Fear in Egypt as Ethiopia builds giant dam in Nile

http://www.timeslive.co.za/scitech/2013/05/31/fear-in-egypt-as-ethiopia-builds-giant-dam-in-nile

Fear in Egypt as Ethiopia builds giant dam in Nile

Sapa-AP | 31 May, 2013 

 Ethiopia's construction of Africa's largest hydroelectric dam on the world's longest river threatens to affect flows of water to Nile-dependent, water-starved Egypt, where there is growing outrage, anger and fear.

 

Egypt in the past has threatened to go to war over its "historic rights" to Nile River water but diplomats from both countries this week played down the potential for conflict.

"A military solution for the Nile River crisis is ruled out," Egypt's irrigation and water resources minister, Mohammed Baheddin, said Thursday amid newspaper reports recalling the threats of war from Egypt's two previous leaders, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak.

Ethiopia on Tuesday started diverting the flow of the Blue Nile for construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

Eighty-five percent of Nile waters originate in Ethiopia yet the East African nation whose name has become synonymous with famine thus far utilises very little of those waters.

Ethiopia's decision challenges a colonial-era agreement that had given downstream Egypt and Sudan rights to the Nile water, with Egypt taking 55.5 billion cubic meters and Sudan 18.5 billion cubic meters of 84 billion cubic meters, with 10 billion lost to evaporation. That agreement, first signed in 1929, took no account of the eight other nations along the 6 700-kilometre river and its basin, which have been agitating for a decade for a more equitable accord.

And Ethiopia's unilateral action seems to ignore the 10-nation Nile Basin Initiative to promote cooperation.

Ethiopia is leading five nations threatening to sign a new cooperation agreement without Egypt and Sudan, effectively taking control from Egypt of the Nile, which serves some 238 million people.

Mohammed Abdel-Qader, governor of Egypt's Gharbiya province in the Nile Delta, warned the dam spells "disaster" and is a national security issue for the North African nation.

"Taking Egypt's share of water is totally rejected ... The Nile means everything to Egypt," said Gov. Abdel-Qader.

Baheddin said Egypt already is suffering "water poverty" with an individual's share of 640 cubic meters well below the international average of 1 000 cubic meters.

Egypt protests that others along the Nile have alternative water sources, while the Nile is the sole water source in the mainly desert country.

Ethiopian officials say the dam is needed to provide much-needed power for development.

At a ceremony marking the diversion of the Nile, Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnin said Ethiopia could export cheap electricity from the dam to energy-short Egypt and Sudan. He insisted the dam would not affect the flow of water to Egypt.

Experts say otherwise.

Alaa el-Zawahri, a dams engineer at Cairo University and an expert on a national committee studying the ramifications of the Ethiopian dam, said Egypt stands to lose about 15 billion cubic meters of water – 27% of annual share – each of the five years that Ethiopia has said it will take to fill the dam. The country's current share already is insufficient.

Egypt also would lose between 30% and 40% of its hydropower generation, he said.

"If I was more of an optimist, I would say it will cause significant damage (to Egypt)," he told The Associated Press. "If I was being pessimistic, it is a catastrophe."

"Potentially catastrophic" is the opinion of Haydar Yousif Hussin, an Italian-based Sudanese hydrologist who has worked on Nile water issues for 35 years. The dam's reservoir "will hold back nearly one and a half times the average annual flow of the Blue Nile" and "drastically affect the downstream nations' agriculture, electricity and water supply," he said in an article published in the South African magazine Infrastructure News.

Given the massive size of the dam, it could lose as much as three billion cubic meters of water to evaporation each year, Yousif added.

Mekonnin said the dam construction is at 21% and should be complete by 2015. Ethiopia has said the massive dam, located 60 kilometres from Sudan's border, is being built with a storage capacity for 74 million cubic meters of water and generating power of 6 000 megawatts – 30% more than the electricity produced by Egypt's Aswan Dam, built on the Nile in the 1960s.

But very little other information is available.

"It remains irresponsible for Ethiopia to build Africa's biggest hydropower project, on its most contentious river, with no public access to critical information about the dam's impacts," Yousif wrote. He urged Ethiopian officials to "allow some light to penetrate this secretive development scheme."

Ethiopia has timed the dam's construction while Egypt is at its weakest. The government announced the project in March 2011, when Egypt's government was overwhelmed by the Arab Spring revolution. The Nile diversion came the day after leaders of the two countries met in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, on the sidelines of an African Union summit, and days before Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan were due to issue a technical report on the dam.

Information about the funding of the project is also unclear.

The World Bank and other donors have refused involvement, reportedly because of Egyptian lobbying of countries like the United States, which considers Egypt a key ally and pivotal to security in the region.

The contract for the $4.8 billion project was awarded without competitive bidding to the Italian company Salini Construttori, according to Yousif and other experts.

Ethiopia says it is funding the massive project on its own, urging citizens to buy bonds that earn 5% or 6% interest. Norway's Development Today magazine quoted Kjetil Tronvoll of Oslo's International Law and Policy Institute as saying that government employees are being pressed to donate one month's salary to the dam and, when people protested, they were arrested.

A journalist who wrote an article criticising the fund-raising methods, Reeyot Alemu, was arrested, tried for terrorism and sentenced to two years' jail, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The issue of the dam also highlights traditional differences between Africa's northern Arabs and the blacks of the south.

That perception must be corrected, Egypt's assistant for foreign affairs, Essam el-Haddad, wrote on Egypt's foreign policy blog.

"Egypt's rejection of the project reinforces a negative stereotype of Egypt that is spreading among the people of Africa ... that this country is the reason for the absence of development and economic progress in African countries because it has acquired, unduly, the largest share of (Nile) water for its development," he wrote. "Egypt seeks to be a real partner in development in Africa."

Will Huge New Hydro Projects Bring Power to Africa’s People?

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/will_huge_new_hydro_projects_bring_power_to_africas_people/2656/

Environment360, 30 May 2013: Analysis
Will Huge New Hydro Projects Bring Power to Africa�s People?

A giant new hydro project on the Congo River is only the latest in a rush of massive dams being built across Africa. Critics contend small-scale renewable energy projects would be a far more effective way of bringing power to the hundreds of millions of Africans still without electricity.
by fred pearce

Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than three-quarters of the population is without electricity, will soon be lit up � or that�s the promise of governments building a host of new hydroelectric schemes across the continent. These projects are an attempt to keep up with the rising power demand from Africa�s economic boom. But the trouble is that, like the boom, the power seems destined to benefit only small industrial and urban elites. For the rest of Africa�s billion inhabitants, this investment looks unlikely to further UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon�s goal of �sustainable energy for all.�

The Congo River in central Africa � the world�s second-largest river after the Amazon � is the latest focus of the rush to harness the continent�s rivers for generating electricity. On May 18, the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) announced in Paris that it was initiating the first phase of the world�s largest hydro scheme on the river�s majestic Inga Falls. At these falls, downstream from the capital Kinshasa, the massive Congo�s entire flow of 42,000 cubic meters a second cascades down a series of rapids, falling 100 meters within a 15-kilometer stretch.

South African hydro-engineer Henry Oliver has called Inga Falls �one of the greatest single natural sources of hydroelectric power in the world,� and his fellow engineers have long dreamed of tapping these waters to power an Africa-wide electricity grid. Two small schemes built in the 1970s and 1980s, known as Inga I and Inga II, are largely moribund, victims of the DRC�s wrecked economy and long-running civil war.

But the idea was revived a decade ago, when world leaders pledged a New Partnership for Africa�s Development (NEPAD). Now it is Chinese construction companies � including Sinohydro, the world�s largest dam builder � who are in line for the contracts.

The first phase, dubbed Inga III, will on its own generate more power than Africa�s current largest hydroelectric-dam, the High Aswan on the Nile in Egypt. Construction should begin in 2015 and will cost at least $8.5 billion. The energy is mostly destined for South Africa, 3,000 kilometers away, where energy utility Eskom has promised to take more than half the capacity of 4,800 megawatts (MW).

But the project�s eventual aim, the DRC�s water and electricity minister Bruno Kapandji Kalala told the Paris meeting, is even grander. The completed project would be almost ten times larger than the initial phase, making it twice the size of China�s Three Gorges hydro-scheme, currently the world�s biggest. It will tap the Congo with 50 separate riverside electricity generating units, each the size of a large conventional power station.

The treaty signed between DRC and South Africa pledges both countries to the $50-billion development, along with extensive transmission lines to a planned southern African supergrid. The project�s promoters say it could one day supply power to half a billion people across the whole of Africa. But the logistics of constructing a distribution to more than a handful of urban centers would take many decades and dwarf the cost of building the hydroelectric works, and nobody has suggested where that money would come from.

There is, it has to be said, an environmental case for the Inga Falls scheme. The Congo River�s flow is so strong and so constant that its enormous power can be extracted without a large dam to store water. With no large reservoir, the �run-of-river� scheme will flood little land, thus saving rainforests, reducing the need to move people, and limiting greenhouse gas emissions from rotting vegetation. Unlike many dam projects in rainforests, it will be a genuinely low-carbon source of energy.

