Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2014 23:49:32 +0100
<http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/02/18/ethiopia-land-water-grabs-devastate-comm
unities> Ethiopia: Land, Water Grabs Devastate Communities
Satellite Images Show Devastating Toll on 500,000 Pastoralists
Ethiopia can develop its land and resources but it shouldn't run roughshod
over the rights of its indigenous communities. The people who rely on the
land for their livelihoods have the right to compensation and the right to
reject plans that will completely transform their lives.
Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director
February 20, 2014
(Nairobi) - <http://www.hrw.org/node/123131> New satellite imagery shows
extensive clearance of land used by indigenous groups to make way for
state-run sugar plantations in <http://www.hrw.org/africa/ethiopia>
Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley, Human Rights Watch and International Rivers
said today. Virtually all of the traditional lands of the 7,000-member Bodi
indigenous group have been cleared in the last 15 months, without adequate
consultation or compensation. Human Rights Watch has also documented the
<http://www.hrw.org/reports/2012/06/18/what-will-happen-if-hunger-comes-0>
forced resettlement of some indigenous people in the area.
The land clearing is part of a broader Ethiopian government development
scheme in the Omo Valley, a United National Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site, including dam
construction, sugar plantations, and commercial agriculture. The project
will consume the vast majority of the water in the Omo River basin,
potentially devastating the livelihoods of the 500,000 indigenous people in
Ethiopia and neighboring Kenya who directly or indirectly rely on the Omo's
waters for their livelihoods.
"Ethiopia can develop its land and resources but it shouldn't run roughshod
over the rights of its indigenous communities," said
<http://www.hrw.org/bios/leslie-lefkow> Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa
director at Human Rights Watch. "The people who rely on the land for their
livelihoods have the right to compensation and the right to reject plans
that will completely transform their lives."
A prerequisite to the government's development plans for the Lower Omo
Valley is the relocation of 150,000 indigenous people who live in the
vicinity of the sugar plantations into permanent sedentary villages under
the government's deeply unpopular "villagization" program. Under this
program, people are to be moved into sedentary villages and provided with
schools, clinics, and other infrastructure. As has been seen in other parts
of Ethiopia, these movements are not all voluntary.
Satellite images analyzed by Human Rights Watch show devastating changes to
the Lower Omo Valley between November 2010 and January 2013, with large
areas originally used for grazing cleared of all vegetation and new roads
and irrigation canals crisscrossing the valley. Lands critical for the
livelihoods of the agro-pastoralist Bodi and Mursi peoples have been cleared
for the sugar plantations. These changes are happening without their consent
or compensation, local people told Human Rights Watch. Governments have a
duty to consult and cooperate with indigenous people to obtain their free
and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their
lands or territories and other resources.
The imagery also shows the impact of a rudimentary dam built in July 2012
that diverted the waters of the Omo River into the sugar plantations. Water
rapidly built up behind the shoddily built mud structure before breaking it
twice. The reservoir created behind the dam forced approximately 200 Bodi
families to flee to high ground, leaving behind their crops and their homes.
In a
<http://www.hrw.org/reports/2012/06/18/what-will-happen-if-hunger-comes-0>
2012 report Human Rights Watchwarned of the risk to livelihoods and
potential for increased conflict and food insecurity if the government
continued to clear the land. The report also documented how government
security forces used violence and intimidation to make communities in the
Lower Omo Valley relocate from their traditional lands, threatening their
entire way of life with no compensation or choice of alternative
livelihoods.
The development in the Lower Omo Valley depends on the construction upstream
of a much larger hydropower dam - the Gibe III, which will regulate river
flows to support year-round commercial agriculture.
A <http://www.internationalrivers.org/node/8199> new film produced by
International Rivers, "A Cascade of Development on the Omo River," reveals
how and why the Gibe III will cause hydrological havoc on both sides of the
Kenya-Ethiopia border. Most significantly, the changes in river flow caused
by the dam and associated irrigated plantations could cause a huge drop in
the water levels of Lake Turkana, the world's largest desert lake and
another UNESCO World Heritage site.
Lake Turkana receives 90 percent of its water from the Omo River and is
projected to drop by about two meters during the initial filling of the dam,
which is estimated to begin around May 2014. If current plans to create new
plantations continue to move forward, the lake could drop as much as 16 to
22 meters. The average depth of the lake is just 31 meters.
