Posted on 08/01/2011 7:33:07 PM PDT by _a_0_0_
The United Nations has come out in support of critics of Ethiopia's massive Gibe III hydropower project, calling for work to be suspended until the negative impacts of the dam can be assessed.
The UN World Heritage Committee, which establishes sites to be listed as being of special cultural or physical significance, said the Gibe III dam's construction endangered the existence of Lake Turkana, the largest desert lake in the world.
In 1997 Lake Turkana, which straddles the Kenya-Ethiopian border, was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Gibe III dam is being built by Italys Salini Construction company, and a Chinese state-owned bank has approved funding for the project, Kenya's The Daily Nation newspaper reported.
Both Ethiopia and China, as members of the World Heritage Committee, were asked to fulfill their responsibilities for the protection of the site.
Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi defended the decision to expand dam projects and scathingly denounced the projects critics, saying, "The views of western critics are ironic as Ethiopian facilities are infinitely more environmentally and socially responsible than the projects in their countries, past and present," adding that those who were advocating against hydropower electricity generation were condemning Africa and its people to remain in extreme poverty before concluding, "They are concerned about butterflies' lives, but not human diseases."
First ban DDT and millions die, now ban power so a poor country cant progress with abundant energy.
Sure seems like the UN hates black people.
... and Rachel Carson and DDT ... save the birdies but kill the kids. He nailed it with a side slap to the EPA I think.
I've heard everything. A dam threatens the existence of a lake?
my god, look at what the liberals are doing now...we have genuinely exported liberalism...
Egypt fears it won’t get the same amount of water
as before. The British set the amount of water that Egypt would get from the Nile, back when they ruled both Egypt and the Sudan. Ethiopia had no input in the decision.
Now Ethiopia wants/needs the dam for electrical power;
and both Egypt and Sudan oppose giving up any of “their” share of the Nile.
Ethiopia is one of if not the single oldest continuously Christian country in the world. They need to suffer.
First to say it...Welcome to FR!
Never stopped FDR’s TVA from destroying MY ‘heritage’.....thousands of acres of my G-Grandfather’s land went under water.
Well, one negative impact is that an impoverished country will be more able to pull itself out of poverty, reducing the ability of agencies like the UN to jerk them around at will.
“Egypt fears it wont get the same amount of water
as before. The British set the amount of water that Egypt would get from the Nile, back when they ruled both Egypt and the Sudan. Ethiopia had no input in the decision.
Now Ethiopia wants/needs the dam for electrical power;
and both Egypt and Sudan oppose giving up any of their share of the Nile.”
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Wiki says Lake Turkana is not part of the Nile watershed. Three rivers: the Omo, Turkwel and Kerio flow into it and there the water evaporates. I believe the dam in question is to be on the Omo river which enters on the Ethiopian side.
If the Omo is damned up maybe the lake will go the way of the Aral Sea.
Will the Etheopians sell water to their neighbors? Water could become the next oil.
He understands libs and tree huggers very well.
He understands libs and tree huggers very well.
Ping.
If the lake is downstream from the dam, sure.
Yep, Africa would be a perfect wilderness for the ecotourists if it wasn’t for all of those darn, pesky Africans living there. Wouldn’t be so bad if they would just live in mud huts and pose for photos, but now they electricity. Next thing they will want cars and air conditioners, and the whole place will be ruined. Damned people.
Maybe not. The Answan Dam has been an ecological disaster.
Libs and treehuggers are perfectly fine with leaving others in poverty...
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