opinion
By Dr Alex Awiti,
Three months ago in this column, I warned that the
completion of Ethiopia's Gibe III dam on the Omo River could transform Lake Turkana,
the world's only desert lake, into Africa's Aral Sea. Impassioned by
China-style great leap forward philosophy, the Ethiopian government has pursued
the development of the Gibe III dam in total disregard to the consequence
associated with it.
The Ethiopian government and multilateral donor
institutions present the Gibe III dam project as critical to national and
regional energy security and contributing to poverty alleviation. A new report
from the African Resource Working Group (ARWG) reveals that the completion of
the Gibe III dam on the Omo River will touch off socio-economic, political and
ecological collapse in the tri-state border region of the Great Horn of Africa.
According to the ARWG report, a major review by the
African Development Bank of the hydrological impacts of the Gibe III dam on
Lake Turkana omitted any assessment of the dependence of the livelihoods of
local communities on the lake's resources. Moreover, the assessment by the
Ethiopian government shows no regard for Kenya's sovereignty over Lake
Turkana's northern shoreline zone and a significant portion of the Omo Delta.
The author of the report, Claudia J. Carr, associate
professor at University of California at Berkeley, argues that no credible
assessments of the environmental and social cross-border impacts of the dam
have been conducted. The report charges that the assessments of the dam's
impact were fragmentary and riddled with major omissions, inaccuracies and even
fabrications.
For instance, the Ethiopian government and the dam
proponents suggest that a 60-70% drop in inflows would only cause a 2m-drop in
lake levels. The report suggests that the Ethiopian government, international
development banks and global commercial investors have operated with the
precondition despite glaringly inadequate appraisal of the impacts of Gibe III
mega-dam project.
The Gibe III reservoir would be 150 km long, in a narrow
gorge with covering an area of 211 square kilometers, with a storage volume of
11,750 million cubic meters; an amount equal to about two years of the Omo
River's flow causing a 60-70% reduction in the volume of the Omo River, which
contributes 90% of inflow into Lake Turkana. This will reduce Lake Turkana's
volume by 58%, lower the lake level by10-22m while doubling its salinity and
putting nearly 500,000 pastoralists and fisher folk at the risk of famine and
conflict.
Gibe III dam will disrupt regular flood cycles of the Omo
River destroying the network of swamps vital for 50 species of fish. Moreover,
the networks of swamps also provide forage and browse for wildlife and
livestock, support flood-retreat agriculture, and are valuable habitat for
water birds that use the lake for their annual migrations between Eurasia and
Eastern Africa. Lake Turkana is home Nile crocodile, bird species numbering in
the hundreds, including charismatic birds like flamingos, cormorants, ibises,
skimmers, and sandpipers, and amphibians like hippos and turtles.
The Gibe III dam will have irreversible consequences on
vital ecosystem services and biodiversity. In turn this will impact hundreds of
thousands of people in the Lower Omo Basin and Lake Turkana Basin whose
livelihoods depend on a complex socio-ecological web of exchange of services
and products. Completion of the dam will destroy the core of the region's
resilient indigenous economies, which are complex and delicately balanced
livelihoods woven together by networks of reciprocity across Ethiopia, Kenya
and South Sudan.
The report further warns that owing to its proximity to
the Main Ethiopian Rift, there is a 50% likelihood of 7 or 8 intensity
earthquakes occurring within 50 years, causing collapse of the dam, triggering
unprecedented destruction of livelihoods and the ecological balance in the
Lower Omo Basin and throughout Kenya's Lake Turkana.
In July 2102, the World Bank voted to approve $684
million to build a 1000-kilometer long transmission major line to link Kenya to
the controversial Gibe III dam. Clearly this demonstrates that both the World
Bank and the Kenyan government failed to grasp the enormous and potentially
catastrophic downstream socio-economic, ecological and political consequences
of the Gibe III dam.
On the basis of the evidence advanced by the Africa
Resource Working Group as well as other studies, Kenya's complicity and tacit
endorsement of the Gibe III dam is reckless, wrongheaded and unconstitutional.
It is the duty of the government of Kenya to protect the rights and livelihoods
of communities for whom the Turkana basin is home.
Dr. Awiti is an ecosystem ecologist based at Aga Khan
University, Nairobi
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