On December 17 the World Financial institution is ready to vote on financing the Rogun mega dam mission in Tajikistan. If the vote passes, it could make one of many wildest goals of the Tajik regime come true.
The $5bn Rogun mission has been in improvement because the mid-Seventies as an answer for the persistent power shortages within the nation. Since 2011, the financial institution has been encouraging it by research and assessments.
Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has stated the mission is a query of “life or loss of life”. The mission might certainly have huge 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 latest report “Financing Repression”, co-published by the Coalition for Human Rights in Improvement, the Early Warning System and Worldwide Accountability Venture, in Tajikistan’s context, the issues of the affected communities danger remaining unheard as a result of folks worry protesting.
The World Financial institution, which has usually come below scrutiny for the harmful impacts of its tasks, over time has developed safeguard insurance policies to make sure civic engagement and participation for undertakings it funds. However how can the correct to participation be upheld in a rustic with such a restrictive civic house and within the context of a mission the place the navy might be concerned in offering “safety”?
The truth that solely worldwide organisations are publicly scrutinising the mission and elevating issues, sadly, doesn’t imply that native communities are usually not being adversely affected. Though lower than 25 % of the development work has been accomplished, greater than 7,000 folks have already been displaced. In keeping with 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 ample compensation.
Furthermore, the Rogun hydropower mission would have a devastating impression on downstream communities and ecosystems. It’s being constructed on the Vakhsh River, a serious tributary to the Amu Darya River which flows into Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Inside Tajikistan, the dam mission 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 might additionally have an effect on comparable nature reserves downstream, in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Underneath the present proposal, the filling of the Rogun reservoir would additionally severely change the water circulate 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 this planet, the Aral Sea has now nearly dried up on account 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 might gasoline protests and transboundary tensions in a area already liable to conflicts.
Regardless of apparent dangers posed by the operation of a brand new large reservoir, the preliminary impression evaluation denied vital modifications in downstream flows. And as downstream nations even have extremely restrictive contexts, there are severe doubts that any significant stakeholder engagement will be performed.
The Tajik regime’s argument that it is a “life and loss of life” state of affairs doesn’t stand. There are alternate options to the present mission that may present the wanted electrical energy and that might not have the identical environmental and human impacts.
Lowering the peak of the dam might massively scale back the variety of those that danger being displaced, and the funds saved by downscaling the mission might be used to construct extra environment friendly photo voltaic farms, thus diversifying the Tajik power sector and avoiding overreliance on hydropower in a area liable to droughts worsened by local weather change. A smaller mission might additionally forestall among 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 alternate options to any massive dam proposal ought to be severely thought-about from the beginning.
But, with the latest push for a fossil gasoline phaseout, massive dams have managed to get renewed help. Even though a few of them emit extra greenhouse gases than fossil gasoline energy crops, dams are being promoted as climate-friendly tasks 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 impression evaluation, together with for various proposals. Now it’s the time for the financial institution to replicate on previous errors, hearken to civil society, and shift investments to smaller-scale tasks the place attainable 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 creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