The river flow past the Gibe III will be almost completely blocked beginning
in 2014. According to government documents, it will take up to three years
to fill the reservoir, during which the Omo River's annual flow could drop
by as much as 70 percent. After this initial shock, regular dam operations
will further devastate ecosystems and local livelihoods. Changes to the
river's flooding regime will harm agricultural yields, prevent the
replenishment of important grazing areas, and reduce fish populations, all
critical resources for livelihoods of certain indigenous groups.
The government of Ethiopia should halt development of the sugar plantations
and the water offtakes until affected indigenous communities have been
properly consulted and give their free, prior, and informed consent to the
developments, Human Rights Watch and International Rivers said. The impact
of all planned developments in the Omo/Turkana basin on indigenous people's
livelihoods should be assessed through a transparent, independent impact
assessment process.
"If Ethiopia continues to bulldoze ahead with these developments, it will
devastate the livelihoods of half a million people who depend on the Omo
River," said Lori Pottinger, head of International Rivers' Ethiopia program.
"It doesn't have to be this way - Ethiopia has options for managing this
river more sustainably, and pursuing developments that won't harm the people
who call this watershed home."
Background
Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley is one of the most isolated and underdeveloped
areas in East Africa. At least eight different groups call the Omo River
Valley home and the livelihood of each of these groups is intimately tied to
the Omo River and the surrounding lands. Many of the indigenous people that
inhabit the valley are agro-pastoralist, growing crops along the Omo River
and grazing cattle.
In 2010, Ethiopia announced plans for the construction of Africa's tallest
dam, the 1,870 megawatt Gibe III dam on the Omo River. Controversy has
dogged the Gibe III dam ever since. Of all the major funders who considered
the dam, only China's Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC)
provided financing (the World Bank, African Development Bank, and European
Investment Bank all declined to fund it, though the World Bank and African
Development Bank have
<http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/07/11/world-bank-power-project-threatens-indig
enous-peoples> financed related power lines).
The Ethiopian government announced even more ambitious plans for the region
in 2011, including the development of at least 245,000 hectares of irrigated
state-run sugar plantations. Downstream, the water-intensive sugar
plantations, will depend on irrigation canals. Although there have been some
independent assessments of the Gibe dam project and its impact on river flow
and Lake Turkana, to date the Ethiopian government has not published any
<http://www.hrw.org/topic/environment> environmental or social impact
assessments for the sugar plantations and other commercial agricultural
developments in the Omo valley.
According to the
<http://4246-multimedia-hrw-org.voxcdn.com/features/omo_2014/docs/villagizat
ion.pdf> regional government plan for villagization in Lower Omo, the World
Bank-supported Pastoral Community Development Project (PCDP) is funding some
of the infrastructure in the new villages. Despite concerns over human
rights abuses associated with the villagization program that were
communicated to Bank management, in December 2013 the World Bank Board
approved funding of the third phase of the PCDP III. PCDP III ostensibly
provides much-needed services to pastoral communities throughout Ethiopia,
but according to government documents PCDP also pays for infrastructure
being used in the sedentary villages that pastoralists are being moved to.
The United States Congress in January included language in the 2014
Appropriations Act that puts conditions on US development assistance in the
Lower Omo Valley requiring that there should be consultation with local
communities; that the assistance "supports initiatives of local communities
to improve their livelihoods"; and that no activities should be supported
that directly or indirectly involve forced evictions.
However other donors have not publicly raised concerns about Ethiopia's
Lower Omo development plans. Justine Greening, the British Secretary of
State for International Development, in 2012 stated that her Department for
International Development (DFID) was not able to "substantiate the human
rights concerns" in the Lower Omo Valley despite DFID officials hearing
these concerns directly from impacted communities in January 2012.
*
<http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media/images/photographs/2007AFR_Eth
iopia_OmoSugarPlantations.jpg>
http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/scale-300x/media/images/ph
otographs/2007AFR_Ethiopia_OmoSugarPlantations.jpg
<http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media/images/photographs/2007AFR_Eth
iopia_OmoSugarPlantations.jpg> Enlarge
Dassanech ("What will happen when hunger comes?")
C 2007 Brent Stirton/Reportage for Getty Images
*
http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/crop-300x200/media/images/
photographs/2007_Ethiopia_SouthOmo.jpg
<http://www.hrw.org/features/omo-sugar-plantations> Special Feature: Omo
Sugar Plantations in Photos, Satellite Images >>
(image/jpeg attachment: image001.jpg)
(image/jpeg attachment: image002.jpg)