Ethiopia's Hydroelectric Program - Boon or Folly?
24 October, 2011 | by John Daly (Oil Price)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
obdurate refusal to consider the potential environmental and political
impacts of its efforts to become the “energy hub” of East Africa have
generated rising concerns not only in Ethiopia but neighboring nations
depending on the country’s water flows.
Two projects have elicited local, regional and international concerns.
The first is the 1,870 megawatt $2.2 billion Gilgel Gibe III dam on the
Omo River, which threatens the unique ecology of Lake Turkana on
the Kenyan-Ethiopian border, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The second is the projected 5,000 megawatt $5 billion Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, formerly known as the Millennium Dam,
on the Blue Nile, which the Ethiopian government is pressing forward
despite rising concern in downstream states Sudan and Egypt about
the potential impact of the facilities on the lower Nile’s water flows.
In its rush to construction, in 2009 Addis Ababa issued an
environmental impact assessment (EIA) statement for Gilgel Gibe III
on the long-term consequences of the dams’ construction, but only two
years after construction began. The resultant report was regarded as
so flawed that the World Bank, European Investment Bank, and the
African Development Bank abandoned the project.
Ethiopia more recently has not even bothered to issue an EIA
evaluation report for the proposed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam,
despite the fact that such evaluations are critical for assessing the
potential impact of the hydroelectric cascades and remain an essential
element in securing international funding.
Italy’s Salini Costruttori was awarded no-bid contracts to build both
the Gilgel Gibe III and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and a
Chinese state-owned bank has approved funding for Gilgel Gibe III
despite the project being dogged by controversy from the outset. A
2009 independent feasibility study submitted to the African
Development Bank questioned the structural stability of the dam,
saying that the risk of a catastrophic failure was "not insignificant."
Last July the UN’s World Heritage Committee said that the Gilgel
Gibe III dam, Ethiopia’s largest investment project, would endanger
the existence of Lake Turkana, which receives up to 90 percent of its
water from the Omo River, by lowering its water level by up to sixty
feet, affecting more than 300,000 people downstream from the facility
as well as increasing salinity and wreaking havoc on the lake’s unique
flora and fauna. In 1997 the Omo River basin and Lake Turkana
received UNESCO World Heritage Site listings. The UN’s Committee
on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has also urged Ethiopia to
suspend the project, fearing its impact on local communities. Experts
fear that the the Gilgel Gibe III dam could suffer 50-75 percent
leakage of waters from its reservoir due to multiple fractures in the
basalt rock at the planned reservoir site and note that the area is also
seismically active. Nevertheless, the project is moving forward.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is brazening out public
criticism, promising to complete Gilgel Gibe III the facility "at any
cost," complaining that his critics "don’t want to see developed Africa;
they want us to remain undeveloped and backward to serve their
tourists as a museum." Upping the ante, three months ago Ethiopia
announced that it would build four additional dams on the Blue Nile
that will work in conjunction with the Gilgel Gibe III and Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam to generate more than 15,000 megawatts
of electricity and last month Ethiopia’s Ministry of Water and Energy
announced that Gilgel Gibe III facility is now 46 percent complete.
If Gilgel Gibe III threatens the Omo River and Lake Turkana and
Ethiopian and Kenyan water flows, it is the $5 billion Grand Ethiopian
Renaissance Dam, whose cornerstone was laid last March, that could
unsettle Ethiopia’s relations with its downstream neighbors down to the
Mediterranean, Egypt most of all.
Egypt relies on the Nile for most of its water supply and Ethiopia’s
Lake Tana is the source of the Blue Nile, which contributes 86 percent
of the water arriving at Egypt’s Aswan High Dam. The White Nile’s
main source is Lake Victoria, whose shoreline is shared by Uganda,
Tanzania and Kenya and which joins the Blue Nile south of Khartoum.