The Inga Falls project is only the latest of a rush of giant hydroelectric dams across Africa. They include the recent completion of the 250-MW Bujagali dam on the Nile in Uganda, which has flooded a much-loved local falls; a 300-MW Chinese dam completed in 2009 in Tekeze canyon at the headwaters of the Nile in Ethiopia, which at 185 meters is one of Africa�s highest; and the 120-MW Djibloho dam completed last year on the Wele River, which now supplies 90 percent of the electricity in tiny Equatorial Guinea.

But these are small fry. This week, Ethiopia diverted the flow of the Blue Nile while it constructs the 6,000-MW Grand Renaissance dam on the river near the border with Sudan, which will shortly supplant the High Aswan as Africa�s biggest. And Ethiopia is just completing the 1,800-MW Gibe III dam on the River Omo. The latter was a favorite of the former prime minister, Meles Zenawi, who defended the project against Western criticism in 2011 by saying: �We want our people to have a modern life and won�t allow [them] to be a case study of ancient living for scientists and researchers.�

That may be. But critics both inside and outside the country say the scheme, which will also provide irrigation water, will wreck the lives of a quarter-million pastoralists and divert so much flow that it will halve the size of Lake Turkana, the world�s largest desert lake, in neighboring Kenya. Some call the project a repeat of the Aral Sea disaster in central Asia half a century ago.

Yet Ethiopia is undeterred. It is East Africa�s water tower and the source of 80 percent of the Nile�s flow. With an economy growing by more than 8 percent a year, analysts say mountainous Ethiopia seems bent on tapping all its rivers before they reach other countries. Besides powering its own industrial drive, it plans on exporting power to its neighbors. To that end, it has set up the Eastern African Power Pool, an intergovernmental authority promoting the transmission of power across the region, linking Ethiopia to Kenya, Tanzania, Eritrea, Uganda and Sudan. The first phase, a high-voltage link between Ethiopia and Kenya, which has World Bank funding, is set for completion by 2019.

In West Africa, Guinea has plans to dam the River Niger upstream of the river�s inner delta, a wetland jewel in neighboring Mali that is the size of Belgium. That, say hydrologists at the NGO Wetlands International, threatens the livelihoods of some 1.5 million people on the delta.

In southern Africa, work started earlier this year on damming the Batoka Gorge for a 1,600-MW scheme downstream of Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River, which forms the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. And China�s Export-Import Bank has agreed to help fund the 1,500-MW Mphanda Nkuwa project further downstream on the same river in Mozambique. The Mphanda Nkuwa scheme is also a run-of-river project that will not flood much land. But critics say it will nonetheless be very damaging because it requires a new management regime at the upstream Portuguese-built Cahora Bassa dam that will scupper efforts to restore the ecology of the lower Zambezi delta.

One reason for the rush to build is that the World Bank, after years of avoiding big dam schemes because of environmental concerns, is back on the case. For instance, it is expected to join the African Development Bank, the Development Bank of Southern Africa, and others in funding Inga Falls.

Meanwhile, Chinese banks and construction companies are keen to get involved, because China wants power to run its growing portfolio of African mines. And the Chinese are less squeamish about environmental downsides than Western aid agencies. Chinese companies recently finished a 1,250-MW scheme in Sudan on the Nile at Merowe, which displaced 15,000 families and flooded a 174-kilometer section of the fertile Nile valley. And they are busy in Ghana damming the Bui Gorge to create a reservoir that will flood a quarter of the Bui National Park.

With financing unlocked, dam builders at the International Hydropower Association this month met in Kuching, in the Malaysian province of Sarawak, to herald an �upsurge in hydropower development� in Africa and elsewhere. But they could not drown out protests from local indigenous communities against dam building in the rainforest-rich Malaysian province.

And the dam industry�s cheerleading was in contrast to a meeting in Bonn, Germany, attended by 500 water scientists from around the world, which agreed that �tens of thousands of large dams� were damaging the flows and ecosystems of most of the world�s great rivers, flooding large areas of fertile river valleys, and displacing millions of people. The scientists� meeting ended with a declaration that mismanagement of the world�s water resources could �trigger irreversible change with potentially catastrophic consequences.�

All countries face choices about balancing short-term economic growth and protecting their natural resources. But the difficulties for promoters of hydroelectric dams are complicated by the joker in the pack � climate change. Parts of Africa almost certainly face major change to rainfall and river flows in the coming decades, with important threats to the sustainability of hydro schemes.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has reported the Zambezi as being at special risk, with an anticipated decline in rainfall across its catchment of 10 to 15 percent. Richard Beilfuss, a hydrologist at the University of Wisconsin�Madison College of Engineering and the University of Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique, says none of the studies for the 13,000 MW of dam projects currently proposed on the Zambezi analyze the risks of changing river flow.

But critics say that giant hydro schemes � whatever their environmental credentials, and whatever the risks from climate change � are the wrong kind of development for a still largely rural continent that lacks power grids to distribute large amounts of centrally generated energy to its inhabitants.

While the DRC talks of sending the power from Inga Falls across Africa, it remains likely that the mass of the Congolese probably won�t see any of it, since their country has no national power grid to deliver it to them and no plans to develop one. The main beneficiaries within its borders are likely to be the copper mines in the southern province of Katanga.

Critics contend the Inga Falls plan, like many other big hydro schemes on the continent, runs counter to the aims of the UN�s Sustainable Energy For All initiative, which is being promoted by secretary-general Ban Ki-moon. It aims to unlock investment for connecting 1.3 billion people to electricity by 2030, while doubling the contribution of sustainable sources of energy to world supplies.

But, says Rudo Sanyanga, the Africa director of the California-based environmental group International Rivers, there is little likelihood that mega-schemes like Inga Falls will democratize access to power. In the Congo, where only 9 percent of the population has access to the electricity grid, he says, �Grid-based electrification is not a realistic option... Billions of dollars in aid for the energy sector will once again bypass Africa�s rural poor.�

The money should be spent on decentralized power systems using solar and wind energy along with small-scale hydro schemes, says Sanyanga. �Like cell phones in the telecom sector, they can revolutionize the lives of the poor that have been bypassed by the centralized landlines and the electric grid systems.�

Building grid systems is essential to getting the power to people who need it. Most countries have created national grids for their people, before devising international links to export power. In Africa, it seems to be the other way round. For most of its citizens, Africa looks likely to remain a dark continent.
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969-MW Neelum Jhelum hydropower project gets boost from China Exim

969-MW Neelum Jhelum hydropower project gets boost from China Exim
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan
29 May 2013
Hydroworld

http://www.hydroworld.com/articles/2013/05/969-mw-neelum-jhelum-hydropower-project-gets-boost-from-china-ex.html

The Export-Import Bank of China has signed an agreement with the
Pakistani government to provide US$448 million for construction of the
969-MW Neelum Jhelum hydropower project, HydroWorld.com has learned.
The project is being developed by Pakistan's Water and Power Development
Authority (WAPDA), which said it hopes to complete the Neelum Jhelum
plant by 2016.

"This agreement is a significant development in efforts to secure
financial resources for completing the remaining work on the Neelum
Jhelum project," a WAPDA release said.

WAPDA said more than 50% of the project's 67 kilometers of tunnel have
been excavated, while digging on the underground powerhouse and
transformer hall are about 75% and 95% complete, respectively.

The project is being built along the Neelum River, making it part of an
international dispute as India's National Hydroelectric Power
Corporation (NHPC) is developing its own project -- the 330-MW
Kishanganga -- along the same river.

International treaty stipulates that the country which completes its
project first has priority rights to the river's waters, though the
Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) upheld India's right to divert
water from the Neelum in February.
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China must strike harder against unapproved construction: official

China must strike harder against unapproved construction: official
By David Stanway
Reuters
May 29, 2013

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/29/us-china-hydropower-law-idUSBRE94S0GM20130529?feedType=RSS

(Reuters) - Beijing needs to toughen up to prevent local authorities and
state-owned enterprises breaking the country's laws by building dams and
power plants without prior approval, an official with the environment
ministry said on Wednesday.

Two giant state-owned power firms, the Guodian Group and the Huaneng
Group, came under fire earlier this month after state auditors found
they had between them invested more than 60 billion yuan ($9.80 billion)
in a series of projects that had not been given the go-ahead by the
central government.

The problem underscores the difficulties Beijing faces in trying to
impose its will on growth-obsessed local governments and powerful SOEs,
especially as it tries to fulfill a promise to reverse decades of damage
done to the environment.

Wan Bentai, chief engineer with China's Ministry of Environmental
Protection, told reporters that the phenomenon of "constructing without
approval" is still rife.

"We need to strengthen our vigilance in order to ban these practices and
request local governments and enterprises to stop building these
projects until they get the go-ahead," he said.

While Wan said the situation had improved and that no central
government-run project would now be allowed to proceed before the full
approval process had been completed, experts claim corners are still cut
on a local level.

"Almost every mega project in China has been simmering at least for a
few years before it is even officially reported," said Zhou Lei, fellow
at Nanjing University, who has studied the environmental impact of big
projects.

