BY DR ALEX AWITI,
Three months ago in this column, I warned that the completion of
Ethiopia's Gibe III dam on the Omo River could transform Lake Turkana,
the world's only desert lake, into Africa's Aral Sea. Impassioned by
China-style great leap forward philosophy, the Ethiopian government has
pursued the development of the Gibe III dam in total disregard to the
consequence associated with it.
The Ethiopian government and
multilateral donor institutions present the Gibe III dam project as
critical to national and regional energy security and contributing to
poverty alleviation. A new report from the African Resource Working
Group (ARWG) reveals that the completion of the Gibe III dam on the Omo
River will touch off socio-economic, political and ecological collapse
in the tri-state border region of the Great Horn of Africa.
According to the ARWG report, a major review by the African Development
Bank of the hydrological impacts of the Gibe III dam on Lake Turkana
omitted any assessment of the dependence of the livelihoods of local
communities on the lake's resources. Moreover, the assessment by the
Ethiopian government shows no regard for Kenya's sovereignty over Lake
Turkana's northern shoreline zone and a significant portion of the Omo
Delta.
The author of the report, Claudia J. Carr, associate
professor at University of California at Berkeley, argues that no
credible assessments of the environmental and social cross-border
impacts of the dam have been conducted. The report charges that the
assessments of the dam's impact were fragmentary and riddled with major
omissions, inaccuracies and even fabrications.
For instance,
the Ethiopian government and the dam proponents suggest that a 60-70%
drop in inflows would only cause a 2m-drop in lake levels. The report
suggests that the Ethiopian government, international development banks
and global commercial investors have operated with the precondition
despite glaringly inadequate appraisal of the impacts of Gibe III
mega-dam project.
The Gibe III reservoir would be 150 km long,
in a narrow gorge with covering an area of 211 square kilometers, with a
storage volume of 11,750 million cubic meters; an amount equal to about
two years of the Omo River's flow causing a 60-70% reduction in the
volume of the Omo River, which contributes 90% of inflow into Lake
Turkana. This will reduce Lake Turkana's volume by 58%, lower the lake
level by10-22m while doubling its salinity and putting nearly 500,000
pastoralists and fisher folk at the risk of famine and conflict.