Nile water access issues are rooted in history, as 82 years ago Britain
as East Africa’s dominant colonial power effectively handed Egypt the
lion’s share of Nilotic waters in a 1929 accord. Under terms of the
agreement Egypt had and currently maintains its historic right to three-
quarters of the Nile’s water, 55.5 billion cubic meters that it annually
diverts of the Nile’s total flow of roughly 84 billion cubic meters.
Under the 1929 agreement Sudan, before South Sudan became
independent in July, was apportioned a further 11 percent of the Nile’s
waters, leaving the other littoral states to share the remainder. Under
terms of the accord Egypt has persistently vetoed neighboring
countries' rights to build dams or irrigation projects upstream which
might affect the river's flow.
In 1959, when Egypt and Sudan were independent but all Nile
upstream states except Ethiopia were still colonies, Egypt and Sudan
signed a bilateral convention that essentially reaffirmed the 1929
accord and left only 10 percent of the Nile's water to the seven
upstream countries, arguing that upstream nations had significant
rainfall, unlike Egypt or Sudan. Instability, poor governance, lack of
finances and the availability of other water sources left the issue largely
dormant until the 1990s, when Nilotic governments seriously started to
consider using their Nile Basin waters to generate energy and irrigate
crops.
In the 1999 Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) emerged as a basin-wide
program between Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania,
Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo to modify
the terms of the 1929 agreement, but it has thus far failed to achieve
any significant progress.
Given the lack of NBI progress, on 14 May 2010 Ethiopia, Tanzania,
Uganda, and Rwanda signed a new water-sharing proposal, the "River
Nile Basin Cooperative Framework," also known as the Entebbe
Agreement, which both Egypt and Sudan rejected. Until recently Cairo
continued to demand a veto power over any projects implemented
upstream in southern Nile nations and pushed international donors such
as the World Bank, NBI’s main fiscal backer, to cut funding to the
renegade Entebbe Agreement signatories.
As an indication of how seriously the Egyptian government took the
Entebbe Agreement, the same month that it was signed responsibility
for the Nile basin dispute was removed from Egypt’s Water and
Foreign Affairs Ministries and given to Egypt's intelligence and security
chief Omar Suleiman, who in February handed over power to the
military after Mubarak resigned. Scrambling to utilize its Nilotic waters
more efficiently, Egypt has succeeded over the last several decades in
increasing its arable land by 25 percent only through extensive and
expensive canal systems and increasing use of expensive imported
fertilizers, which any diminution of flow would threaten.
As for Egyptian concerns about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
diverting downstream flows, they are well aware of such issues, as it
took 12 years beginning in 1964 to fill the Aswan High Dam’s Lake
Nasser reservoir with 11 cubic kilometers of waters, which now drive
12 turbines generating 2,100 megawatts, less than half the power
output of the proposed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
Far from addressing Egyptian environmental concerns, the Ethiopian
government has not even bothered to issue an EIA for the Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which some hydrological specialists
predict that in filling its reservoir will cause a 25 percent annual
reduction in river flow to Egypt, as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance
Dam reservoir’s volume would be about equivalent to the annual flow
of the Nile at the Sudanese-Egyptian border, roughly 65.5 billion cubic
meters.
The “Arab Spring” that overthrew the regime of Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak in February has resulted in Egypt’s interim government
showing new signs of flexibility on Nile water issues. Last month
Egyptian Interim Prime Minister Essam Sharaf met with Zenawi in
Cairo and agreed to set up a technical team to study the impact of the
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam while Zernawi, on an obvious
charm offensive to secure international financial backing, agreed to host
Egyptian and Sudanese officials to prove that the Grand Ethiopian
Renaissance Dam will not be used to irrigate any of the large corporate
farms the Ethiopian government has leased to foreign investors in
recent years, but instead be used solely to generate electricity, adding
that his government will delay ratifying the 2010 Entebbe Agreement.
Several months ago Ethiopia said it would be forced to finance the
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam itself and from the sale of
government bonds because Egypt was pressuring donor countries and
international lenders not to fund its dam projects.
