Photo source: ©© Bernard Polet
Excerpts;
The World Bank Thursday approved a 73.1-million-dollar grant in support of a controversial giant dam project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Protests by local communities and international human rights and environmental groups that documented the massive displacements and environmental damage these mega-dams often caused – not to mention their failure to deliver electricity to those most in need – resulted in a halt in approving new projects in the mid-1990s.
Earlier this month, four researchers at Oxford Unversity Said Business School released a major study based on data from 245 large dams built since 1934 in 65 different countries.
It found that they suffered average cost overruns of more than 90 percent and delays of nearly 50 percent inflicting huge additional costs in inflation and debt service for the mostly public entities that built them.
“Proponents of mega-dams tend to focus on rare stories of success in order to get their pet projects approved,” said Atif Ansar, one of the Oxford researchers. “If leaders of emerging economies are truly interested in the welfare of their citizens, they are better off laying grand visions of mega-dams aside…”
DRC Mega-Dam to Be Funded by Private Sector, Groups Charge, IPS News
Grand Inga Hydroelectric Project: An Overview, International Rivers
The Grand Inga is the world’s largest proposed hydropower scheme. It is the centerpiece of a grand vision to develop a continent-wide power system. The Grand Inga mega-project is a priority project for a number of Africa development organizations, including the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), East African Power Pool (EAPP) and ESKOM, Africa’s largest power utility, among others.
The proposed dam is the fourth and largest of a series of dams that have been built or are proposed for the lower end of the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Grand Inga will generate 40, 000 MW, and will be constructed in 6 phases of which the Inga III Dam is the first phase. The power generated would be double the capacity of the largest dam in the world, the Three Gorges Dam in China…
Sediment Trapped Behind Dams Makes Them ‘Hot Spots’ for Greenhouse Gas Emissions, (Uploaded 08-01-2013)
The large reservoirs of water behind the world’s 50,000 large dams are a known source of methane. Methane has a warming effect 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. That knowledge led to questions about hydroelectric power’s image as a green and nonpolluting energy source.
