From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Fri Jun 18 2010 - 08:37:51 EDT
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-18/kenyan-conservationists-try-to-stop-ethiopia-power-purchase.html
Kenyan
Conservationists Try to Stop Ethiopia Power PurchaseJune 18, 2010, 6:07 AM
EDT
By Sarah McGregor
June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Kenyan conservationists filed a court case against
the government and Kenya Power and Lighting Ltd., arguing they’ve
disregarded environmental and social concerns in deciding to buy
hydroelectricity from Ethiopia.
The Gibe III hydropower dam, a 1.5 billion-euro ($1.86 billion) project on
the Ethiopia’s Omo River, threatens livelihoods in the region, Ikal Angelei,
co-founder of Friends of Lake Turkana, said in a phone interview from Dublin
today. The group filed the suit on June 14 at the High Court in Nairobi,
Kenya’s capital. No court date has been set.
Residents and pastoral communities along the Omo River and Kenya’s Lake
Turkana which it flows into may face water shortages, damaging fishing and
farming, Angelei said.
“These communities are already in conflict due to a lack of natural
resources,” Angelei said. “The suit against KPLC and the government is to
try and stop their engagement until the proper studies have been done.”
Kenya plans to import as much as 600 megawatts of electricity from Ethiopia
as it looks to boost energy supplies to help spur economic growth, Joseph
Kinyua, permanent secretary in the Finance Ministry, said on Dec. 4.
Conservation groups including London-based Survival International and
International Rivers, based in California, have called on the African
Development Bank, the European Investment Bank, JP Morgan Chase and other
financiers not to fund completion of the Gibe III project.
Italy’s Salini Costruttori SpA is working on the dam with financing from the
Ethiopian government. If completed, the 243- meter-high dam will generate
1,870 megawatts of electricity, more than doubling Ethiopia’s current power
output, according to the Ethiopian Electric Power Corp.
Salini has said critics of the dam “are not in possession of adequate
information or adequate competences” and that the project will contribute
toward political stability in the region, the Rome-based company said in a
March 30 statement on its website.
--Editors: Karl Maier, Emily Bowers
To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah McGregor in Nairobi at
smcgregor5@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin in
Johannesburg at asguazzin@bloomberg.net.
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