And both structures are largely about electricity exports. If completed,
Gilgel Gibe III alone will double Ethiopia’s hydroelectric total installed
capacity from its 2007 level of 814 megawatts. In April Zenawi
announced that Ethiopia plans to produce as much as 8,000
megawatts of additional electricity from hydropower sources by 2016
as various projects come online.
While Ethiopia reportedly has "initial agreements" to export electricity
to Sudan, Dijibouti, and Kenya, critics of the hydroelectric projects
emphasize that the majority of Africans are not connected to the power
grid, and that Ethiopia will be generating far more electricity than it or
its neighbors can currently utilize.
The projected future environmental water stresses of the Nile basin’s
population make for grim reading. Washington DC’s Population
Reference Bureau has developed some unsettling statistics for
countries along the Nile, estimating that Egypt's population of 80
million is expected to reach 122 million by 2050. During the same
period Ethiopia’s 83 million population will soar to 150 million and in
Uganda, with one of the highest birthrates in the world, the population
is expected to more than triple from its current level of 32 million to 97
million.
While East Africa’s efforts to improve their standards of living with
increased electricity resources, it is questionable whether a massive
commitment to hydroelectric power is the only option. The surging
demographics of the region combined with the potential environmental
impacts of massive hydroelectric projects along the world’s longest
river, combined with Ethiopia’s refusal to provide EIAs should give all
international investors pause before underwriting such massive
undertakings. The waters of the Nile are finite and will soon support a
population greater than the United States, and water diversions for
such projects can only increase national and regional tensions.
It is good that Egypt is now willing to talk, but even more important
that Ethiopia be willing to listen. If the international community wishes
to support Ethiopia’s efforts to become East Africa’s energy “hub,”
then it should request transparency about the environmental
consequences of such extravagant hydrological projects and their
impact not only in Ethiopia but their neighbors along the shared river
basins which geography has bequeathed them.
Courtesy
24 October, 2011 | by John Daly (Oil Price)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Developing countries
worldwide view the
construction of power facilities
as integral to their economic
development to lift their
populations out of poverty.
Ethiopia has now embarked
on massive hydroelectric
schemes currently involving the
obdurate refusal to consider the potential environmental and political
impacts of its efforts to become the “energy hub” of East Africa have
generated rising concerns not only in Ethiopia but neighboring nations
depending on the country’s water flows.
Two projects have elicited local, regional and international concerns.
The first is the 1,870 megawatt $2.2 billion Gilgel Gibe III dam on the
Omo River, which threatens the unique ecology of Lake Turkana on
the Kenyan-Ethiopian border, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The second is the projected 5,000 megawatt $5 billion Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, formerly known as the Millennium Dam,
on the Blue Nile, which the Ethiopian government is pressing forward
despite rising concern in downstream states Sudan and Egypt about
the potential impact of the facilities on the lower Nile’s water flows.
In its rush to construction, in 2009 Addis Ababa issued an
environmental impact assessment (EIA) statement for Gilgel Gibe III
on the long-term consequences of the dams’ construction, but only two
years after construction began. The resultant report was regarded as
so flawed that the World Bank, European Investment Bank, and the
African Development Bank abandoned the project.
Ethiopia more recently has not even bothered to issue an EIA
evaluation report for the proposed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam,
despite the fact that such evaluations are critical for assessing the
potential impact of the hydroelectric cascades and remain an essential
element in securing international funding.
Italy’s Salini Costruttori was awarded no-bid contracts to build both
the Gilgel Gibe III and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and a
Chinese state-owned bank has approved funding for Gilgel Gibe III
despite the project being dogged by controversy from the outset. A
2009 independent feasibility study submitted to the African
Development Bank questioned the structural stability of the dam,
saying that the risk of a catastrophic failure was "not insignificant."
