A report from the Kyoto water meeting by the South African Press Assoc.

Hydro-electric power: the good and the bad

March 18 2003 at 03:28PM

Kyoto - How to balance the environmental, social and financial costs
of large-scale dams with the benefits of hydro-electric power for
developing countries prompted an emotional debate on Tuesday at the
Third World Water Forum.

As many as 80 million people wordwide have been displaced by
reservoirs and incalculable damage has been done to once healthy
river ecosystems and fauna, according to a World Commission on Dams
report released in 2000 by the World Bank and a consortium of
non-governmental organisations.

But energy needs are becoming more pressing as the global population
is expected to increase by 50 percent in the next half century to
nine billion, noted the International Hydropower Association (IHA).

"Energy consumption will triple in the next 50 years, not just
because of the population but because of increased equity in
distribution," said IHA president Raymond Lafitte.
"It is a huge challenge to provide the water, food and energy to all
those people."

Dam proponents advocate large-scale power projects for developing
countries as they utilise a resource that is in abundant supply and
may incur only minor maintenance costs over a dam's lifespan, which
can exceed 100 years.

"Only seven percent of Africa's hydro resources are developed, which
means only five percent of the population has access to modern
energy," Daudi Migereko, Uganda's minister of energy for Uganda told
the forum.

"The only way forward to ensure the advancement of the continent is
to exploit its hydro potential."

Opponents argue the costs of large-scale projects, often a huge
proportion of a struggling nation's gross domestic product, as well
as the implications for indigenous communities whose homes and
livelihoods are washed away by reservoirs, outweigh the benefits.

"It's hard to say, in black and white, that there should be no large
hydro-electric projects, because countries all have different power
needs," said Ute Collier, the dams initiative leader for the
conservation group WWF, one of 250 NGOs invited to the forum of 8 100
participants from 165 countries.

"What we are saying is that dam projects should better meet the needs
of the communities they are trying to supply, and take into account
the environmental and social impacts, while also ensuring that enough
power is generated to make the projects worthwhile."

Hydropower advocates point to large-scale projects such as the
Ataturk dam in Anatolia in southeast Turkey and the Saltos Caixha dam
on Brazil's portion of the Iguacu River, as evidence that communities
can be resettled happily and environmental damage can be minimal with
proper planning.

Yet there are dams illustrating precisely the opposite, such as the
Brokopondo in Indonesia, which forced the resettlement of 5 000
people to produce 30 megawatts of power, and went broke in the
process.

China's controversial $27-billion (about R220-billion) Three Gorges
dam project, likely to displace more than one million people, will
produce 18 000 megawatts of power by the time its 600km-long
reservoir is completed in 2009.

Collier proposed that a calculation of how many people would be
displaced compared to the amount of power produced be included in the
assessment of the impact a large-scale project would have on a
community.

"If we are talking about the poorest people in the world's poorest
countries, if a project is providing so little power and they are
being saddled with an enormous amount of debt, it is not worth it,"
Collier said.

"The bottom line is making sure that the poor benefit from the
projects that are having a major impact on where and how they live."
- Sapa-AFP

Ryan Hoover
Africa Program
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way
Berkeley, CA 94703
USA
Phone: (510) 848-1155 Fax: (510) 848-1008
www.irn.org