BLESSED AND CURSED RIVER

Israel has control over the headwaters of the Jordan River and holds the rights to use
the groundwater in the Jordan River Basin. The diversion of water from Jordan to new
wide-ranging cultivated fields in the Negev Desert has ruined Middle Jordan, and seriously
damaged the Dead Sea.

Palestinians in the West Bank have no access to the Jordan and are prohibited from drilling
new wells. In addition to having considerable water supply for irrigation, every Israeli
has about 341 liters per day of good quality water for urban and industrial uses, while each
Palestinian barely have access to 60 liters per day of poor-quality water for the same uses,
resulting in survival issues and serious health problems.

Text: Marisancho Menjón
Photography: Stefano Serra, Laurent Weyl and Dieter Telemans

FLOODING EDEN

The Pharaonic Project in the Southeast of Antolia, (GAP) planned by the Turkish government
since the 1960s, consists of the construction of 22 dams and 19 hydroelectric plants in the
Tigris valley, proclaimed as the base of development of the Kurdistan. However the Kurdish
people denounce the plan as a strategic plan to further disperse them and cause massive
displacement.

The Ilisu Dam, currently under construction, will be the second largest in the country.
Around 78,000 people would be displaced, mostly Kurds. The dam will flood 68 villages in
addition to the 10,000-year-old culturally significant city of Hasankeyf; create serious
ecological and socio-economic problems; and disrupt the flow of water downstream to Syria
and Iraq.

However, the international campaign against the Ilisu Dam continue to denounce the lack of
input from affected communities, failure of its proponents to consider other alternatives
and the serious social and cultural damage it would cause, such as the lack of an adequate
relocation plan and just compensation for the displaced people.

Texts: Anna Irving and Marisancho Menjón
Photography: Micah Garen/Four Corners Media and Christian Kaiser

THE COLLAPSE OF AN ARTERY

The livelihoods and cultures of the 60 million people living in the Lower Mekong Basin are intimately
connected with the river’s natural cycles. Boasting one of the world’s most diverse and productive
inland fisheries, the Mekong supplies its people with about 80% of their protein needs. Yet this
beautiful, dynamic and thriving river system is under threat.

The region’s governments and various foreign interests have plans to construct scores of hydropower dams
on the Mekong and its tributaries. Laos, in its bid to become “the battery of Southeast Asia,” hopes to
develop more than 30 dams on Mekong tributaries and four huge projects on the currently undammed mainstream
of the lower part of the river. Vietnam is building multiple-dam cascades on several Mekong tributaries,
and Cambodia is also hoping to build dams on tributaries and the mainstream. These dams, such as Pak Mun
(Thailand) and Theun Hinboun (Laos), would mean death by a thousand cuts to the river’s rich fisheries and
the people who depend upon them.

Text: Patrick McKully
Photography and captions: Francesca Casciarri and Eirik Linder Aspelund / CALIAS PHOTO

Half a million people live along the Lower Omo in remote southwestern Ethiopia and around Lake Turkana
in northern Kenya which receives the Omo’s waters. The crops, livestock and fisheries of at least eight
distinct indigenous communities in Ethiopia are supported by the river’s seasonal rise and fall, which
is currently being threatened by the construction of the massive Gibe 3 Dam.

The project’s US$1.7 billion construction contract was awarded without competition to the Italian
construction giant Salini, raising serious questions about the potential for corruption. In addition,
the rights of the communities of the Lower Omo Valley under both Ethiopian and international laws have
been abused, leaving their livelihoods and communities at great risk.

Without adequate mitigation, Gibe 3 Dam will diminish the quality of life for much of the population of
the Lower Omo and Lake Turkana, create hunger, poor health, and food aid dependence, and cause resource
conflicts and a general unraveling of the region’s social structure.

Text: Terri Hathaway
Photography: Brent Stirton

MONSTER DAM, MONSTER PROBLEMS

The Three Gorges Dam is the world’s ultimate pharaonic mega project. The project sets records
for the number of people displaced; at least 1.3 million, number of cities and towns flooded;
13 cities, 140 towns, 1,350 villages, and length of reservoir; more than 630 km (363 miles).

The situation is especially bad for displaced farmers: many of them have received just a
fraction of the compensation they were promised. Project opponents have been intimidated,
beaten up and imprisoned for demanding fair compensation. Massive landslides triggered by
the rising reservoir have killed hundreds and forced the evacuation of 70,000 people.

Scientists predict that by trapping nutrients in river sediments, the dam could reduce annual
fish catches in the East China Sea by 100 million tonnes. The submergence of hundreds of
factories, mines and waste dumps, and the presence of massive industrial and population
centres upstream, are turning the reservoir into a toxic soup of sewage.

In late 2007, the Chinese government admitted for the first time that the dam could cause
an environmental “catastrophe.” Yet, the Government continues to repress any criticisms
and demand of compensation for the affected population.