"If you talk to anyone at the local, provincial, village level, you will
see that environmental policies are not really a restriction and that
everything is negotiable, even if it causes immediate environmental damage."

BUILD AND BE DAMMED

With construction times already protracted, state-owned hydropower
developers have constantly sought ways to speed up a convoluted approval
process involving local government, several ministries and the State
Council, China's cabinet.

State auditors said Huaneng's Huangdeng dam project on the Lancang river
in southwest China had begun construction without permission, with
around a third of the project built, confirming a Reuters report last year.

Last week, authorities passed an environmental impact assessment report
for the Shuangjiangkou hydropower project in southwest Sichuan province,
which will house China's tallest dam, at 314 meters. Environmentalists
have warned it could damage the local ecosystem and also increase
seismicity in a region already prone to earthquakes.

But while it still needs final cabinet approval, activists say
construction already began years ago, with a diversion canal and
temporary dam already built at the site, a gorge criss-crossed with new
roads near Sichuan's border with Tibet.

Firms normally claim that they are doing only the "preliminary
construction" required before the project is finally approved, but Wan
of the MEP said even that was a violation of state laws.

With power consumption still expected to rise by almost 50 percent in
the 2011-2015 period, power firms are under considerable pressure to
expand. Hydro developers are also expected to put an additional 70 GW of
capacity into operation over the 2011-2015 period.

Experts say the firms - in cahoots with local authorities - choose to
invest heavily in a project in the hope that they can present the
central government with a fait accompli once it finally reaches the
approval stage.

"There is no way to turn it back because they have put a lot of money
into it already to make it happen," said Zhou. ($1 = 6.1215 Chinese yuan)

(Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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Op-ed: Latin America playing a risky game by welcoming in the Chinese dragon

Latin America playing a risky game by welcoming in the Chinese dragon
Op-ed by Kevin Gallagher
30 May 2013
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/may/30/latin-america-risky-chinese-dragon

The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, travels to the US and Latin America
this week, for the first time since he took office in March. What a
difference a decade makes. Ten years ago, there would hardly have been
any fanfare about a Chinese visit to the region. Now, for Brazil, Chile
and others, China is the most important trade and investment partner.
China-Latin America trade surpassed $250bn (�165bn) last year.

Although China's impact in Africa receives the most attention, China
trades just as much in Latin America as in Africa, and has more
investments in the region. Chinese finance in Latin America � chiefly
from the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China � is
staggeringly large and growing. In a recently updated report, colleagues
and I estimate that, since 2005, China has provided loan commitments of
more than $86bn to Latin American countries. That is more than the World
Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank have provided to the region
during the same period.

China's presence is a great opportunity for Latin America, but it brings
new risks. If the region can seize the new opportunities that come with
Chinese finance, countries could come closer to their development goals,
and pose a real challenge to the way western-backed development banks do
business. However, if Latin American nations don't channel this new
trade and investment toward long-term growth and sustainability, the
risks may take away many of the rewards.

First, the positive side. Chinese trade and investment is partly a
blessing for Latin America because it diversifies the sources of finance
� finance that for too long has relied on the west. The US and European
economies have been anaemic since 2008, and trade with China has tugged
Latin American growth rates to impressive levels. Every 1% increase in
Chinese growth is correlated with a 1.2% increase in Latin American growth.

Chinese finance is more in tune with what Latin American nations want,
rather than with what western development experts say they "need".
Whereas the US and international financial institutions (IFIs) such as
the World Bank and IMF tend to finance in line with the latest
development fads such as trade liberalisation and micro-anti-poverty
programmes, Chinese loans tend to go into energy and infrastructure
projects in a region that has an annual infrastructure gap of $260bn.

Neither do Chinese loans come with the harsh strings attached to IFI
finance. The IFIs are notorious for their "conditionalities" that make
borrowers sign up to austerity and structural adjustment programmes that
have had questionable outcomes on growth and equality in the region.

But there are risks. While the Chinese do not attach policy conditions
to their loans, they have required that borrowers contract Chinese
firms, buy Chinese equipment, and sometimes sign oil sale agreements
that require nations to send oil to China in exchange for the loans
instead of local currency.

Chinese investment accentuates the deindustrialisation of Latin America.
Large scale, capital intensive commodities production is not very
employment-intensive, nor does it link well with other sectors of an
economy. Dependence on commodities can cause a "resource curse" where
the exchange rate appreciates such that exporters of manufacturing and
services industries can't compete in world markets � and thus contribute
to deindustrialisation and economic vulnerability.

Producing natural resource-based commodities also brings major
environmental risk. Many of China's iron, soy and copper projects are
found in Latin America's most environmentally sensitive areas. In areas
such as the Amazon and the Andean highlands, conflict over natural
resources, property rights and sustainable livelihoods have been rife
for decades.

In our report, we find that Chinese banks actually operate under a set
of environmental guidelines that surpass those of their western
counterparts when at China's stage of development. Nevertheless, those
guidelines are not on par with 21st century standards for development
banking � exist at a time when environmental concerns are at an all-time
high.

With every opportunity comes a challenge. Latin Americans have access to
a new source of finance that gives them more leeway to meet their own
development goals. If Latin America doesn't channel some of the finance
to support macroeconomic stability, economic diversification, equality
and environmental protection, this new source of finance could bring
great risk.
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Small Dams on Chinese River Harm Environment More Than Expected

Small Dams on Chinese River Harm Environment More Than Expected
National Science Foundation Press Release
May 28, 2013

http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=128073&org=NSF

A fresh look at the environmental impacts of dams on an ecologically
diverse and partially protected river in China found that small dams can
pose a greater threat to ecosystems and natural landscapes than large dams.

Large dams have been considered more harmful than their smaller
counterparts.

But researchers' surveys of habitat loss and damage at several dam sites
on the Nu River and its tributaries in Yunnan Province revealed that the
environmental effects of small dams are often greater--sometimes by
several orders of magnitude--than of large dams.

"Small dams have hidden detrimental effects, particularly when effects
accumulate" through multiple dam sites, said Kelly Kibler, a water
resources engineer who led the study while at Oregon State University.

"That's one of the main outcomes, to demonstrate that the perceived
absence of negative effects from small hydropower is not always correct."

She and Desiree Tullos, also a water resources engineer at Oregon State,
report their findings in a paper accepted for publication in Water
Resources Research, a journal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

"These researchers have taken advantage of what is essentially a natural
experiment that allowed them to compare the effects of hydroelectric
dams of different sizes," said Tom Baerwald of the National Science
Foundation's (NSF) Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic
Sciences, which co-funded the research with other NSF directorates. "The
results are applicable beyond this region."

To compare the effects of small and large dams, Kibler investigated 31
small dams built on tributaries to China's Nu River and four large dams
proposed for the main stem of the Nu River.

She assessed the environmental effects of these dams in 14
categories--including the area and quality of habitat lost, the length
of river channel affected, the amount of conservation land affected, and
the landslide risk.

Because information regarding large dams is restricted under the Chinese
State Secrets Act, Kibler modeled the potential effects of the four
large dams using publicly-available information from hydropower
companies, development agencies, and academic literature.

After evaluating data from the field, hydrologic models, and
Environmental Impact Assessment reports on the small dams, Kibler and
Tullos concluded that effects of the small dams exceeded those of large
dams on nine out of the 14 characteristics they studied.

One particularly detrimental effect of the small dams is that they often
divert the flow of the river to hydropower stations, leaving several
kilometers of river bed dewatered, Kibler said.

From its headwaters in the Tibetan Plateau, the Nu River flows through
China, Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand.

"While the number of small hydropower dams in operation or planned for
tributaries to the Nu River is unreported," the authors state in their
paper, "our field surveys indicate that nearly one hundred small dams
currently exist within Nujiang Prefecture alone."

Thirteen large hydropower dams are proposed for the mainstem of the Nu
River in Tibet and Yunnan Province in China.

Environmental, social, and economic factors make the Nu River basin
extremely sensitive to hydropower installations.

In addition to supporting several protected species, the region is home
to a large proportion of ethnic minorities and valuable natural
resources, the authors report.

While large hydropower projects are managed by the central government,
and both large and small hydropower projects undergo environmental
impact assessments, decisions about small hydropower projects are made
at a provincial or other regional level and often receive less
oversight, Kibler and Tullos state.

The lack of regulation paired with a dearth of communication between
small dam projects in China allows for the effects to multiply and
accumulate through several dam sites, the authors write.

To mitigate the detrimental effects of small dams, there's a need for
comprehensive planning for low-impact energy development, said Kibler
and Tullos.

"The lack of analyses of the cumulative effects of small hydropower,"
Kibler said, "is a significant research gap with important policy
implications."
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Sudan's 360 MW Kajbar hydropower scheme to proceed

Sudan's 360 MW Kajbar hydropower scheme to proceed

ESI-Africa.com
www.esi-africa.com/node/16376

23 May 2013 - The Sudan government is determined to go ahead with the
construction of the Kajbar hydroelectric project on the River Nile. The
project will generate some 360 MW and will require the relocation of 12
villages on the river’s banks.

The project is seen as important in facilitating heavy industrial
activity in the area. However, the Chinese financed project has come up
against strong opposition from the residents of the region.

