Blogs: In the Field

Guest blog by Daniel Moss, Consultant for American Jewish World Service

Los OjOs del Mundo están puestos en Temaca (IMDEC)

The eyes of the world are on Temacapulín. So declared banners draped around the town, sharing wall space alongside similar pronouncements to save the Mekong River and Narmada valley. Solidarity is probably the best hope for the 500 residents of this sleepy Mexican town on the brink of being submerged by a big dam.

It’s a battle of David and Goliath proportions. Father Gabriel, the local priest, tweaked the final words of the Lord’s Prayer, urging, “Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from dams. Amen.”  

Rivers for Life meeting in Temacapulin

Imagine a mixture of a dam protest, legal seminar, solar panel installation and river dance. Imagine hundreds of grassroots activists from all around the world coming together in a remote rural community for five days of discussions, skill-shares and parties. This is what just happened at the “Rivers for Life 3” meeting in Temacapulin, Mexico. Read this eyewitness report by an inspired and exhausted participant.

In late March, I traveled with Caterina Amicucci

Caterina (CRBM) and Joshua (FoLT) crossing Lake Turkana

(Campaign to Reform the World Bank) and Joshua Angelei (Friends of Lake Turkana) to meet those whose lives would be devastated by the impact of Gibe 3 Dam on Lake Turkana. As our plane descended into Lodwar, Lake Turkana’s biggest town, the landscape was irregularly green – rain had broken the area’s three year drought. But the rains which caused celebrations amongst the communities are increasingly an exception, no longer the historic, seasonal rule. We also found that the rain's respite had not calmed the people’s opposition to Gibe 3 Dam.

BP Oil Spill, Gulf of Mexico, 2010 (NASA)

As BP's Gulf oil spill is so tragically demonstrating, once the cows are out of the barn and the oil is out of the well, it's too late to come up with a disaster response plan.

As the rivers of Patagonia prepare for the open season onslaught of mega-hydroelectric development, and as Chile motors towards presidential elections, getting up to date news from the long thin country becomes a priority.

Ethiopia announced last week that, faced with a 120 MW deficit, electricity will be cut, 14 hours daily for six days each month. Those lost 84 hours a month will cost the country’s economy 1% of its GDP.

Although Ethiopia has only 767 MW of grid-based electricity, it was more than the country’s demand until last year. Domestic peak demand has reportedly risen 24% since, beyond the national utility’s meager supply.

But Ethiopia’s power company, EEPCo, had every intention that two new hydro plants, Tekeze (300 MW) and Gilgel Gibe II (480 MW), would be supplying power long before now, doubling grid supply and even jumpstarting power exports in 2008. Once operational, both will loom largely over Ethiopia’s current largest power plant, the 184 MW Gilgel Gibe Dam. But technical delays and cost overruns, two characteristics notoriously common in large dams, are now haunting EEPCo.

Read Part 1 of the blog. 

Victor Caal from Las Margaritas Copon (Aviva Imhof)

Our next stop was Las Margaritas Copón: a village of some 45 families that's an hour's walk away from the river. To get there we took a boat upstream along the Chixoy River: a gorgeous turquoise tropical river surrounded by forests and plots of maize. Parts of Las Margaritas would be flooded by the reservoir, and much of their land would be lost: land where they currently grow cardamom, corn and beans. Here we participated in an assembly of ACODET, the community organization that has been formed to fight the dam (ACODET stands for Association of Communities for Development, Defense of the land and natural resources).

Location of Xalala Dam (INDE)

A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of visiting communities that would be affected by the proposed Xalalá Dam in Guatemala. It was an inspiring and harrowing experience. Inspiring to witness the organization and strength of communities threatened by the dam: indigenous people proud of their heritage and determined to fight to retain it. Harrowing to hear stories of the legacy of the war and genocide that killed so many people in the area and forever changed the lives of the survivors. To these people, who have been through war, displacement, violence and dispossession, and who have benefited so little from government services since the Peace Accords were signed in 1996, the dam is a new kind of war.

Exploiting the Inga Rapids could make a lot of money and electricity, but there's a snowball's chance that the people of Democratic Republic of Congo will see much of either....

Matadi Port

From Matadi, the country's main port and capital of Bas Congo Province, we headed towards one of the Congo's great riches: the Inga Rapids. The paved road continued, curving lightly past steep hillsides of brilliant green dropping downward into deep valleys. It was a sight I might expect to see amongst the foothills of the Alps. Below me to the right, the Congo River lay calm and wide. The serenity of the landscape gave no hint of the exploitation, conflict and injustice that have shrouded the country for more than a hundred years.

(This is part 3 in a 3 part series. Read part I: Take Me to the River)

Dust in the Wind: Ahai Dam Barrels Ahead

Raft Approaching the Ahai Dam Site

If the 160-meter-high Ahai Dam is completed, its designers will be able to proudly say that their concrete work erased a thousand years of lovingly crafted Great Bend terraces in just a few years of reservoir filling. The legacy they are focusing on is surely a more positive one: increased distribution of eletricity to a power-hungry China, and increased efficiency for the Three Gorges Dam. According to the engineers, the main purpose of this eight-dam cascade will be regulating flows and sediment for the world's largest hydroelectric power station downstream. Whether or not all eight dams are actually required to make this work, and what that says about the design of Three Gorges itself, are all unknowns in China's disordered grand plan.