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The Gilgel Gibe III Dam is an under construction 243 m high roller-compacted concrete dam with an associated hydroelectric power plant on the Omo river in Ethiopia. Once completed it would be the largest hydroelectric plant in Africa with a power output of about 1870 Megawatt (MW), thus more than doubling total installed capacity in Ethiopia from its 2007 level of 814 MW.[1][2] The Gibe III dam would be part of the Gibe cascade, a series of dams including the existing Gibe I dam (184 MW) and Gibe II power station (420 MW) as well as the planned Gibe IV (1472 MW) and Gibe V (560 MW) dams. The existing dams are owned and operated by the state-owned Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation, which is also the client for the Gibe III Hydroelectric dam.
As of February 2011, according to the project company the project was 41% completed and the completion of the dam was tentatively scheduled for July 2013. Full commissioning is scheduled for June 2013 after the reservoir will have filled and the hydroelectric plant will have been completed.[1] Local and international environmental groups expect major negative environmental and social impacts of the dam and have criticized the project's environmental and social impact assessment as insufficient. Because of this and accusations that the entire approval process for the project was suspect,[3] funding for the full construction cost has not yet been secured, as the African Development Bank has delayed a decision about a loan pending a review of the dam's environmental impact by its compliance review and mediation unit which in August 2009 accepted a call from NGOs for such a review.[4]
In August 2010 Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi vowed to complete the dam "at any cost", saying about critics of the dam that "They don’t want to see developed Africa; they want us to remain undeveloped and backward to serve their tourists as a museum."[5]
According to the Ethiopian authorities, once the dam has been built the total amount of water flowing into the lake will not change. The only difference would be a more stable flow over the year - more during the dry season, and less during the wet. Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said in a BBC interview: "The overall environmental impact of the project is highly beneficial. It increases the amount of water in the river system, it completely regulates flooding, which was a major problem, it improves the livelihood of people downstream because they will have irrigation projects, and it does not in any way negatively affect the Turkana Lake. This is what our studies show."[22]
According to critics, the dam will be potentially devastating to the indigenous population.[19] The dam will stop the seasonal flood, which will impact the lower reach of the Omo River and Lake Turkana as well as the people who rely on these ecosystems for their livelihoods. According to Terri Hathaway, director of International Rivers' Africa programme, Gibe III is "the most destructive dam under construction in Africa." The project would condemn "half a million of the region's most vulnerable people to hunger and conflict."[23]
There are also reports about human rights violations by the Ethiopian army against locals who oppose the sugar plantations in the lower Omo Valley that would be irrigated with water from the dam's reservoir. According to the reports, "villagers are expected to voice immediate support, otherwise beatings (including the use of tasers), abuse, and general intimidation occurs", (...) "instilling a sense of fear regarding any opposition to sugar plantation plans."
The decreased water flow of the Omo River resulting from the Gibe III dam will have significant impacts on the ecosystems surrounding the river. The Omo River Basin is home to the only pristine riparian forest remaining in the drylands of sub-Saharan Africa. The survival of this forest is dependent upon the seasonal flooding of the Omo River, which will cease with construction of the dam. This may cause 290 km2 of forest to "dry out" from lack of water. The decreased water flow will also negatively impact, if not eliminate, all economic activities associated with the Omo River such as farming, fishing, and tourism. The water level of the Omo River is crucial for recharging groundwater supplies in the Omo basin.[19] If the water level of the river drops once the Gibe III dam is built, then it will no longer be able to refill underground water supplies, leaving much of the basin bereft of groundwater, which negatively impacts people and ecosystems. As the water level of the Omo River drops, the erosion of its riverbanks will increase, causing increased sediment flows in the river, loss of soil for crop cultivation along the riverbanks, and loss of riparian habitats.[19]
A December 2012 study stated Ethiopia's Gibe III dam would cause humanitarian catastrophe and major cross-border armed conflict.[26]
Construction of one of the world's tallest dams on the Omo River in southern Ethiopia will lead to mass starvation among a half million indigenous people in an already famine-prone region, sparking major armed conflict in the three-nation border region over its disappearing natural resources, according to a new report from the African Resources Working Group (ARWG).
"Humanitarian Catastrophe and Regional Armed Conflict Brewing in the Transborder Region of Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Sudan: The Proposed Gibe III Dam in Ethiopia" analyzes the full scale of impacts of the dam and charges that no environmental or social review of the full cross-border impact area has been carried out by the Ethiopian government or international development banks involved in the project, including the World Bank. It is authored by a member of the ARWG and long-term researcher in the region, Claudia J. Carr, an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The 250-page report is based on substantial field-based research involving the participation of local residents throughout much of the cross-border region.
The Gibe III dam is already under construction by Ethiopia along its Omo River, with general recognition that it will cause a major decrease in river flow downstream and a serious reduction of inflow to Kenya's Lake Turkana, which receives 90 per cent of its waters from the river. According to the ARWG report, these changes will destroy the survival means of at least 200,000 pastoralists, flood-dependent agriculturalists and fishers along the Omo River 300,000 pastoralists and fishers around the shores of Lake Turkana - plunging the region's ethnic groups into cross-border violent conflict reaching well into South Sudan, as starvation confronts all of them.
The report offers a devastating look a deeply flawed development process fueled by the special interests of global finance and African governments. In the process, it identifies major overlooked or otherwise minimized risks, not the least of which is a U.S. Geological Survey estimation of a high risk for a magnitude 7 or 8 earthquake in the Gibe III dam region.
Professor Carr in her new book [27] further examines how development processes driven by international finance, African governments and the global consulting industry can lead to such disastrous outcomes for the vast number of people affected by such development.
Design
The Gilgel Gibe III Dam will be a 610 m-long (2,000 ft) and 243 m (797 ft) high roller-compacted concrete dam. It will withhold a reservoir with a capacity of 14 km3 (3.4 cu mi) and a surface area of 210 km2 (81 sq mi), collecting with a catchment area of 34,150 km2 (13,190 sq mi). The reservoir's live (active or "useful") storage will be 11.75 km3 (2.82 cu mi) and dead storage 2.95 km3 (0.71 cu mi). The normal operating level of the reservoir will be 892 m (2,927 ft) above sea level with a maximum of 893 m (2,930 ft) and minimum of 800 m (2,600 ft). The dam's spillway will be 108 m (354 ft) long and floodgate-controlled with having a maximum discharge capacity of 18,000 m3/s (640,000 cu ft/s). Water above 873 m (2,864 ft) above sea level can be discharged through its gates. Feeding the dam's power house will be two penstocks that each branch into five separate tunnels for each individual turbine. The power house will contain ten 187 MW generators supported by Francis turbines for a total installed capacity of 1,870 MW.[6]
The initial design of the dam foresaw a rock-fill dam. However, due to difficulties with obtaining proper and sufficient insurance coverage for the rock-fill dam, the design has been changed to roller-compacted concrete. The rock-fill design has been criticized by an independent feasibility study submitted to the African Development Bank in 2009. In particular, the study questioned the structural stability of the dam, saying that the risk of a catastrophic failure was "not insignificant".[7]
The course will equip the learners with the knowledge required when conducting Transboundary Environmental impact assessment across countries and continents. At the end of the course the learners are required to write a report and also come up with an environmental management and monitoring plan for a sample project.