing out
fossil fuel lending in favour of sustainable and reliable energy services
for the poor, as well as supporting the transition to zero or
ultra-low-carbon development. It recommends a number of steps towards these
goals.

Another submission, from UK NGOs including Christian Aid and WWF-UK,
stresses a "limited but catalytic role for the World Bank in ensuring
energy access for the poor and supporting the transition towards a low
carbon future," in part by phasing out fossil fuel lending. Excluding
representations from industry bodies, similar messages have dominated
submissions to the first phase of the Bank's energy strategy consultation.

In an April paper, Romina Picolotti and Jorge Daniel Taillant of
Argentinian NGO Centre for Human Rights and Environment warned that
"Current discussions at the World Bank regarding energy policy largely fail
to address the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities that
has been established in global discussions around the challenges in
addressing climate change." They argue that historical responsibility for
climate change must be taken into account in developing equitable financing
solutions, which should support local, national and regional project
planning and implementation, including local generation of clean
technology.
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