The government of Sudan is to undertake an open dialog with those
opposed to the project, and urges the country’s citizens to understand
the economic benefits of the hydroelectric scheme. The implementation of
the Kajbar project will start only after the process of compensation and
resettlement is completed.
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China Power Investment Corp. to invest 17 bln USD in (hydro)power projects in Indonesia

China Power Investment Corp. to invest 17 bln USD in power projects in
Indonesia
Xinhua | 2013-5-28

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/784771.shtml#.UaQyret2cZQ

China Power Investment Corp., one of China's largest state-owned firms,
has committed to investing 17 billion US dollars in hydropower plant
projects in North Kalimantan of Indonesia, an Indonesian minister said
on Monday.

Indonesian Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Jero Wacik made the
statement after meeting with Vice President of the firm Xia Zhong at his
office.

The Chinese firm hoped to start the projects next year, at least the
ground breaking, according to Wacik.

The minister said that the hydropower station with a designed capacity
of 7,000 megawatt would generate electricity by using the water in Kayan
river.

"It would be done gradually for seven years," he said.

China Power Investment Corp. has a good track record in building
hydropower plant, as it has just completed a similar project in Myanmar.

Indonesia's electrification is at about 70 percent at present, according
to state utility firm PT PLN.

With an economy growing at a rate of more than 6 percent since 2010, and
perhaps by 6.5 percent this year and 6.8 percent next year, the demand
for electricity was going to rise by 10 percent annually, Adi Supriono,
corporate secretary of PLN, said.

Wacik said that the Chinese firm was also interested in taking part in
funding the construction of smelters in Indonesia and development of
renewable energy.

Wacik added that he and Xia expected the financing could kick off next
year as Indonesia badly needs processing sector (smelter) to support the
downstream of the country's mining industry.

Footnote: If built the North Kalimantan project would be the biggest
hydropower project, by capacity, in Southeast Asia.
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Chinese gov't approaches Myanmar's opposition NLD on Myitsone dam

Chinese gov't approaches Myanmar's opposition NLD for re-undertaking
Myitsone dam project

Monday, 20 May 2013, Eleven Media
URL:
http://www.elevenmyanmar.com/national/3561-chinese-gov-t-approaches-myanmar-s-opposition-nld-for-re-undertaking-myitsone-dam-project

China has reportedly approached Myanmar's opposition National League for
Democracy (NLD) to help push for the resumption of the Myitsone
(confluence) dam project in Kachin state.

The approach was made during the 10-day visit of an NLD delegation to
the People's Republic of China at the invitation of the ruling Chinese
Communist Party.

Myanmar President Thein Sein announced the suspension of the project,
which was being built on the Ayeyawady River near Tanphe village, about
7 kilometers downstream of the confluence, in September 2011.

A news source of Radio Free Asia (RFA) quoted Nyi Pu, leader of the
NLD's visiting delegation, as saying China wanted to re-implement the
project.

"We met Kunming governor. When we arrived in Beijing, we called on
government officials, including director general of foreign affairs
department. We also met government deputy ministers. They expressed
their willingness to re-undertake the Myitsone dam project. They said
they wanted to make investment in the project."

During the visit, both sides also discussed trade and investment
matters. The Myanmar delegation studied trade activities, road
connections, environmental conservation and low-cost housing projects.

The RFA news stated that China wants to continue to invest in Myanmar
and express heart-felt thanks to NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi for giving
help in the controversial China-backed Latpadaungtaung copper mine project.

Lower House MP Phyu Phyu Thin, who is a member of the visiting
delegation, told the Eleven Media Group that Aung San Suu Kyi would be
informed of details about the study tour, including China's willingness
to resume the Myitsone dam project.

However, some experts say that the resumption of the project will draw
widespread criticism even if the NLD leader supports it.

"The project should not continue. China will approach us for what they
want to do. The Chinese government insisted constructing three dams in
the Yangtze river amid public objections," said writer Ko Tar. "Myitsone
is our treasure and the land of Kachin. We cannot bear giving it to
aliens. That's why the project should never continue," he explained.

Forestry expert U Ohn said: "Myitsone is the origin of the Ayeyawady
River, which is the lifeblood of Myanmar. The river represents our
culture, history, prosperity and all. We totally oppose the project.
Instead of the large Myitsone dam, it is more appropriate to build a
hundred of small dams with no more than 15 metres in length and less
than 50 feet in height."

"From the perspective of water resources, the river does not flow well
in summer. We should not see it economically but environmentally and
socially. China is very keen on the project because its people need
electricity," U Ohn said.

President Thein Sein sent a message to Parliament in September 30, 2011,
saying the Myitsone dam project would be suspended during his presidency.

The 10-point message stated that the project was suspended as public
concern mounted over possible damage to the Ayeyawady River. The melting
of glaciers in the northern part due to climate change, heavy rains,
strong quakes are considerable factors to cause destruction or damage to
the Myitsone dam and Ayeyawady river, thereby threatening the lives of
local people, the message described.

Environmentalist Myint Zaw said that any ruling government and political
party should seek the long-term interest of the Ayeyawady.

"As the Ayeyawady is the national character, political parties and state
leaders should not sacrifice our Ayeyawady for economic gains,� he said.

Khun Jar from the Kachin Peace Network also said: "Anyone who wants to
continue the Myitsone project is the enemy of the entire nation. Mega
dams are no more popular in the world. Myanmar is also in need of
electricity. Small dams should be considered if we have little
environmental impact, and if the people are secure.�

She said she could not understand why the NLD discussed it with China
because it is not an economic organization or was not delegated to do so.

The Ayeyawady river must be protected as its watershed areas account for
65% of the total area of Myanmar, Khun Jar suggested.

As Myanmar has improved its relations with western countries, including
the United States, since Thein Sein's government took office, the
Chinese government has come to build closer relationship not only with
the Myanmar government but also with the opposition NLD.

Chinese Ambassador Yang Houlaan recently called on NLD chairperson Aung
San Suu Kyi, who is popular among the public to win the 2015 election
and come to power. The ambassador donated 1 million kyats to the NLD's
education network funds.

Suu Kyi did not include the visiting delegation as the Chinese Communist
Party only invited those under 60.
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The landslide story (Nature Geoscience Journal)

The landslide story
May 22, 2013
Probe International

http://journal.probeinternational.org/2013/05/22/the-landslide-story/

Chinese experts in landslide and geohazard protection fear debris flows,
triggered by an epic 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province, may pose a
threat to the region for two decades. A tremendous amount of loose
material from the landslides is suspended on hillslopes, ready to be
washed away by rain. The potential for ongoing landslides and secondary
hazards, such as flooding and blocked rivers, they argue, warrants
further investigation.

The full version of this report is available from the publisher here:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n5/full/ngeo1806.html [by
subscription only]

The Landslide Story
By Runqiu Huang and Xuanmei Fan
Nature Geoscience Journal
6, 325-326 (2013), doi:10.1038/ngeo1806
Published online: April 29, 2013

In "The Landslide Story," geohazard experts Runqiu Huang and Xuanmei Fan
look at the substantial rise in geological hazards experienced by
China's southwestern Sichuan Province following a powerful magnitude-7.9
earthquake on May 12, 2008 in the region's Wenchuan County. Ranked as
China's largest seismic event in more than 50 years, the devastating
quake killed at least 80,000 people.

The Wenchuan quake, they say, triggered more than 60,000 landslides over
an area of 35,000 km2 and caused about one-third of the total number of
fatalities recorded. But the slippage isn't finished as a tremendous
amount of loose material remains suspended on the hillslopes, ready to
be eroded and transported by rain.

The dangers are already evident. The authors note the incidence of
debris flow in the four years following the 2008 quake has increased
three-fold.

Moreover, they estimate, the risk of more debris flows that directly
result from sediment movement during the 2008 earthquake may remain
active for another two decades.

Though an attempt was made by the authorities following the 2008 quake
to assess future hazards, "perhaps not enough attention was paid to the
cascade of geohazards following the earthquake. For example, landslides
triggered by the earthquake blocked rivers, which in turn generated
risks of floods."

The long-term effects of a "cascade of potential hazards were not fully
taken into account in the post-seismic hazard assessment and in the
selection of sites for the reconstruction of destroyed buildings," the
authors caution. In one instance, "following intense rainstorms more
than two years after the earthquake, two large-scale debris flows
partially dammed the Minjiang and Mianyuan rivers. When the dams burst,
the newly reconstructed towns of Yingxiu and Qingping were
catastrophically flooded."

In addition, Huang and Fan say, the long-term impact of the 2008
Wenchuan earthquake on sediment flux in the affected watersheds was also
underestimated initially:

"We now realize that increases in sedimentation as a result of the
shaking will pose a significant problem for rivers and their downstream
reaches. Some river beds have already been elevated by more than 10 m.
These changes raise the probability of floods in the future, and could
severely affect the generation of hydropower."

In order to anticipate the potential short- and long-term risks
associated with future seismic events, the authors say "focused research
efforts must be invested into quantifying the impact cascade following a
large earthquake."

