GERD: Impacts on local communities

 

Despite the major positives of the GERD, such as it drastically increasing power output for Ethiopia and much of East Africa, the construction of a large scale dam is not without consequences. In this blog I would like to carry on from last week by addressing some of the negative impacts, but this time I will focus on the local communities which are often overlooked in media coverage of such huge, internationally important projects. 

Local impacts in Ethiopia

The development of the project has been very secretive, using a top down financial and authorisation approach (International Rivers, 2014). The general public was not consulted or given a voice due to the elitist and exclusionary decision making. People were not properly informed of the consequences of the project.  There was no opportunity to express their wishes or concerns, even for those who were directly affected (International Rivers, 2014). The political climate in Ethiopia also prevents people from speaking out; Reyoot Alemu is an Ethiopian journalist who voiced questions about the dam in 2011 and was subsequently imprisoned (arcgis.com, 2020). Furthermore, staff from an NGO called ‘International Rivers’ received death threats for raising some issues about the dam (arcgis.com, 2020).

Figure 2: The size of the GERD reservoir

Source: waterpolitics, 2020

The reservoir created behind the dam will flood 1,680 km2 of land in northwest Ethiopia, shown in Figure 2 (International Rivers, 2014). To put this in context for you readers, this is an area about 4 times the size of Cairo, the capital city of Egypt. This is a huge area and you might be thinking, surely there must have been people living here? If this did cross your mind then you would be correct. Some of the key social and economic impacts for local communities include:

• Displacement - loss of home, land and possessions. At least 20,000 people have been displaced, including thousands from the indigenous people of Gumuz and Berta who have been forced to relocate and alter their lifestyle (Vaughan, 2020)
• Resettlement - loss of community as will not all be resettled together 
• Poor crop production - reduced water quality and quantity for downstream communities will reduce crop production. These crops are often the main food supply for such communities (The Ethiopian Renaissance Dam)
• Health risks -  ecological changes, especially when they are as extreme as in this case, will cause increased parasitic diseases (The Ethiopian Renaissance Dam). This can cause serious health issues when the medical resources needed are not available. This is the case for the Gumuz and Berta indigenous peoples who do not have access to proper healthcare (Vaughan, 2020).
• Drastic changes to the environment will also threaten animal species in the region.

The social and economic impacts for the local communities, especially the indigenous communities in the region, are very extreme and it is likely that many will never recover from these effects. This can be seen in other examples of major dams such as the Three Gorges Dam in China, where local surrounding communities suffered similar impacts. The top down approach to the GERD project has resulted in little consideration being taken for local communities, such as the Gumuz communities. Those in power have prioritised the economic benefits of the dam over concern for local communities who will not necessarily share in the benefits these developments may bring.