Press Responses : Thursday, February 6, 2003

Ottawa Xpress

February 6, 2003

Damned Canadian Dam Builders

by Anita Grace

Canada is facing a flood of criticism for financing a dam that is turning into a huge ecological disaster and massive human rights offence.

The Three Gorges Dam on China's Yangtze River was built on claims that it will prevent floods, generate power and improve water supply. But scientists, environmentalists and human rights groups warn it is a 60-storey concrete mistake that will wreck the environment, destroy cultural relics and ignite social unrest.

Not only are there ecological disasters waiting to happen - like the unplanned-for build-up of silt behind the dam - but close to 1.9 million people are being evicted from their homes to make way for its 630-square-kilometre reservoir.

International Rivers Network recently released a report, Human Rights Dammed Off at the Three Gorges, which alleges corruption and embezzlement, claims land and jobs promised to the resettled population are not being delivered, and shows how protests are forcefully silenced by police.

With filling of the reservoir scheduled for April, and thousands of people still to be relocated, International Rivers and other lobby groups are pushing for outside intervention. They are especially lobbying countries like Canada who helped finance the project.

The World Bank wouldn't lend it a dime, but Export Development Canada chipped in $189 million for this largest and most expensive hydro project in the world.

"We want the Canadian government to take accountability for human rights with regard to the Three Gorges," said Fraser Reilly-King, the coordinator of Halifax Initiative Coalition's NGO working group on the federal agency. His organization insists that, having funded the dam, EDC and the Canadian government have a responsibility to the ordinary people harmed by it. "We can't stop the dam, but we can have people compensated fairly."