Text: Patrick McKully
Photograpy: Pierre Montavon and Steven Benson

SAVE THE NARMADA

The Narmada River, one of the most important rivers in India, is being seriously harmed
by the construction of dozens of dams. The most notorious of these dam projects, Sardar
Sarovar, is flooding tens of thousands of hectares of fertile land and forests and evicting
more than 200,000 people. Once deprived of their rights and traditional livelihoods, the
displaced are condemned to hunger, poverty, and debt and forced to move to resettlement
camps without decent drinking water, adequate farmland, or forests for collecting timber,
firewood and wild vegetables and medicines.

The farmers facing evictions and many outside supporters have led an epic struggle against
these dams under the banner of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA – Save the Narmada
Movement). The NBA has inspired many others worldwide who are fighting against dams and
other megaprojects that uproot communities and destroy the environment in the name of an
outdated, authoritarian concept of progress.

Sadly, many communities have lost the struggle to stay on their lands and are now fighting
against the callousness, incompetence and corruption of authorities who continue to deny
them adequate compensation, rehabilitation, dignity and justice.

Texts: Patrick McKully and Marisancho Menjón
Photography: Karin Robinson

NO MONEY, NO POWER

British colonial authorities evicted more than 57,000 Gwembe Tonga people in the 1950s to make way for
the Kariba Reservoir, one of the world’s largest. Eight villagers were shot and at least 32 wounded by
police during the poorly conceived and trauma-ridden effort to clear the Tonga from their lands.

Half a century after the dam was built, the Tonga remain mired in extreme poverty. Today, their remote
resettlement sites are marred by low and erratic rainfall, poor soils and tsetse fly infestations. Tonga
organizations are now pushing the Zimbabwean and Zambian governments and the World Bank to provide
reparations for decades of suffering.

The Kariba Dam, largely funded by the World Bank, was built mainly to provide electricity to copper mines
in present-day Zambia, and the growing industrial belt around the Zimbabwean capital, Harare. By contrast
the Gwembe Tonga, whose ancestors have been living along the Zambezi for at least several thousand years,
receive neither electricity from the dam’s huge hydropower plants nor water from the massive reservoir.

Text: Patrick McKully
Photography: Karin Retief

FAREWELL TO PARADISE

The hydroelectric dam Yacyretá, on the Paraná River, with its 5 km wall and 65 km of dikes, has meant
the flooding of 500 square kilometers and the forced displacement of more than 40,000 people. The vast
majority of these people are from the mythical Guaraní indigenous race, who as a result of this project
is today in the process of disintegration. The cost of the project escalated and multiplied by five and
6,000 million dollars were embezzled.

Affected people today denounce, both the miserable living conditions they are forced to endure, and the
violent aggressions they suffer at the hands of the paramilitary groups who forcibly evict them by burning
down their houses. They are fighting against the enlargement of the dam, which would mean the flooding of
a further 1,000 square km with 200,000 ha of crops, the displacement of 80,000 more people and the destruction
of the supposedly protected Iberá wetlands, internationally recognized for their ecological importance.

DESARRAIGO. Pawel Wiechetek

Texts: Marisancho Menjón and Pawel Wiechetek
Fotografía: Argeo Ameztoy, Mónica Giménez, Samuel Cossar-Gilbert and Juan Roa

In January 2010, the Mexican press reported that, due to financial problems, the La Parota Dam project
promoted by the Federal Commission of Electricity (CFE) was being cancelled. The CFE came to the area
seven years ago to work on the Papagayo River without the community’s permission. The project affected
five municipalities on the Guerrero coast. It destroyed 17,300 hectares of jungle, displaced 25,000
peasants in 39 communities, and seriously and indirectly affected another 75,000 downstream.

“There have been many sleepless nights of sit-ins, 11 of us went to jail and four were murdered… And all
to defend our land.” Besides building a dedicated local resistance, which today consists of 40 communities,
the La Parota movement has learned to combine judicial and political strategies, as well as to cultivate
national and international solidarity.

Today, the Council of Communal Lands and Communities Opposed to La Parota Dam (CECOP) states, “It is a
victory, not only for our fight but also for all the organizations that stood by us and our movement. But
we dare not let down our guard. Our struggle will continue until we hold in our hands the presidential
letter saying that La Parota has been cancelled permanently.”

Text: Rodolfo Galindo Chavez
Photography: Roberto Bear Guerra, Maribel Roldón, Karina Tejada and Gonzalo Perez/Frontera Images

DO WÂBURA,
GOODBYE RIVER

The Urrá I hydroelectric dam on the Sinu River submerged 7,400 hectares and displaced tens
of thousands of people, including the Embera-Katío indigenous communities. The dam has reduced
the fishing potential of the Sinu from 6,000 to 1,700 tons per year, harming the livelihoods
and nutrition of tens of thousands of people.

Several indigenous leaders who fought against the project were assassinated or forced into
internal exile. The Sinu River and the Embera-Katío are threatened by the construction of a
second and much larger dam. Fortunately in June 2009 the government rejected the environmental
license for this dam.

Texts: Conchita Guerra and Marisancho Menjón
Photography: Conchita Guerra