Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, May 4 2005 (IPS) — One of Africa’s largest dams, now under construction in Sudan, carries a hefty price for the environment and threatens intensified social unrest, project critics say.

The Merowe/Hamadab Dam Project, a 1.5-billion-dollar effort on the fourth cataract of the Nile River, would double the country’s energy capacity but in the process would displace more than 50,000 people, mainly small farmers living along the river, they say.

A group representing local groups warned that the project also would destroy archeological sites in the area, where early human and African civilisations evolved and ruled from the Nile Valley to Palestine.

Spearheading local opposition to the massive construction project is the Leadership Office of the Hamadab Dam Affected People (LOAHP), a non-governmental organisation that says it represents local communities.

The project betrays a ”development policy that misuses natural resources and causes huge destruction to both human and environment, in pursuance of a mirage of short term economic gains,” A. Askouri, the group’s president, told IPS. He declined to provide his first name.

Project planning has been secretive and people who will be directly affected have not had their voices heard, Askouri, a former official in Sudan’s water and irrigation ministry, said in an e-mail interview from Sudan.

”If we ignore those issues today, generations in the very near future will find it imperative to go to war due to fatal and unnecessary mistakes committed by these short-sighted politicians,” he added. ”The project is not sustainable, and it stands completely against all guidelines adopted by the United Nations and other world organisations working in the field of water and environment.”

Locals do not stand completely opposed to the project, however. Rather, they have sought a break postponement to allow for public consultation and to satisfy them that the project’s likely environmental and social impacts have been thoroughly investigated.

They also have urged that communities undergoing resettled be preserved, not broken up, in the process of resettlement. None of these demands has been met so far, according to Askouri.

The U.S.-based International Rivers Network (IRN) and British-based Corner House, in a report released earlier this month, said the project, located about 350 kilometres north of the capital, Khartoum, already had displaced 10,000 people from fertile land along the Nile to the Nubian Desert where the land is barren with little groundwater supply.

The 15-page report, based on field trips in February and March, said that soils at the resettlement site are so poor that the farmers cannot sell their paltry produce on the market, fuelling anger and clashes with authorities.

”The re-settlers were promised free services such as water, electricity, and fertilisers for a two-year transition period but are being cheated out of most of these services,” the report said.

Environmentalists and aid groups long have said that, while intended to boost development, the construction of large dams such as Merowe/Hamadab, instead has lead to further impoverishment and degraded environments in many parts of the world.

”In Sudan, large infrastructure projects, pipelines and agricultural schemes have in the past created a serious social and ethnic tensions and fueled conflicts that turned into major humanitarian disasters,” said Peter Bosshard of IRN.

In November 2000, the World Commission on Dams, established by the World Bank and The World Conservation Union to assess the merits of the hydro-electric facilities, released a highly critical report saying that dams had generated less power, irrigated less land, and supplied less drinking water than projected.

The Sudan project, first proposed by British occupation authorities in the early 20th century, will result in a 174-kilometre-long reservoir holding some 12,450 million cubic metres of water, or 20 percent of the country’s annual water flow. The dam itself will rise to a height of about 65 metres and stretch for 9.2 kilometres, according to builders’ plans.

Germany’s Lahmeyer International is carrying out the engineering and project management and the Swiss unit of French-based conglomerate Alstom is in charge of the electro-mechanical works. Officials from both companies were not available for comment.

Chinese construction companies including China International Water and Electric Corporation also are involved, along with local Sudanese companies specialising in civil works, according to project documents from Lahmeyer. Work is scheduled for completion by the end of 2008.

Arab financial institutions, including the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, the Saudi Fund for Development, and The Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, are providing 700 million dollars in project financing, according to Lahmeyer.

More than 300 million dollars is coming from The Export-Import Bank of China, which is backed by several Western commercial banks. Sudan’s government is covering the remaining 500 million dollars, Lahmeyer said.

The project is drawing fresh interest from groups like IRN as it follows on the heels of pledges by international donors of some 4.5 billion dollars in support for reconstruction and development in war-blighted Sudan over the next three years. These pledges in turn have triggered expectations that new infrastructure investment also will follow, especially in the key electricity sector.

”The Merowe/Hamadab Dam is a test case of whether the basic rights of affected people and the environment will be safeguarded in such investments,” said Bosshard. ”The generous international support for Sudan’s reconstruction is welcome, but donors must ensure that social and environmental standards are respected in the process.”