هل يرجع الجيش المصرى للسودان دفاعا عن حقوقهما المائية؟؟!!

Quote: There is a new twist to the story about the European Investment Bank (EIB) funding of the controversial Gibe 3 Dam in Ethiopia. A story carried by ghanabusinessnews.com from a press release by International Rivers, one of the NGOs in a coalition that is campaigning against the construction of the dam said the EIB has pulled back its component of the funding for the $1.7 billion project. But two days later, International Rivers (IR) issues another statement painting a different picture about the EIB funding story. In the release titled ‘The Smoke and Mirrors of the EIB’ and copied to ghanabusinessnews.com, it said, “a statement issued June 4 by the European Investment Bank contradicts a June 3 announcement made to Friends of Lake Turkana that the Bank had withdrawn its consideration of the Gibe 3 Dam in Ethiopia. The June 4 statement is consistent with the Bank’s efforts to conduct its operations on Gibe 3 and other controversial projects behind smoke and mirrors.” International Rivers went on to narrate incidents to support the said contradictory position of the EIB. According to IR on March 4, 2009, Ikal Angelei, coordinator of Kenyan community group, Friends of Lake Turkana, sent a letter to the President of the EIB urging the Bank not to fund the Gibe 3 Dam. On April 30, the EIB’s Secretary General informed Friends of Lake Turkana that the Bank’s Complaints Office would meet with the organization, “to allow the EIB to make an informed decision concerning a possible financing or not financing of the project”. IR said, the head of the Complaints Office informed Friends of Lake Turkana that she would participate in the group’s meetings with the Compliance Review and Mediation Unit of the African Development Bank in the week of June 8 in Nairobi. On June 3, however, according to IR, the head of the EIB Complaints Office called Ikal Angelei and told her that the President of the EIB had formally announced that the Bank would not get involved in the Gibe 3 Project, adding that the Complaints Office would therefore not attend the forthcoming meetings in Nairobi. A representative of another financial institution talked with Ikal Angelei on the same day and confirmed that the EIB had “pulled out” of the Gibe 3 Project. Following this development, IR together with its coalition partners, Counter Balance and Friends of Lake Turkana celebrated the success of the campaign to halt the construction of the dam. They considered the announcement by EIB as “a breakthrough for affected people and the environment” and a “a fundamental step forward in the bank’s external lending standards.” Following the new development therefore, the NGOs are accusing the EIB of denying the truth. According to the NGOs, EIB is being secretive about its involvement with the project and are therefore, calling for transparency and accountability. As a matter of fact, the European Investment Bank financed the Gilgel Gibe Dam and Gilgel Gibe 2 project in Ethiopia to the tune of Euro 41 million and Euro 50 million respectively, conducted a pre-assessment of the Gibe 3 Dam in the same river basin, and decided to fund the Gibe 3’s Economic, Financial and Technical Assessment, currently underway. Meanwhile, a contributor to the discussion on ghanabusinessnews.com, who gave his name as Anthony Mitchell, and said he was the one who authored the Gilgel Gibe III dam Ethiopia: technical, engineering and economic feasibility study report, says “Ethiopia is not such a rich country that it can afford to take extreme risks with this type of rockfill facility, which has never been successfully completed before to such an incredible height. It is situated in an earthquake zone and has three meters of unstable volcanic ash under the site.” He argues further that “I find assertions about no-water-loss from the project to be factually incorrect, as outflows and evapotranspiration from the artificial lake and surrounding countryside will permanently decrease downstream water flows while raising the water table in the region around the lake.” Mr. Mitchell disagreed with the dam’s proponents. He said, “The statements by the dam’s proponents about the impact assessment for the dam fail to disclose that the assessment was done by a company whose owners include vendors for the project, was conducted for a concrete dam (not the low-tech rockfill design that was substituted later), and was not initiated until after construction was well underway.” He pointed out that relocation and other mitigation measures concentrate on populations in the immediate vicinity of the dam, not downstream or in the Turkana region where population dislocations, famine and environmental refugees will encourage violence and threaten the stability of southwestern Ethiopia and northern Kenya. He cited Ethiopia’s two most recent attempts at big hydro projects (Tekeze and Gibe II) which failed to meet design goals. Gibe III, with its planning flaws and corruption-tainted contracting process, appears headed in the same direction, he asserts. He called on the United States, as a major underwriter of Ethiopia’s national budget, to step in and allow Ethiopian democratic institutions and civil society groups to function openly and in a manner that could forestall “the catastrophically poor decision making and governance that we see today under the authoritarian regime of Ethiopia’s long-standing Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.” In place of failed mega projects, a mix of smaller scale, low impact projects are needed. This would include run-of-the-river generation facilities in the Blue Nile basin, solar and additional wind generation capacity. The United States also needs to become engaged in strengthening the capabilities of Ethiopian institutions so as to avoid the type of politically motivated embarrassment that we see committed by proponents of Gibe III here, he concluded. By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi

http://ghanabusinessnews.com/2009/06/06/european-bank-e...-saga-takes-a-twist/


http://ghanabusinessnews.com/2009/07/24/african-develop...-gibe-3-dam-project/


http://www.ethiopianreview.com/news/5484


http://www.eepco.gov.et/GibeIII-2/Chapter_2.pdf


http://www.counterbalance-eib.org/component/option,com_.../func,detail/id,113/

http://www.ayyaantuu.com/Oromiyaa/NewsBlog/tabid/36/Ent...a-takes-a-twist.aspx