Last July the UN’s World Heritage Committee said that the Gilgel
Gibe III dam, Ethiopia’s largest investment project, would endanger
the existence of Lake Turkana, which receives up to 90 percent of its
water from the Omo River, by lowering its water level by up to sixty
feet, affecting more than 300,000 people downstream from the facility
as well as increasing salinity and wreaking havoc on the lake’s unique
flora and fauna. In 1997 the Omo River basin and Lake Turkana
received UNESCO World Heritage Site listings. The UN’s Committee
on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has also urged Ethiopia to
suspend the project, fearing its impact on local communities. Experts
fear that the the Gilgel Gibe III dam could suffer 50-75 percent
leakage of waters from its reservoir due to multiple fractures in the
basalt rock at the planned reservoir site and note that the area is also
seismically active. Nevertheless, the project is moving forward.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is brazening out public
criticism, promising to complete Gilgel Gibe III the facility "at any
cost," complaining that his critics "don’t want to see developed Africa;
they want us to remain undeveloped and backward to serve their
tourists as a museum." Upping the ante, three months ago Ethiopia
announced that it would build four additional dams on the Blue Nile
that will work in conjunction with the Gilgel Gibe III and Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam to generate more than 15,000 megawatts
of electricity and last month Ethiopia’s Ministry of Water and Energy
announced that Gilgel Gibe III facility is now 46 percent complete.
If Gilgel Gibe III threatens the Omo River and Lake Turkana and
Ethiopian and Kenyan water flows, it is the $5 billion Grand Ethiopian
Renaissance Dam, whose cornerstone was laid last March, that could
unsettle Ethiopia’s relations with its downstream neighbors down to the
Mediterranean, Egypt most of all.
Egypt relies on the Nile for most of its water supply and Ethiopia’s
Lake Tana is the source of the Blue Nile, which contributes 86 percent
of the water arriving at Egypt’s Aswan High Dam. The White Nile’s
main source is Lake Victoria, whose shoreline is shared by Uganda,
Tanzania and Kenya and which joins the Blue Nile south of Khartoum.
Nile water access issues are rooted in history, as 82 years ago Britain
as East Africa’s dominant colonial power effectively handed Egypt the
lion’s share of Nilotic waters in a 1929 accord. Under terms of the
agreement Egypt had and currently maintains its historic right to three-
quarters of the Nile’s water, 55.5 billion cubic meters that it annually
diverts of the Nile’s total flow of roughly 84 billion cubic meters.
Under the 1929 agreement Sudan, before South Sudan became
independent in July, was apportioned a further 11 percent of the Nile’s
waters, leaving the other littoral states to share the remainder. Under
terms of the accord Egypt has persistently vetoed neighboring
countries' rights to build dams or irrigation projects upstream which
might affect the river's flow.
In 1959, when Egypt and Sudan were independent but all Nile
upstream states except Ethiopia were still colonies, Egypt and Sudan
signed a bilateral convention that essentially reaffirmed the 1929
accord and left only 10 percent of the Nile's water to the seven
upstream countries, arguing that upstream nations had significant
rainfall, unlike Egypt or Sudan. Instability, poor governance, lack of
finances and the availability of other water sources left the issue largely
dormant until the 1990s, when Nilotic governments seriously started to
consider using their Nile Basin waters to generate energy and irrigate
crops.
In the 1999 Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) emerged as a basin-wide
program between Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania,
Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo to modify
the terms of the 1929 agreement, but it has thus far failed to achieve
any significant progress.
Given the lack of NBI progress, on 14 May 2010 Ethiopia, Tanzania,
Uganda, and Rwanda signed a new water-sharing proposal, the "River
Nile Basin Cooperative Framework," also known as the Entebbe
Agreement, which both Egypt and Sudan rejected. Until recently Cairo
continued to demand a veto power over any projects implemented
upstream in southern Nile nations and pushed international donors such
as the World Bank, NBI’s main fiscal backer, to cut funding to the
renegade Entebbe Agreement signatories.
