On December 17 the World Financial institution is ready to vote on financing the Rogun mega dam undertaking in Tajikistan. If the vote passes, it might make one of many wildest desires of the Tajik regime come true.
The $5bn Rogun undertaking has been in improvement because the mid-Seventies as an answer for the power vitality shortages within the nation. Since 2011, the financial institution has been encouraging it via research and assessments.
Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has stated the undertaking is a query of “life or demise”. The undertaking may certainly have monumental penalties, however maybe not those the president has in thoughts. Constructing the dam would displace greater than 60,000 folks and trigger irreparable harm to the atmosphere.
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 issues of the affected communities danger remaining unheard as a result of folks concern protesting.
The World Financial institution, which has usually come beneath scrutiny for the damaging impacts of its initiatives, over time 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 army can be concerned in offering “safety”?
The truth that solely worldwide organisations are publicly scrutinising the undertaking and elevating issues, sadly, doesn’t imply that native communities will not be being adversely affected. Though lower than 25 p.c 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, diminished entry to meals, unreliable and insufficient entry to fundamental companies, and lack of sufficient compensation.
Furthermore, the Rogun hydropower undertaking would have a devastating affect 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 Website within the Vakhsh River floodplain. It will additionally have an effect on related nature reserves downstream, in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Beneath the present proposal, the filling of the Rogun reservoir would additionally severely change the water move 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 the earth, the Aral Sea has now virtually dried up because of extremely problematic water infrastructure and cotton manufacturing arrange within the 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 could gas protests and transboundary tensions in a area already susceptible to conflicts.
Regardless of apparent dangers posed by the operation of a brand new big reservoir, the preliminary affect evaluation denied vital modifications in downstream flows. And as downstream nations even have extremely restrictive contexts, there are critical doubts that any significant stakeholder engagement will be performed.
The Tajik regime’s argument that it is a “life and demise” state of affairs doesn’t stand. There are options to the present undertaking that may present the wanted electrical energy and that will not have the identical environmental and human impacts.
Lowering the peak of the dam may massively cut back the variety of folks that danger being displaced, and the funds saved by downscaling the undertaking may very well be used to construct extra environment friendly photo voltaic farms, thus diversifying the Tajik vitality sector and avoiding overreliance on hydropower in a area susceptible to droughts worsened by local weather change. A smaller undertaking may additionally forestall 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 atmosphere, and why options to any giant dam proposal ought to be critically thought of from the beginning.
But, with the current push for a fossil gas phaseout, giant dams have managed to get renewed help. Although a few of them emit extra greenhouse gases than fossil gas energy vegetation, dams are being promoted as climate-friendly initiatives and improvement banks are once more closely investing in them.
The World Financial institution nonetheless has a possibility to pause the proposed investments and demand a brand new affect evaluation, together with for various 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 initiatives the place doable harms will 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.