Today in Southern Africa indigenous people who have felt the negative effects of massive government and industry-supported dam projects conducted a 24 hour fast , refraining from both eating and using electricity, to mark solidarity with the indigenous people facing "illegal submergence" due to the building of the Sardar Sarovar dam in India. Over the last several years, similar indigenous protests against large dam projects have inspired millions to act to force governments, corporations that profit from hydroelectric power and international "development " bodies such as the World Bank to withdraw from massive dams that have often had devastating effects on the very people that they're claiming to help.
According to the World Commission on Dams a World Bank-supported organization that has been critical of the Bank's past dam projects, since its inception the World Bank has provided almost $75 billion for 538 large dams in 92 countries. Bank-supported large dams have forced at least 10 million people from their homes and lands, adversely impacting local economies, especially of indigenous people and those in poverty. The WCD also criticizes the lack of voice the Bank gives people in a proposed dam's region in decisions about the project. Supporters of huge dams say they're necessary to generate efficient, environmentally-friendly power. Detractors say the privatization of utilities enables powerful entities to unduly profit from the earth's natural resources.
Widespread protest has slowed dam expansion and even temporarily halted dam building in places like Djenne, Mali, where the Talo dam project threatens the livelihoods of thousands of farmers as well as the historical Djenne mosque, the world's largest adobe structure. People are currently fighting massive dam projects in the Narmada region of India, where Satyahraha (non-violent resistance) is planned throughout the year, Lesotho in Southern Africa, where the Lesotho Highlands WaterProject has been a continual source of corruption, Southeastern Anatolia in Turkey, whe re the Ilisu Dam will displace tens of thousands of people, most of them Kurdish, and destroy the ancient archeological site of Hasankeyf, and China, where the Three Gorges Dam threatens to displace up to two million people.
In some places government and corporate reaction to these activists has been har sh. In 1982, Guatemalan paramilitary units massacred 400 Mayan villagers who re fused to leave their ancestral lands to make way for the Chixoy Dam As recently as June 30 of this year Honduran anti-dam activist Carlos Roberto Flores died, according to eyewitnesses, after being shot by six security guards working for a corporation that has a government contract to build a hydroelectric dam on the Babilonia River. Amnesty International estimates there have been 25 anti-dam activists killed or kidnapped in the last ten years in Latin America. Despite ongoing popular action, the Honduran government continues to support Energisa, a privately-owned concern that is attempting to build a 4.4-megawatt dam in the buffer zone of Sierra de Agalta National Park.
[ Read more | International Rivers Network | Friends of the River Narmada ]