As an indication of how seriously the Egyptian government took the
Entebbe Agreement, the same month that it was signed responsibility
for the Nile basin dispute was removed from Egypt’s Water and
Foreign Affairs Ministries and given to Egypt's intelligence and security
chief Omar Suleiman, who in February handed over power to the
military after Mubarak resigned. Scrambling to utilize its Nilotic waters
more efficiently, Egypt has succeeded over the last several decades in
increasing its arable land by 25 percent only through extensive and
expensive canal systems and increasing use of expensive imported
fertilizers, which any diminution of flow would threaten.
As for Egyptian concerns about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
diverting downstream flows, they are well aware of such issues, as it
took 12 years beginning in 1964 to fill the Aswan High Dam’s Lake
Nasser reservoir with 11 cubic kilometers of waters, which now drive
12 turbines generating 2,100 megawatts, less than half the power
output of the proposed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
Far from addressing Egyptian environmental concerns, the Ethiopian
government has not even bothered to issue an EIA for the Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which some hydrological specialists
predict that in filling its reservoir will cause a 25 percent annual
reduction in river flow to Egypt, as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance
Dam reservoir’s volume would be about equivalent to the annual flow
of the Nile at the Sudanese-Egyptian border, roughly 65.5 billion cubic
meters.
The “Arab Spring” that overthrew the regime of Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak in February has resulted in Egypt’s interim government
showing new signs of flexibility on Nile water issues. Last month
Egyptian Interim Prime Minister Essam Sharaf met with Zenawi in
Cairo and agreed to set up a technical team to study the impact of the
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam while Zernawi, on an obvious
charm offensive to secure international financial backing, agreed to host
Egyptian and Sudanese officials to prove that the Grand Ethiopian
Renaissance Dam will not be used to irrigate any of the large corporate
farms the Ethiopian government has leased to foreign investors in
recent years, but instead be used solely to generate electricity, adding
that his government will delay ratifying the 2010 Entebbe Agreement.
Several months ago Ethiopia said it would be forced to finance the
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam itself and from the sale of
government bonds because Egypt was pressuring donor countries and
international lenders not to fund its dam projects.
And both structures are largely about electricity exports. If completed,
Gilgel Gibe III alone will double Ethiopia’s hydroelectric total installed
capacity from its 2007 level of 814 megawatts. In April Zenawi
announced that Ethiopia plans to produce as much as 8,000
megawatts of additional electricity from hydropower sources by 2016
as various projects come online.
While Ethiopia reportedly has "initial agreements" to export electricity
to Sudan, Dijibouti, and Kenya, critics of the hydroelectric projects
emphasize that the majority of Africans are not connected to the power
grid, and that Ethiopia will be generating far more electricity than it or
its neighbors can currently utilize.
The projected future environmental water stresses of the Nile basin’s
population make for grim reading. Washington DC’s Population
Reference Bureau has developed some unsettling statistics for
countries along the Nile, estimating that Egypt's population of 80
million is expected to reach 122 million by 2050. During the same
period Ethiopia’s 83 million population will soar to 150 million and in
Uganda, with one of the highest birthrates in the world, the population
is expected to more than triple from its current level of 32 million to 97
million.
While East Africa’s efforts to improve their standards of living with
increased electricity resources, it is questionable whether a massive
commitment to hydroelectric power is the only option. The surging
demographics of the region combined with the potential environmental
impacts of massive hydroelectric projects along the world’s longest
river, combined with Ethiopia’s refusal to provide EIAs should give all
international investors pause before underwriting such massive
undertakings. The waters of the Nile are finite and will soon support a
population greater than the United States, and water diversions for
such projects can only increase national and regional tensions.
It is good that Egypt is now willing to talk, but even more important
that Ethiopia be willing to listen. If the international community wishes
to support Ethiopia’s efforts to become East Africa’s energy “hub,”
then it should request transparency about the environmental
consequences of such extravagant hydrological projects and their
impact not only in Ethiopia but their neighbors along the shared river
basins which geography has bequeathed them.
Courtesy
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