Environmentalist 'Davids' Oppose Goliath Dam Projects
2/26/97
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Headline: Environmentalist 'Davids' Oppose Goliath Dam Projects
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Date: 2/26/97
Author: C-csm@clari.net (CSM / Lyn Shepard)
Copyright 1997 by Christian Science Monitor
'Green' groups target projects that displace thousands of
people and hurt the ecology.
In a city of global bankers noted for ``business as usual,'' environmental
activist Peter Bosshard speaks for a new breed of Swiss committed to
``green'' values - concerted public action to preserve Earth's natural
resources.
Mr. Bosshard shares leadership of a Zurich-based public-interest
group, the Berne Declaration, which claims 16,000 members. The group
shares information with similar nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
worldwide.
Since assuming his post in the Berne Declaration, Bosshard has
rocked the Swiss boat on issues involving commercial ties with Asia,
Africa, and Latin America.
The Berne Declaration has been strikingly effective in briefing
Swiss citizens on massive dam projects funded by Swiss banks and
engineered by hydroelectric firms such as the Swedish-Swiss giant Asea
Brown Boveri Ltd.
ABB's Swedish chairman and CEO Percy Barnevik insists that ABB
bears a responsibility to the third world to ``[transfer] to them the
experiences of our own industrialization as well as efficient and
clean technology.''
But the Bosshard network, critical of the dam projects, sees things
differently. It has focused its protest efforts on three huge dam
projects: the Narmada Dam in India; the Bakun Dam in Sarawak,
Malayasia; and the Three Gorges project in China.
In each case, Bosshard says, well-reasoned NGO protests forced the
World Bank to back off plans to fund the project. Crucial to the NGO's
case: a likely catastrophic impact on either nature, humanity, or
both.
In India's Narmada Valley, the proposed dam would have displaced,
seized land from, or cost the jobs of 320,000 people in Guijarat
State. The World Bank pullout has prompted India to refocus on
smaller, less volatile dam projects.
Malaysia's Bakun Dam project would uproot 9,400 people. Bosshard
rates Bakun's potential threat to the partially jungle environment as
``among the top 10 trouble spots worldwide.'' Malaysia seeks to offset
the loss of World Bank funds through private capital.
China's gigantic Three Gorges project dwarfs all others. It would
force the displacement of some 1.3 million people from a 600-km
stretch along the Yangtze River valley. The project area alone is four
times larger than the state of California. Environmental critics regard
the project as a planned disaster masked by extreme nationalistic pride.
Doubts sown by the NGOs about skewed impact studies by corrupt engineers
and officials have found their mark.
``Now nobody in government defends these projects anymore,'' Bosshard
says. ``But they'll still argue ... that 'If we don't build them, somebody
else will.' ``
ABB won the consortium leader role for the $5 billion Malaysia job
this year and vies with many competitors for the much larger China
project. Bejiing is expected to name its prime contractor later this
year.
The Berne Declaration hopes both projects can still be stopped. The
NGO has lobbied the Swiss government not to grant any firm an export-risk
guarantee in bidding for the Three Gorges project, an 18,000-megawatt job
priced at $30 billion to $50 billion.
Bosshard toured China several years ago and had a first-hand look
at the fertile valley of the Yangtze, the world's third-longest river.
His visit coincided with Premier Li Peng's approval of the Three
Gorges Dam project.
After speaking with some of the project's critics, Bosshard became
convinced that, besides the environmental damage the dam would cause,
``many millions of people'' would be endangered by the dam due to
seismic activity in a region highly sensitive to earthquakes.
But a Chinese public works minister publicly dismissed any possibility of
project engineering error ``because it would indicate a flaw in socialism,
and that is scientifically impossible.''
``It's just that sort of 'Apres moi le deluge' thinking that
worries us,'' Bosshard says.
Working with other key NGOs, Bosshard's group now monitors the
Chinese project, condemns it before Swiss politicians, and leaflets
for public support.
The Swiss will join other international activists at the First
International Conference of People Affected by Large Dams, meeting
Mar. 11-14 in Curitiba, Brazil, to discuss strategy on the China
project, other large dams, and ``destructive river infrastructure
projects'' worldwide.
Other critical projects condemned by groups like the Berne Declaration
include the Yacyreta Dam on the Parana River at the Argentine-Paraguay
border, the Kafin Zarkin Dam in Nigeria's Bauchi State, and the Manantali
Dam in Mali's Senegal River Basin. Swiss environmentalists also label as
``hot spots'' Turkey's Greater Anatolia project (irrigating the Euphrates
River before it enters Syria), Pakistan's Tarblea Reservoir, and eastern
Canada's ``GRAND Canal'' plan for the northern James Bay.
But in democratic countries (from which China and Three Gorges
project must clearly be exempted), Bosshard and his Swiss activists
say the NGOs have slain a Goliath. Dam critic Patrick McCully agrees.
``The international dam industry,'' he concludes, ``appears to be
entering a recession from which it may never escape.''