On December 17 the World Financial institution is about to vote on financing the Rogun mega dam undertaking in Tajikistan. If the vote passes, it will make one of many wildest goals of the Tajik regime come true.
The $5bn Rogun undertaking has been in improvement for the reason that mid-Nineteen Seventies as an answer for the continual power shortages within the nation. Since 2011, the financial institution has been encouraging it by way of research and assessments.
Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has mentioned the undertaking is a query of “life or dying”. The undertaking might certainly have huge penalties, however maybe not those the president has in thoughts. Constructing the dam would displace greater than 60,000 folks and trigger irreparable injury to the setting.
Tajikistan is extensively 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 folks worry protesting.
The World Financial institution, which has typically come beneath scrutiny for the damaging impacts of its tasks, through the years has developed safeguard insurance policies to make sure civic engagement and participation for undertakings it funds. However how can the precise to participation be upheld in a rustic with such a restrictive civic area and within the context of a undertaking the place the navy shall be concerned in offering “safety”?
The truth that solely worldwide organisations are publicly scrutinising the undertaking and elevating considerations, sadly, doesn’t imply that native communities should not being adversely affected. Though lower than 25 % of the development work has been accomplished, greater than 7,000 folks 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 primary companies, and lack of satisfactory compensation.
Furthermore, the Rogun hydropower undertaking would have a devastating impression on downstream communities and ecosystems. It’s being constructed on the Vakhsh River, a significant tributary to the Amu Darya River which flows into Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Inside Tajikistan, the dam undertaking 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.
Underneath the present proposal, the filling of the Rogun reservoir would additionally severely change the water stream 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 this planet, the Aral Sea has now virtually 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 liable to conflicts.
Regardless of apparent dangers posed by the operation of a brand new large reservoir, the preliminary impression evaluation denied important modifications in downstream flows. And as downstream nations even have extremely restrictive contexts, there are critical doubts that any significant stakeholder engagement might be performed.
The Tajik regime’s argument that it is a “life and dying” scenario doesn’t stand. There are options to the present undertaking that may present the wanted electrical energy and that may not have the identical environmental and human impacts.
Reducing the peak of the dam might massively scale back the variety of people who threat being displaced, and the funds saved by downscaling the undertaking could possibly be used to construct extra environment friendly photo voltaic farms, thus diversifying the Tajik power sector and avoiding overreliance on hydropower in a area liable to droughts worsened by local weather change. A smaller undertaking might additionally stop a few of the worst environmental impacts.
Within the Nineteen 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 folks and the setting, and why options to any giant dam proposal ought to be critically thought-about 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 vegetation, dams are being promoted as climate-friendly tasks and improvement banks are once more closely investing in them.
The World Financial institution nonetheless has a chance to pause the proposed investments and demand a brand new impression evaluation, together with for different proposals. Now it’s the time for the financial institution to mirror on previous errors, take heed to civil society, and shift investments to smaller-scale tasks the place doable harms might be adequately mitigated. In any other case, the dream of the largest dam will flip right into a nightmare for the folks and nature in Tajikistan and past.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
