On December 17 the World Financial institution is about to vote on financing the Rogun mega dam venture in Tajikistan. If the vote passes, it will make one of many wildest desires of the Tajik regime come true.
The $5bn Rogun venture has been in improvement for the reason that mid-Seventies as an answer for the continual vitality shortages within the nation. Since 2011, the financial institution has been encouraging it by research and assessments.
Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has mentioned the venture is a query of “life or demise”. The venture may certainly have huge penalties, however maybe not those the president has in thoughts. Constructing the dam would displace greater than 60,000 individuals and trigger irreparable harm to the atmosphere.
Tajikistan is broadly recognized for its repression of dissent, suppression of freedom of speech, and stifling of civil society. It’s a nation the place human rights defenders and journalists are routinely imprisoned and attacked, and police torture is widespread.
As highlighted within the current report “Financing Repression”, co-published by the Coalition for Human Rights in Improvement, the Early Warning System and Worldwide Accountability Challenge, in Tajikistan’s context, the considerations of the affected communities threat remaining unheard as a result of individuals worry protesting.
The World Financial institution, which has usually come below scrutiny for the harmful impacts of its initiatives, through the years has developed safeguard insurance policies to make sure civic engagement and participation for undertakings it funds. However how can the proper to participation be upheld in a rustic with such a restrictive civic area and within the context of a venture the place the navy will probably be concerned in offering “safety”?
The truth that solely worldwide organisations are publicly scrutinising the venture and elevating considerations, sadly, doesn’t imply that native communities will not be being adversely affected. Though lower than 25 p.c of the development work has been accomplished, greater than 7,000 individuals have already been displaced. In response to a 2014 Human Rights Watch report, resettled households have confronted lack of livelihoods, lowered entry to meals, unreliable and insufficient entry to fundamental providers, and lack of satisfactory compensation.
Furthermore, the Rogun hydropower venture would have a devastating influence on downstream communities and ecosystems. It’s being constructed on the Vakhsh River, a serious tributary to the Amu Darya River which flows into Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Inside Tajikistan, the dam venture would have an effect on critically endangered endemic sturgeons and distinctive floodplain ecosystems downstream, together with “Tugay Forests of the Tigrovaya Balka”, a World Heritage Web site within the Vakhsh River floodplain. It might additionally have an effect on comparable nature reserves downstream, in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Beneath the present proposal, the filling of the Rogun reservoir would additionally severely change the water circulation to the Aral Sea, an ecosystem that has already suffered one of many largest human-induced environmental catastrophes.
As soon as the fourth-largest saline lake on the planet, the Aral Sea has now nearly dried up on account of extremely problematic water infrastructure and cotton manufacturing arrange within the Nineteen Sixties in Uzbekistan, then a part of the Soviet Union.
The operation of the Rogun hydropower dam will additional have an effect on seasonal patterns of water influx and its quantity supporting the associated ecosystems, their biodiversity, and the livelihoods of the already struggling riparian communities of Decrease Amu Darya and its delta. Water redistribution shortages might gasoline protests and transboundary tensions in a area already vulnerable to conflicts.
Regardless of apparent dangers posed by the operation of a brand new big reservoir, the preliminary influence evaluation denied important adjustments in downstream flows. And as downstream nations even have extremely restrictive contexts, there are severe doubts that any significant stakeholder engagement will be performed.
The Tajik regime’s argument that it is a “life and demise” state of affairs doesn’t stand. There are alternate options to the present venture that may present the wanted electrical energy and that will not have the identical environmental and human impacts.
Reducing the peak of the dam may massively cut back the variety of folks that threat being displaced, and the funds saved by downscaling the venture may very well be used to construct extra environment friendly photo voltaic farms, thus diversifying the Tajik vitality sector and avoiding overreliance on hydropower in a area vulnerable to droughts worsened by local weather change. A smaller venture may additionally forestall a few of the worst environmental impacts.
Within the Nineties, the World Financial institution itself spearheaded the institution of the World Fee on Dams. In 2000, the fee launched a damning report clearly demonstrating how mega dams can severely hurt individuals and the atmosphere, and why alternate options to any giant dam proposal must be significantly thought of from the beginning.
But, with the current push for a fossil gasoline phaseout, giant dams have managed to get renewed help. Even supposing a few of them emit extra greenhouse gases than fossil gasoline energy crops, dams are being promoted as climate-friendly initiatives and improvement banks are once more closely investing in them.
The World Financial institution nonetheless has a possibility to pause the proposed investments and demand a brand new influence evaluation, together with for various proposals. Now it’s the time for the financial institution to replicate on previous errors, take heed to civil society, and shift investments to smaller-scale initiatives the place attainable harms will be adequately mitigated. In any other case, the dream of the most important dam will flip right into a nightmare for the individuals and nature in Tajikistan and past.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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