Runqiu Huang and Xuanmei Fan are at the State Key Laboratory of
Geohazards Prevention and Geoenvironment Protection, Chengdu University
of Technology, Chengdu, Sichuan, China.

Xuanmei Fan is also at the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth
Observation (ITC), University of Twente, 7500 AE, Enschede, The Netherlands.
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DR Congo waits on funding for world's largest hydropower project

DR Congo waits on funding for world's largest hydropower project
John Vidal, environment editor
The Guardian, Tuesday 21 May 2013
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/21/dr-congo-funding-world-largest-hydropower-dam


The dream of harnessing the mighty Congo with the world's largest set of
dams has moved closer, with the World Bank and other financial
institutions expected to offer finance and South Africa agreeing to buy
half of the power generated.

In the past 60 years French, Belgian, Chinese, Brazilian and African
engineers have all hoped to dam the river.

But decades of civil war, corruption, and the Democratic Republic of
Congo's (DRC) reputation as a failed state have limited the hydropower
developments at the country's Inga Falls to two relatively small dams,
built in 1972 and 1982. These, known as Inga 1 and 2, have a theoretical
capacity of 1,400 megawatts but produce about half that.

A new $20bn (£13.2bn) development to generate a further 4,800MW was
announced over the weekend in Paris, with work planned to start in
October 2015. According to the DRC government, working with European and
other consultants, five further stages at Inga Falls could eventually
have a capacity of 40,000MW - equivalent to more than 20 large nuclear
power stations.

This would make the complete Grand Inga development the largest hydro
project in the world, generating twice as much as the Three Gorges dam
in China. In theory, say its backers, it could provide 40% of Africa's
electricity needs.

The attraction of developing hydropower on the Congo, says the
government, is that unlike most of the world's great dam projects, it
would not require tens of thousands of people to be relocated, nor would
it block the river and result in significant environmental consequences.
Because the Congo River around Inga is so vast and falls nearly 100
metres over a short distance, water can be diverted to create a massive
new lake without disturbing its main flow.

"The impact on land use is very limited. The development can be
progressive and carried out in a series of further phases, eventually
providing 40,000MW of power," says the technical data for the proposed
development.

The African Development Bank, World Bank, French Development Agency,
European Investment Bank and Development Bank of South Africa have all
shown interest in financing the next stage of the project. No developer
has been chosen but Chinese, Korean and Spanish companies are said to be
in the forefront.

Key to the project is South Africa's commitment this week to buy 2,500MW
of capacity. "We have affirmed our commitment to the project by already
provisioning for this purchase in our budgetary plan," said a South
Africa ministry of energy official, Garrith Bezuidenhoudt.

But the prospect of local people getting power from Inga in the next 20
years is remote. Less than 10% of the population has electricity, with
nearly all Inga 1 and 2 power going directly to multinational mining
companies in the Katanga "copper belt". It is expected most Inga 3 power
would travel 1,500 miles to power-hungry South Africa or large mines in DRC.

Giant hydropower schemes in Africa have a poor track record. "Projects
such as Inga 1 and 2 have not unleashed economic development, but have
been major contributors to African countries' unsustainable debt
burden," said the US-based International Rivers network, which has led
opposition to major dams around the world for 20 years.

In a letter last week to the World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, the
International Rivers and 18 other civil society organisations and
networks from Africa, Europe and the US said the reality of large-scale
dams seldom matched their expectations, mostly adding to debt problems
and allowing powerful companies to cheaply exploit and export Africa's
vast natural resources.

According to the groups, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has found
that because of the continent's low population density, grid-based
electrification - including through large hydropower projects - is not
cost-effective for much of rural Sub-Saharan Africa.

The letter said: "Renewable energy solutions such as wind, solar and
micro hydropower projects are much more effective at reaching the rural
poor.

"According to the IEA report, 70% of the world's unelectrified rural
areas are best served through mini-grids or off-grid solutions.

"In the DRC, the World Bank and other financiers have invested billions…
in the construction and rehabilitation of the Inga 1 and 2 hydropower
projects and associated transmission lines over the past 40 years.

"After all this investment, 85% of the electricity in the DRC is
consumed by high-voltage users, while only 6-9% of the population has
access to electricity. We are concerned that the bank's proposed focus
on large hydropower projects will write off electricity access for the
majority of Africa's poor."
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Grand Inga - the World Bank's Latest Silver Bullet for Africa

Grand Inga - the World Bank's Latest Silver Bullet for Africa
Peter Bosshard
Huffington Post, May 21, 2013
www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-bosshard/grand-inga-the-world-bank_b_3308223.html

When World Bank President Jim Kim visits the Democratic Republic of
Congo this week, he will find a country rich in natural resources but
blighted by a lack of basic services. The world's poorest country has
not only been ravaged by civil wars, but by decades of grandiose
development schemes that inevitably failed. The World Bank and other
donors are now concocting the continent's biggest pie in the sky: the
$80 billion Grand Inga Dam on the Congo River.

Close to 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live in a state of
permanent power outage. It is tempting to provide electricity to so many
people with one ambitious silver bullet. The Grand Inga Dam would divert
the Congo River near its mouth and, according to its promoters, meet the
electricity needs of more than 500 million people. With a capacity of
40,000 megawatts, the scheme would be the world's largest hydropower
project.

On Saturday, the DRC government announced plans to start construction on
the Congo River in October 2015. The World Bank, the African Development
Bank and the European Investment Bank want to join the ride. The World
Bank is considering support for the Inga 3 Dam, the first stage of the
much larger Grand Inga scheme, and two similar projects on the Zambezi
River. The Inga dams feature prominently on the agenda of the Bank
President's visit to the DRC.

The enthusiasm of the World Bank and other funders for mega-dams has a
long history. Over the past 40 years, donors have poured billions of
dollars into dams and associated transmission lines on the Congo River.
The projects have been plagued by rampant corruption, perform far below
capacity, and have failed to benefit the poor. About 85 percent of the
electricity in the DRC is consumed by the mining industry, while only 6
to 9 percent of the population has access to electricity. Worse, the
centralized nature of these investments has created a winner-takes-all
system that has encouraged tension and civil war.

The World Bank argues that a new generation of mega-dams could "catalyze
very large-scale benefits to improve access to infrastructure services"
in Africa. Yet once again, the projects on the Congo and the Zambezi are
designed to power the mining industry and urban centers. More than half
of the electricity generated by Inga 3 would be exported to South
Africa. The International Energy Agency has found that for most of
Africa's rural poor, grid-based electrification is not a realistic
option, and billions of dollars in aid for the energy sector will once
again bypass them.

Africa is more vulnerable to the vagaries of climate change than any
other continent. The World Bank's proposed support for mega-dams will
further increase this climate vulnerability. In a period when rainfalls
are becoming ever less predictable, focusing investments in centralized
reservoirs amounts to putting all energy eggs into one basket.

Luckily, better options are available. Distributed renewable energy
solutions have become affordable for poor consumers, who currently spend
a big part of their income on candles and kerosene. Decentralized wind,
solar and micro hydropower projects are much more effective at reaching
the rural poor and creating local jobs than grid-based power projects.
Like cell phones in the telecom sector, they can revolutionize the lives
of the poor that have been bypassed by the centralized landline and
electric grid systems.

Unlike large dams, decentralized renewable energy projects strengthen
the resilience of poor societies to the vagaries of climate change. They
have a smaller environmental footprint than large dams. And in contrast
to big, corruption-prone hydropower projects they are at a scale that
can be monitored by a poor country's civil society.

Donors claim that they will learn the lessons of their past failures
with mega-dams. Yet they are excluding civil society voices from the
decision-making process. The DRC government did not invite any NGOs to
the stakeholder meeting which launched the Grand Inga Project on May 18.
World Bank President Kim is not meeting any NGOs during his visit to the
Congo. The dam industry even excluded my colleague Rudo Sanyanga from
attending their Africa 2013 hydropower conference as a paid participant.

Donor governments will be asked to underwrite the new era of mega-dams
for Africa through the replenishment of IDA, the World Bank's fund for
the poorest countries. They have a choice. They can support an outdated
top-down approach that has failed Africa's poor in the past. Or they can
throw their weight behind the creative, decentralized energy
technologies of the future. Africa can't afford to waste another decade
on a new generation of mega-dams.
________________________________________________

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Grand Inga - the World Bank's Latest Silver Bullet for Africa

Grand Inga - the World Bank's Latest Silver Bullet for Africa
Peter Bosshard
Huffington Post, May 21, 2013
www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-bosshard/grand-inga-the-world-bank_b_3308223.html

When World Bank President Jim Kim visits the Democratic Republic of
Congo this week, he will find a country rich in natural resources but
blighted by a lack of basic services. The world's poorest country has
not only been ravaged by civil wars, but by decades of grandiose
development schemes that inevitably failed. The World Bank and other
donors are now concocting the continent's biggest pie in the sky: the
$80 billion Grand Inga Dam on the Congo River.

Close to 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live in a state of
permanent power outage. It is tempting to provide electricity to so many
people with one ambitious silver bullet. The Grand Inga Dam would divert
the Congo River near its mouth and, according to its promoters, meet the
electricity needs of more than 500 million people. With a capacity of
40,000 megawatts, the scheme would be the world's largest hydropower
project.

