Environment
however. Several credible sources indicate that the projects
would have significant implications on the livelihoods
of 200,000 indigenous people in the Turkana area and
Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley, including the Mursi, Bodi,
Kwegu and Suri communities.
water-consuming sugarcane plantations. “In light of
this”, Yared was quoted as saying, “UNESCO’s future
negotiations with the government should primarily focus
on the sugarcane plantations instead of the reduction of
the size of the hydro-dam.”
Since its (Gibe III Dam) inception in 2006, international
human rights groups have repeatedly accused the Ethiopian
government of driving indigenous minority ethnic groups
out of the Lower Omo Valley and endangering the Turkana
community.
Three years ago, Human Rights Watch warned that the
Ethiopian government is “forcibly displacing indigenous
pastoral communities in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley
without adequate consultation or compensation to make
way for state-run sugar plantations” in a process that has
come to be known as “villagisation”.
Ethiopia’s water-intensive commercial plantations on the
Omo River could reduce the river’s flow to Lake Turkana
by up to 70 percent, The Guardian newspaper reported.
Lake Turkana is home to at least 60 fish species and sustains
several sea and wild animals, the main source of livelihood
for the Turkana community. Commercial plantations may
also pollute the water with chemicals and nitrogen run-off.
Fears are growing that the dam will result in resource
depletion thereby leading to conflict among various
communities in the already fragile Turkana ecosystem.
According to a recent report by the UK-based Sustainable
Food Trust, “large-scale crop irrigation in dry regions
causes water depletion and soil salination.”
“This place will turn into an endless, uncontrollable
battlefield,” Joseph Atach, assistant chief at Kanamkuny
village in Turkana, told The Guardian. Reduction in fishery
stocks would have “massive impacts for the 200,000 people
who rely on the lake for their livelihoods,” said Felix Horne,
Human Rights Watch researcher for Ethiopia, thereby
leaving them in precarious situations.
The Gibe III hydroelectric plant is also expected to irrigate
the state-owned Kuraz Sugarcane Scheme and other foreign
commercial large-scale cotton, rice and palm oil farms
appropriated through massive land enclosures.
According to information from UNESCO, the Kuraz
Sugarcane Scheme could “deprive Lake Turkana of 50
percent of its water inflow” thereby resulting in an estimated
lowering of the lake level by 20 metres and a recession of
the northern shoreline by as much as 40 km.
Horne estimated that “between 20 and 52 percent of the
water in the Omo River may never reach Lake Turkana
depending on the irrigation technology used.”
Horne downplayed the significance of UNESCO’s planned
assessment, saying that most credible sources indicate that
the filling of the dam’s artificial lake combined with the
reduction from downstream water flows caused by planned
irrigated agriculture will greatly reduce the water going into
the lake.
Yared Hailemariam, a Belgium-based former Ethiopian
opposition politician and human rights activist, concurred.
The main threat to Lake Turkana, he said, was the planned
14
Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene • July - August 2015
Asked about the government’s methods of evicting
indigenous communities from their ancestral homes,
Horne said that “direct force seen in the early days of the
relocation programme has been replaced by the threat of
force, along with incentives, including access to food aid if
individuals move into the new villages.”
Meanwhile, the Kenyan government’s stance has come
under scrutiny. Horne and Argaw Ashine, an exiled
Ethiopian environmental journalist [