Inner land in Guyana consists of a 150 kilometre wide tropical rainforest, mostly untouched. However, the official perception since the ‘70s of mining as essential for “development”, and the opening of the country’s economy --with the subsequent promotion of the exploitation of natural resources, especially timber and minerals-- to face the increasing foreign debt and satisfy the conditions of the 1991 structural adjustment programme imposed by the IMF and the World Bank, have paved the way to transnational companies.
Bulletin articles
The spill of 5,500 barrels of oil at the Marañón River that occurred on October 3rd 2000 in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, at Urarinas and Parinari Districts in the Province of Loreto, constitutes an ecological disaster, whose consequences are still provoking damages to the environment and to the indigenous population of the area. The spill affected the Pacaya Samiria Reserve, which is the biggest protected area in the country. Responsible for both the accident and the present situation is the transnational Pluspetrol based in Argentina.
What follows are extracts from the findings of an environmental and social impact assessment of logging operations in the west coast of Manus province, carried out in 1997 and during January 2000, which details the impacts of logging.
When asked to name different causes of deforestation, few people will mention hydroelectric dams as being one of them. Even fewer will include them as a cause of human rights violations. However, dams constitute a major direct and indirect cause of forest loss and most of them have resulted in widespread human rights abuses.
The Sondu Miriu River is one of the six major rivers in the Lake Victoria basin, which drains 3,470 square kilometres in the western part of Kenya. The company responsible for managing all public power generation facilities in Kenya --KenGen-- is planning a dam project to be located about 400 kilometres from Nairobi. Water from the river will be diverted through a 7.2 kilometre long tunnel into a one million cubic meter reservoir and a 60 megawatt hydro power station.
For over five years plans have been discussed by the Namibian and Angolan governments to dam the Kunene river, which runs through both countries, and construct a hydroelectric power station somewhere south of the Angolan border. The proposals have been dogged by controversy and delays from the outset and have developed into a saga, which has rumbled on and on without ever seeming to reach closer to a conclusion.
The Ugandan government --backed by the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank, the US agency Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), and a number of European export credit agencies (ECAs)-- is promoting the construction of a huge dam which, if implemented, will destroy the living space of thousands of local dwellers together with the scenic beauty and historical sites at the Bujagali falls region on the Upper Nile River. Responsible for the construction of this U$S 530 million hydroelectric dam is US-based AES corporation.
The Bakun Dam project --the largest in Southeast Asia-- was originally planned by the Malaysian authorities in the early 1980s, abandoned in 1990, revived in 1993 and reshaped in 1997. The Bakun Hydroelectric Corporation is the owner and future operator of the dam. Lahmeyer International from Germany, Harza from the US and Dohg-Ah Construction and Industrial Co. from South Korea have been involved in the supervising of the works and the construction of the tunnel for the diversion of the waters.
The San Roque Dam is to be located on the lower Agno River of Pangasinan Province, in the Cordillera region of Luzon island in the Philippines. If built, San Roque would be the tallest dam --at 200 meters-- and largest private hydropower project in Asia, generating 345 megawatts of power. Electricity generated by the dam would be primarily used to power industrial activity and the burgeoning mining industry in northern Luzon. Preparation of the site began in 1998, and construction is slated for completion in 2004.
Over the past 30 years, activists have fought a long battle for institutions such as the World Bank to adopt social and environmental policies. However, these institutions are no longer the main source of public finance for ‘development’ projects in the South. Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) are now the largest public funders of large-scale infrastructure projects in southern countries, exceeding by far the infrastructure investments of multilateral development banks and bilateral aid agencies.
Vietnam's US $1 billion Yali Falls 720-megawatt hydroelectric dam, under construction for the past seven years -- with funding from the governments of Russia and Ukraine-- drains into the Se San river which runs through Cambodia to the Mekong. Before the dam-building began, no study was done of its environmental effect on Cambodia.
Forced resettlement of local people living in the area where dams are built usually results in human rights abuses. One of the most terrible examples is that of the Chixoy hydroelectric dam, which was built during the military dictatorship in Guatemala. The project resulted in the massacre of more than 400 Maya Achi people, mostly from the community of Río Negro, one of the villages to be flooded by the dam.