On Saturday, the DRC government announced plans to start construction on
the Congo River in October 2015. The World Bank, the African Development
Bank and the European Investment Bank want to join the ride. The World
Bank is considering support for the Inga 3 Dam, the first stage of the
much larger Grand Inga scheme, and two similar projects on the Zambezi
River. The Inga dams feature prominently on the agenda of the Bank
President's visit to the DRC.

The enthusiasm of the World Bank and other funders for mega-dams has a
long history. Over the past 40 years, donors have poured billions of
dollars into dams and associated transmission lines on the Congo River.
The projects have been plagued by rampant corruption, perform far below
capacity, and have failed to benefit the poor. About 85 percent of the
electricity in the DRC is consumed by the mining industry, while only 6
to 9 percent of the population has access to electricity. Worse, the
centralized nature of these investments has created a winner-takes-all
system that has encouraged tension and civil war.

The World Bank argues that a new generation of mega-dams could "catalyze
very large-scale benefits to improve access to infrastructure services"
in Africa. Yet once again, the projects on the Congo and the Zambezi are
designed to power the mining industry and urban centers. More than half
of the electricity generated by Inga 3 would be exported to South
Africa. The International Energy Agency has found that for most of
Africa's rural poor, grid-based electrification is not a realistic
option, and billions of dollars in aid for the energy sector will once
again bypass them.

Africa is more vulnerable to the vagaries of climate change than any
other continent. The World Bank's proposed support for mega-dams will
further increase this climate vulnerability. In a period when rainfalls
are becoming ever less predictable, focusing investments in centralized
reservoirs amounts to putting all energy eggs into one basket.

Luckily, better options are available. Distributed renewable energy
solutions have become affordable for poor consumers, who currently spend
a big part of their income on candles and kerosene. Decentralized wind,
solar and micro hydropower projects are much more effective at reaching
the rural poor and creating local jobs than grid-based power projects.
Like cell phones in the telecom sector, they can revolutionize the lives
of the poor that have been bypassed by the centralized landline and
electric grid systems.

Unlike large dams, decentralized renewable energy projects strengthen
the resilience of poor societies to the vagaries of climate change. They
have a smaller environmental footprint than large dams. And in contrast
to big, corruption-prone hydropower projects they are at a scale that
can be monitored by a poor country's civil society.

Donors claim that they will learn the lessons of their past failures
with mega-dams. Yet they are excluding civil society voices from the
decision-making process. The DRC government did not invite any NGOs to
the stakeholder meeting which launched the Grand Inga Project on May 18.
World Bank President Kim is not meeting any NGOs during his visit to the
Congo. The dam industry even excluded my colleague Rudo Sanyanga from
attending their Africa 2013 hydropower conference as a paid participant.

Donor governments will be asked to underwrite the new era of mega-dams
for Africa through the replenishment of IDA, the World Bank's fund for
the poorest countries. They have a choice. They can support an outdated
top-down approach that has failed Africa's poor in the past. Or they can
throw their weight behind the creative, decentralized energy
technologies of the future. Africa can't afford to waste another decade
on a new generation of mega-dams.
________________________________________________

This is International Rivers' mailing list on the role of international financial institutions in promoting large dams.

You received this message as a subscriber on the list: ifi@list.internationalrivers.org

To be removed from the list, please visit:
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Grand Inga - the World Bank's Latest Silver Bullet for Africa (fyi)

Grand Inga - the World Bank's Latest Silver Bullet for Africa
Peter Bosshard
Huffington Post, May 21, 2013
www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-bosshard/grand-inga-the-world-bank_b_3308223.html

When World Bank President Jim Kim visits the Democratic Republic of
Congo this week, he will find a country rich in natural resources but
blighted by a lack of basic services. The world's poorest country has
not only been ravaged by civil wars, but by decades of grandiose
development schemes that inevitably failed. The World Bank and other
donors are now concocting the continent's biggest pie in the sky: the
$80 billion Grand Inga Dam on the Congo River.

Close to 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live in a state of
permanent power outage. It is tempting to provide electricity to so many
people with one ambitious silver bullet. The Grand Inga Dam would divert
the Congo River near its mouth and, according to its promoters, meet the
electricity needs of more than 500 million people. With a capacity of
40,000 megawatts, the scheme would be the world's largest hydropower
project.

On Saturday, the DRC government announced plans to start construction on
the Congo River in October 2015. The World Bank, the African Development
Bank and the European Investment Bank want to join the ride. The World
Bank is considering support for the Inga 3 Dam, the first stage of the
much larger Grand Inga scheme, and two similar projects on the Zambezi
River. The Inga dams feature prominently on the agenda of the Bank
President's visit to the DRC.

The enthusiasm of the World Bank and other funders for mega-dams has a
long history. Over the past 40 years, donors have poured billions of
dollars into dams and associated transmission lines on the Congo River.
The projects have been plagued by rampant corruption, perform far below
capacity, and have failed to benefit the poor. About 85 percent of the
electricity in the DRC is consumed by the mining industry, while only 6
to 9 percent of the population has access to electricity. Worse, the
centralized nature of these investments has created a winner-takes-all
system that has encouraged tension and civil war.

The World Bank argues that a new generation of mega-dams could "catalyze
very large-scale benefits to improve access to infrastructure services"
in Africa. Yet once again, the projects on the Congo and the Zambezi are
designed to power the mining industry and urban centers. More than half
of the electricity generated by Inga 3 would be exported to South
Africa. The International Energy Agency has found that for most of
Africa's rural poor, grid-based electrification is not a realistic
option, and billions of dollars in aid for the energy sector will once
again bypass them.

Africa is more vulnerable to the vagaries of climate change than any
other continent. The World Bank's proposed support for mega-dams will
further increase this climate vulnerability. In a period when rainfalls
are becoming ever less predictable, focusing investments in centralized
reservoirs amounts to putting all energy eggs into one basket.

Luckily, better options are available. Distributed renewable energy
solutions have become affordable for poor consumers, who currently spend
a big part of their income on candles and kerosene. Decentralized wind,
solar and micro hydropower projects are much more effective at reaching
the rural poor and creating local jobs than grid-based power projects.
Like cell phones in the telecom sector, they can revolutionize the lives
of the poor that have been bypassed by the centralized landline and
electric grid systems.

Unlike large dams, decentralized renewable energy projects strengthen
the resilience of poor societies to the vagaries of climate change. They
have a smaller environmental footprint than large dams. And in contrast
to big, corruption-prone hydropower projects they are at a scale that
can be monitored by a poor country's civil society.

Donors claim that they will learn the lessons of their past failures
with mega-dams. Yet they are excluding civil society voices from the
decision-making process. The DRC government did not invite any NGOs to
the stakeholder meeting which launched the Grand Inga Project on May 18.
World Bank President Kim is not meeting any NGOs during his visit to the
Congo. The dam industry even excluded my colleague Rudo Sanyanga from
attending their Africa 2013 hydropower conference as a paid participant.

Donor governments will be asked to underwrite the new era of mega-dams
for Africa through the replenishment of IDA, the World Bank's fund for
the poorest countries. They have a choice. They can support an outdated
top-down approach that has failed Africa's poor in the past. Or they can
throw their weight behind the creative, decentralized energy
technologies of the future. Africa can't afford to waste another decade
on a new generation of mega-dams.
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China gives environmental assessment for hydropower plant - public hearing announced

China gives environmental assessment for hydropower plant
March 16, 2013
Xinhua News

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-05/16/c_132387309.htm

BEIJING, May 16 (Xinhua) -- The Ministry of Environmental Protection has
given an assessment for the construction of a major hydropower plant in
southwest China's Sichuan Province.

The Shuangjiangkou hydropower plant will have a total installed capacity
of 2 GW, with annual power generation to reach 7.93 billion
kilowatt-hours upon completion.

The project will affect the spawning and movement of rare fish species,
as well as the growth of endangered plants, including the Chinese yew,
which is under first-class state protection, the ministry said in a
statement.

The ministry suggested countermeasures to help mitigate the plant's
effect on the environment. The measures include protecting fish habitats
in tributaries, building fish ladders and increasing fish breeding and
releasing, as well as constructing seed banks for rare plants and
cultivating them artificially.

Waste treatment facilities will be built in order to protect the
environment while local residents are relocated, the statement said.

The project is estimated to cost about 27.3 billion yuan (4.42 billion
U.S. dollars), about 1.46 billion yuan of which will be used to cover
the cost of environmental protection efforts, the statement said.

Relevant parties can apply for a public hearing of the assessment during
the period from May 13-17.
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Sudan Nile Dam Threatens To Drown Nubian Villages

Sudan Nile Dam Threatens To Drown Nubian Villages
By: Reem Abbas for Al-Monitor Posted on May 14, 2013
www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/05/sudan-kajbar-dam-nubians.html

KHARTOUM, Sudan - On the morning of June 13, 2007, Mohamed Fageer
Sid-Ahmed spent one hour convincing his mother that he needed to
participate in a protest taking place later that day to protect his land.

