Along its 760-kilometer course, from the Shewan highlands in southern Ethiopia, down to Lake Turkana in Kenya, the Omo River supports half a million Indigenous People from more than two dozen different tribes, including the Bodi, Karo, Muguji, Mursi, Elmolo, Gabbra, Rendille and Hamar in the Lower Omo valley and around Lake Turkana. For generations, the Indigenous People have farmed sorghum, maize and beans along the lower Omo and around Lake Turkana region, depending on the annual flooding cycle of the river. The natural ebb and flow of the Omo River provides water for agriculture, livestock, and fishing.
But since the 1970s, droughts have increased in frequency and length, bringing famine and displacing thousands of people. Water scarcity and conflicts over water resources are also likely to worsen when the Gibe III Dam project finishes in 2012. The dam is situated about 300 kilometers southwest of Addis Ababa with a capacity of 1,870 MW, and can provide power to 400 million people. Ethiopia is among the countries with the lowest rates of electricity - currently, only 15 percent of Ethiopians have access to electricity, and this access is mainly in cities.
But the dam potentially threatens the lives of the Indigenous farmers and fishers from the Omo-Turkana region. According to the African Resources Working Group (ARWG), the Gibe III dam will reduce the lake's depth by about seven to ten meters in its first five years, adding to the effects of climate change, which has likely reduced the depth by about five to eight meters already. The dam will disturb the natural flooding cycle of the Omo River, eliminating the seasonal floods and the nutrients deposited along the river.
Artificial flooding from the dam will last 10 days, replacing the natural gradual flood which usually lasts for several months. The International Rivers organization states that the artificial flood will be incapable of reaching all the areas that the natural annual flood feeds and will not support the current agricultural and fishing productivity.
According to the project's Public Consultation and Disclosure Plan, only 93 members from four Indigenous communities were consulted from around 500,000 affected Indigenous People located downstream of the dam, and it occurred after construction of the dam had already begun. The Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIAs) are not accessible for the majority of the affected people and are not even in the languages spoken by them, violating domestic laws and international agreements that require consultation among the affected people, allowing them to give free, prior, and informed consent to developments and the use of their land and other resources.
Friends of Lake Turkana (FoLT), a Kenyan organization representing Indigenous groups in northwestern Kenya, is carrying out a campaign to highlight the potentially harmful consequences to biodiversity, livelihoods and food security that the Gibe III dam would cause to the lake and its ecosystem, to the Kenyan public, legislators, diplomatic missions, donor agencies, and development partners.
Although the dam constructors promise benefits, including electricity, for citizens, the cost to the Indigenous People and the environment might be too high a price to pay.
Patricia Baquero is a research intern with Nourishing the Planet.
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what about the negative impacts of the recurrent flood that has always been treatening the lives of the indigenous tribes you mentioned? Like other contributions by all anti-Gibe-development campainers, this piece lacks professionalism. It doesn't assess or report positive impacts of the project beyond the 1800 MW energy sought to be produced. For interested readers and even writer of this article, I suggest having a look at the following research work. It employes state-of-the-art tools to assess impacts of the Gibe III project. http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/16/1/2012/hess-16-1-2012.pdf
The author of this article, Patricia Baquero, seems to see this Gibe III hydroelectric project from one angle i.e. Indigenous Peoples' Right. I, as an Environmental & Social Impact assessor myself, understand some of the author's concern. However, the author made a huge gaffe to highlight her argument by saying "this Gibe III Dam will provide power to 400 million people". This claim is dead wrong.
Nonetheless, ESIAs are done to make sure such projects have least side effects on the Environment and Society. No infrastructure project on earth has ZERO Environmental and Social effects. But with the help of ESIA studies damages are minimized. In this case, Gibe III Dam's ESIA study guarantee the project will have a minimum side effect on the environment and society.