His mother was adamantly against the idea - he was her only child after
all - but he won the argument and joined the protest. Thousands of
Nubian women and men protested that day from different towns and
villages that would be affected by the Kajbar Dam, a dam project
proposed by the Sudanese government in the mid-1990s.

The protesters marched to the dam site to protest; after being hit by
heavy tear gas, all of a sudden, live bullets were fired and Sid-Ahmed
was the first victim to fall to the ground.

"He was shot in the back. At the time, he was giving water to the
protesters, but police forces shot at the protesters from up the
mountains," said Osman Ibrahim, the secretary-general of the Higher
National Committee to Resist the Kajbar Dam, in an interview with
Al-Monitor.

With tears in his eyes, Ibrahim told the story of Sid-Ahmed and the
story of his activism against the Kajbar Dam since 1995.

Ibrahim hails from Nubia, an area that stretches from northern Sudan to
southern Egypt and dates back thousands of years.

When Egypt built the High Dam in the 1960s, tens of thousands of Nubians
in Egypt and Sudan were displaced. In Sudan, they were resettled in an
area far away from the Nile, the bloodline of their community.

"I feel that there is a conspiracy against Nubians, the government wants
to get rid of us, they think we are all Communists," said Ibrahim.

The government of Sudan stated through Yousef Tahir Qureshi, an adviser
to the governor of Northern state, that the dam will generate 360
megawatts of electricity.

Qureshi told the Sudan News Agency (SUNA) earlier this month that two
large-scale agricultural projects will be established and services will
be offered to those resettled.

The head of the anti-dam committee, Ezzeldeen Idris, told Al-Monitor
that it is unclear how many villages will drown.

"The dam implementation unit failed to provide us with a feasibility
study that tells us how high the dam will be, so we can't clearly say
how many villages will be submerged," said Idris, who lives in Fareeg,
one of the villages threatened.

Sometimes government officials make revealing statements about the dam,
helping Nubians to estimate the extent of the damage.

"Qureshi said that the drowned area is 180 kilometers (112 miles), which
means from Kajbar to Al-Guld, which is 25-30 kilometers from Dongola,
the capital of Northern state," Ibrahim said.

Arif Gamal, a Nubian scholar now teaching at the University of
California at Berkeley, wrote on RescueNubia.org that in 1964, as
Nubians were being transported by train from their soon-to-be submerged
villages, one woman left the train and ran back to the village. There
was confusion on board for some time, and then as people were preparing
to follow her, they saw her coming back. She went to lock her house, she
told everyone.

The woman's house was locked, but soon submerged in water. Half a
century later, Nubians refuse to go through the same ordeal.

"What is happening is seriously making us think about secession, why
would we want to be in a state that wants to drown our villages along
with our culture and history?" Ibrahim asked, bitterly.

Ibrahim was detained for a month in a wave of arrests of Nubian
activists following the 2007 protest. He spent a year in detention in
the 1970s for political activism when he was a student.

Now in his late 60s, he walks around with a file full of statements by
the committee, pictures of the protests and what the committee calls the
"Kajbar massacre."

The police center in Kajbar refused to open the complaint into the 2007
killings, so activists took the struggle to the international community
through Rescue Nubia, a Washington-based organization led by Nubians in
diaspora.

After the 2007 incident, the government grew silent about the dam
project, before speaking again about the ambitious $1.5 billion project
financed by China.

Even with the attractive development projects proposed by the
authorities, the Nubians oppose the dam because it will drown their
history and disperse a group of people whose identity is tied to this land.

"If they want to give us services in exchange for the dam, they are too
late, we already built a hospital and are building a secondary school
for girls now in Fereeg," Idris said, adding that the residents have
also sustained a collective agriculture project since the 1950s through
donations.

For the Nubians, the experience of the Manasir, an ethnic group
displaced by the Merowe Dam — a multibillion dollar project completed in
2010 — makes them hesitant to even consider the Kajbar Dam.

After waiting for compensation for years, 1,500 men from the Manasir
took matters into their own hands and went to El-Damer, the capital of
River Nile state, 300 kilometers (190 miles) from Khartoum, and
organized a sit-in that lasted three months.

Although other groups were also affected, the Manasir were the most
affected and were kept waiting for government compensation.

The protesters demanded to be compensated; finally, a delegation from
the government signed a memorandum of understanding with the Manasir in
March 2012.

"The agreement is on paper, but the reality is we have not been
compensated for our land. We want to be resettled around the lake, but
the government wants to resettle us far away," said Al-Rashid
Al-Affendi, of the Executive Committee of the Manasir People Affected by
the Merowe Dam, in an interview with Al-Monitor.

Affendi added that the only compensation received was for the lost palm
trees since they represented a large resource for the Manasir.

Peter Bosshard, the policy director at International Rivers, a US-based
environmental and human rights organization that published reports on
Kajbar Dam, said that this is an international test case.

"The Kajbar Dam is an international project, and international actors —
particularly from China — share a responsibility for it. The human
rights violations caused by the Merowe Dam have tarnished the reputation
of the Chinese companies and financiers involved in the project,"
Bosshard said in an email interview with Al-Monitor.

The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights filed a
complaint against two executives at Lahmeyer International GmbH, a
German engineering company that was a consultant in the Merowe Dam project.

In the villages of Nubia that will be affected by the dam, electricity
is not available the whole day, but the citizens there confirm that
there are many other ways to generate electricity other than the dam.

"Our area is very hot, they could try providing us with solar energy,"
said Idris.

Bosshard agreed. "Sudan has a solar energy potential and a big wind
energy potential that is much less damaging than the Kajbar Dam and
other projects on the Nile."

Reem Abbas is a Sudanese freelance journalist based in Khartoum and an
award-winning blogger. She currently contributes to www.theniles.org. On
Twitter: @ReemShawkat. Read more:
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/05/sudan-kajbar-dam-nubians.html#ixzz2TO0xW78U
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China gives environmental approval to country's biggest hydro dam

China gives environmental approval to country's biggest hydro dam
By David Stanway
Reuters
May 15, 2013

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/15/china-hydropower-idUSL3N0DW2B420130515?feedType=RSS

China's environment ministry has given the go-ahead for the construction
of what will become the country's tallest hydroelectric dam despite
acknowledging it will have an impact on plants and rare fish.

The dam, with a height of 314 metres (1,030 feet), will serve the
Shuangjiangkou hydropower project on the Dadu River in southwestern
Sichuan province.

To be built over 10 years by a subsidiary of state power firm Guodian
Group, it is expected to cost 24.68 billion yuan ($4.02 billion) in
investment.

The ministry, in a statement issued late on Tuesday, said an
environmental impact assessment had acknowledged that the project would
have a negative impact on rare fish and flora and affect protected local
nature reserves.

Developers, it said, had pledged to take "counter-measures" to mitigate
the effects. The project still requires the formal go-ahead from the
State Council, China's cabinet.

China aims to raise the share of non-fossil fuels in its energy mix to
15 percent by 2020, up from 9.4 percent in 2011. Hydropower is expected
to make the biggest contribution.

It has vowed to speed up construction of dams in the 2011-2015 period
after slowing it down following the completion of the controversial
Three Gorges project in 2005.

The Three Gorges Dam, which serves the world's biggest hydropower
station on the Yangtze river, measures 185 metres.

The 300-m Nurek dam in Tajikistan in Central Asia is the world's
highest, though other taller dams are now under construction. China's
tallest dam now, at 292 metres, is the Xiaowan Dam on the Lancang River,
also known as the Mekong.

On completion, the Sichuan project will have a total installed capacity
of 20 gigawatts (GW), with annual power generation to exceed 7 billion
kilowatt-hours (kWh).

The government said this year that hydropower capacity was expected to
reach 290 GW by 2015, up from 220 GW at the end of 2010. It also said it
would begin building a controversial project on the undeveloped Nu River
in Yunnan province.

Guodian was one of a number of state-owned firms criticised by China's
national audit office last week for starting work on projects not yet
been approved by the central government. The office said by the end of
2011, the company had invested nearly 30 billion yuan in 21 unapproved
projects.

The Huadian Group, China's biggest power company, was also criticised
for launching construction of the Huangdeng hydropower plant before
receiving the government's go-ahead. ($1 = 6.1428 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Ron Popeski)
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FT: Water Shortages in China and Three Gorges Dam

High and dry
By Leslie Hook
Financial Times, 15 May 2013

Devastating water shortages are putting a brake on economic growth and
stirring political discontent � but Beijing's high-spending responses to
the problem have triggered widespread criticism.

Wang Fuguo, a 63-year-old cotton farmer, does not know when his
ancestors began tilling the land in the dusty village of Weijie.

But he is fairly sure he will be the last of his family to do so.
"They've all fled," he says, looking out from his gate at the abandoned
houses that line the village's only street.

The reason is simple. "There's just no water here," he says. "If you
don't have water you can't survive." His household gets running water
for one hour every five days, barely enough to feed a tiny patch of
aubergines and supply his family and their dozen sheep.

In the face of China's rapid economic expansion and growing presence
on the global stage, it is often forgotten that the country is running
out of water. In per capita terms, China's water resources are just a
quarter of the world average. Eight of China's 28 provinces are as
parched as countries in the Middle East such as Jordan and Syria,
according to China Water Risk, a consultancy based in Hong Kong.

In the area where Mr Wang lives, Minqin county, a former oasis in
the vast desert of Inner Mongolia, the problem is particularly severe.
Mr Wang's neighbours are not the only ones who have moved away. More
than 10,000 people have left the area and have become shengtai yimin,
"ecological migrants".

Chinese officials identify water scarcity as one of the nation's
most pressing difficulties. The problems are social, political and
economic. This year Beijing for the first time issued water quotas to
every province, setting targets for annual consumption by 2015.

The water shortage is made even more urgent by China's rapid
urbanisation, as expanding cities have greater water needs. More than
300m people are expected to move into cities between now and 2030.

This transformation comes as the Chinese are becoming far more
critical and vocal about the way they are governed. Weibo, a
Twitter-like social network, is routinely filled with users sharing
information about pollution violations. Some users even dare officials
to take a dip in the rivers they are supposed to be in charge of keeping
clean. At times the government's inability to control its waterways has
made it the object of public ridicule, such as when more than 16,000
dead pig carcases floated down Shanghai's main waterway this year.

The economic problems are formidable, with the water shortage
threatening to slam a brake on growth. According to a World Bank report
in 2007, water problems cost China economic losses of 2.3 per cent of
gross domestic product. Executives say that water shortages are already
starting to reshape their industries.

"Serious water scarcity is one of the big problems that has slowed
down social and economic development in the north," says Jiang Liping,
water specialist at the World Bank in Beijing .

China's lack of water is itself partly a result of economic growth.
As people grow wealthier and move to cities, they eat more
water-intensive foods, buy more water-intensive products and use more
water at home. Changing climate also plays a role, as rainfall patterns
and river flows shift. All this is exacerbated by a strained
agricultural sector � which accounts for 60 per cent of China's water
use. Farmers are digging ever deeper to access water supplies and
irrigate more of their land.

The water scarcity is also worsened by the heavy pollution that
accompanies China's economic growth. "Controlling pollution is the most
difficult aspect of China's water policies," says Xia Jun, director of
the centre for water resources research at the Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences. "Even in places that have water, it is so polluted that you
might not be able to use it." Already, 39 per cent of the water in
China's major rivers is too toxic to be fit for any contact with humans.

In a sign of the gravity of the problem, Beijing is planning to pour
Rmb1.8tn ($291bn) into water-related infrastructure projects such as
irrigation and dams under the current five year plan � a sum that is
greater than the annual gross domestic product of economies such as
Egypt and Chile.

Loss of livelihood for farmers such as Mr Wang in Minqin is just one
example of the huge pressure that water scarcity is putting on China's
whole commercial landscape. The country's growth and political stability
are increasingly threatened by the widespread degradation of its air and
soil.

China's energy sector is particularly threatened by water shortages.
Promising new technologies will be constrained in some areas. Projects
to develop shale gas, for example, require large amounts of water for
hydraulic fracking. Even as Beijing builds new nuclear power plants at a
record rate, the government has also announced a moratorium on inland
nuclear plants because of concerns over water supply and safety.

"All uses of energy are connected with water," says Lin Boqiang, an
energy economist at the University of Xiamen. "In the past, when there
was not a shortage of water resources, people would only think about how
much water they needed on the site where they wanted to build a project.
Now it's the other way around. The volume of water available determines
how much energy can be developed in a certain place."

The state's deep concern about water has resulted in some of the
toughest laws on water use and water pollution anywhere in the world,
although corruption and weak rule of law mean implementation is patchy.
"You have to build the most sophisticated water treatment plants in the
world to fulfil the law," says an executive in the chemicals industry.
"The water laws are sometimes causing investors to rethink, given the
amount of investment needed."

However, many question whether these tough laws and the billions
spent on water infrastructure will really ease the water crisis. Some
Chinese scientists have lambasted the expensive projects at the core of
Beijing's water strategy, including the giant diversion system that will
carry water thousands of kilometres from southern to northern China to
alleviate shortages there.

That project, known as the South-North Water Transfer, will cost at
least $41bn and has forced more than 300,000 people to relocate, with
engineers cutting new canals and reservoirs. Other efforts to ease the
water shortages in northern China, such as the desalination plants
springing up on the coast near Tianjin, are also expensive and consume
large amounts of energy.

Minqin county, where Mr Wang lives, is a good example of how China's
obsession with water infrastructure has backfired. Mega-projects have
been a hallmark of communist rule. When Mao Zedong was in power, a giant
dam was built across Minqin's only water source, the Shiyang river, in
1958, by students eager to show their devotion to their leader. But soon
after the reservoir was filled, Qingtu lake, the body of water
downstream that had been at the heart of the Minqin oasis, dried up.

With no more water in the lake and diminished flows in the Shiyang
river, farmers in Minqin started pumping water from the ground to feed
their crops. As a result the water table fell. Trees and shrubs that had
kept the desert at bay for centuries died during the 1980s and 1990s.
With the vegetation gone, the desert started to encroach on the
once-lush area. In some places, sand dunes engulfed entire houses.

Minqin's plight eventually started to attract national attention. In
2007, Premier Wen Jiabao visited, declaring: "We should win the fight
for Minqin, and not let it vanish from the map." The government
allocated Rmb4.7bn to make sure that did not happen. This was a colossal
amount for one of China's poorest provinces but the move mirrored
China's huge outlays on water projects across the country.

However, China's approach to water management has changed little
since Mao. Instead of improving the situation, the multibillion yuan
programme has infuriated many in Minqin over what they consider to be
useless vanity projects.

At the top of their list is Qingtu lake. It dried up several decades
ago but the government has "restored" it by building a new canal
network. When water started flowing through the canals towards the lake,
farmers gathered to watch it go by, shocked that so much of the precious
resource could be expended to build an artificial lake when their
parched fields lay nearby. The lake today resembles a small wetland
among the dunes, supported by dykes, pipes and underground sealants to
help keep the water in place.

"It is totally unsustainable," says Kuoray Mao, a researcher with
the University of Kansas who lived in Minqin for 18 months, referring to
the new lake. "All this money is really just going to feed the
bureaucracy, not to improve farmers' lives."

While Minqin has its artificial lake, other parts of China are
similarly grappling with the impact of water projects gone wrong. The
Three Gorges Dam, completed in 2006 at a cost of Rmb254bn, has been
plagued by silting, landslides, pollution and ecological degradation.
Last year, the State Council, China's cabinet, warned that the dam had
"urgent problems". Across northern and central China, the rapid
expansion of irrigation infrastructure thanks to government funding has
hastened the depletion of underground aquifers.

Few places have more cause for public anger than Minqin, however.
"The people here are very unhappy with the government," says one former
farmer who asked not to be named. "They spent all this money to build a
lake but our lives have only gotten harder."

As part of the multimillion-dollar restoration programme, farmers'
private wells were closed and water prices were raised, making it
difficult to get by. The government provides enough water to each farmer
to cultivate 2.5 mu of land per person (slightly less than half an
acre), but no more than that.

It is hard to see how areas such as Minqin can realise the vision
outlined by China's leaders, who are promising a "China dream" with
higher incomes and better standards of living.

Although thousands of farmers have moved out of Minqin, suicide and
depression are common among those who remain. Mr Wang, the cotton
farmer, says he and his wife have thought about moving but decided
against it. "No one wants us," he says.

***

Three Gorges Dam - A vanity project with dire consequences
By Jamil Anderlini
Financial Times, 15 May 2013

When the main structure of the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest
hydropower project, was completed in 2006 it was hailed in China as a
triumph of man over nature and a shining example of the Communist
party's ability to mobilise advanced technology to build grand projects.

But by May 2011, China's state council was referring to the dam's
"urgent problems" of environmental degradation, resettlement of about
1.3m people and serious erosion throughout the dam's reservoir area.

A project that was supposed to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and
end centuries of devastating floods has become mired in controversy and
been blamed for the extinction of species, contributing to climate
change, exacerbating droughts downstream and seismic instability.

The dam was envisioned by the early revolutionary Sun Yat-sen but it
was Chairman Mao Zedong who was its main champion and who had engineers
thrown in prison in the late 1950s when they criticised the proposed
project.

Mao did not live to see his vision poured in concrete but the plan
was revived in the 1980s and approved in 1992 despite opposition from
nascent environmentalists and even many officials who saw it as a
ludicrously expensive and environmentally devastating vanity project.

About 1.3m people were moved from their ancestral homes, many of
them unwillingly and some of them in the face of violent threats as the
660km-long reservoir was gradually filled. Official corruption was rife
throughout the compensation and resettlement process.

But it was only when the dam was completed that the scale of the
environmental problems became clear.

"The environmental impacts of the project are profound and are
likely to get worse as time goes on," according to International Rivers,
a US-based environmental group. "The submergence of hundreds of
factories, mines and waste dumps and the presence of massive industrial
centres upstream are creating a festering bog of effluent, silt,
industrial pollutants and rubbish in the reservoir."
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