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ethiopia
The Big Dam in Very Hot World
Driven by dwindling water resources, the global hydropower crisis has become a flashpoint in the far reaches of Northern Africa, where the creation of a giant dam could very well lead to a regional war and worse.
Feb 19, 2024
We live in a world of dangerous, deadly extremes. Record-breaking heat waves, intense drought, stronger hurricanes, unprecedented flash flooding. No corner of the planet will be spared the wrath of human-caused climate change and the earth’s fresh water is already feeling the heat of this new reality. More than half of the world’s lakes and two-thirds of its rivers are drying up, threatening ecosystems, farmland, and drinking water supplies. Such diminishing resources are also likely to lead to conflict and even, potentially, all-out war.
“Competition over limited water resources is one of the main concerns for the coming decades,” warned a study published in Global Environmental Change in 2018. “Although water issues alone have not been the sole trigger for warfare in the past, tensions over freshwater management and use represent one of the main concerns in political relations between… states and may exacerbate existing tensions, increase regional instability and social unrest.”
The situation is beyond dire. In 2023, it was estimated that upwards of three billion people, or more than 37% of humanity, faced real water shortages, a crisis predicted to dramatically worsen in the decades to come. Consider it ironic then that, as water is disappearing, huge dams — more than 3,000 of them — that require significant river flow to operate are now being built at an unprecedented pace globally. Moreover, 500 dams are being constructed in legally protected areas like national parks and wildlife reserves. There was a justification for this, claimed the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) some years ago. Such projects, it believed, would help battle climate change by curbing carbon dioxide emissions while bringing electricity to those in the greatest of need.
“[Hydropower] remains the largest source of renewable energy in the electricity sector,” the IPCC wrote in 2018. “Evidence suggests that relatively high levels of deployment over the next 20 years are feasible, and hydropower should remain an attractive renewable energy source within the context of global [greenhouse gas] mitigation scenarios.”
The IPCC acknowledged that unceasing droughts impact stream flow and that climate change is unpredictably worsening matters. Yet its climate experts still contended that hydropower could be a crucial part of the world’s energy transition, arguing that an electric dam will produce seemingly endless energy. At the same time, other renewable sources like wind and solar power have their weather- and sunlight-bound limitations.
A Crack in the Dam Logic
Well-intentioned as it may have been, it’s now far clearer that there is a crack in the IPCC’s appraisal. For one thing, recent research suggests that hydro-powered dams can create an alarming amount of climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions. Rotting vegetation at the bottom of such reservoirs, especially in warmer climates (as in much of Africa), releases significant amounts of methane, a devastating greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.
“Most of this vegetation would have rotted anyway, of course. But, without reservoirs, the decomposition would occur mostly in the atmosphere or in well-oxygenated rivers or lakes,” explains Fred Pearce in the Independent. “The presence of oxygen would ensure the carbon in the plants formed carbon dioxide. But many reservoirs, particularly in the tropics, contain little oxygen. Under those anaerobic conditions, rotting vegetation generates methane instead.”
While CO2 also seriously harms the climate, methane emissions are far worse in the short term.
“We estimate that dams emit around 25% more methane by unit of surface than previously estimated,” says Bridget Deemer of the School of Environment at Washington State University in Vancouver, lead author of a highly-cited study on greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs. “Methane stays in the atmosphere for only around a decade, while CO2 stays several centuries, but over the course of 20 years, methane contributes almost three times more to global warming than CO2.”
And that’s hardly the only problem dams face in the twenty-first century. At the moment, Chinese financing is the most significant global driver of new hydropower construction. China has invested in the creation of at least 330 dams in 74 countries. Each project poses its own set of environmental quandaries. But above all, the heating of the planet — last year was the warmest in human history and January 2024 the hottest January on record — is making many of those investments look increasingly dubious. On this ever-hotter globe of ours, for instance, a drought in Ecuador has all too typically impacted the functionality of the Amaluza Dam on the Paute River, which provides 60% of that country’s electricity. Paute was running at 40% capacity recently as its river flow dwindled. Similarly, in southern Africa, water levels at the Kariba Dam’s reservoir, located between Zambia and Zimbabwe, have fluctuated drastically, impairing its ability to produce consistent energy.
“In recent years, drought intensified by climate change has caused reservoirs on all five continents to drop below levels needed to maintain hydroelectric production,” writes Jacques Leslie in Yale E360, “and the problem is bound to worsen as climate change deepens.”
Even in the United States, the viability of hydropower is an increasing concern. The Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, for example, has been impacted by years of drought. Water levels at its reservoir, Lake Mead, continue to plummet, raising fears that its days are numbered. The same is true for the Glen Canyon Dam, which also holds back the Colorado, forming Lake Powell. As the Colorado dries up, Glen Canyon may also lose its ability to produce electricity.
Driven by dwindling water resources, the global hydropower crisis has become a flashpoint in the far reaches of Northern Africa, where the creation of a giant dam could very well lead to a regional war and worse.
A Crisis on the Nile
The lifeblood of northeastern Africa, the Nile River, flows through 11 countries before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. Measured at 6,650 kilometers, the Nile may be the longest river on Earth. For millennia, its meandering waters, which run through lush jungles and dry deserts, have been irrigating farmlands and providing drinking water for millions of people. Nearly 95% of Egypt’s 109 million people live within a few kilometers of the Nile. Arguably the most important natural resource in Africa, it’s now at the epicenter of a geopolitical dispute between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan that’s brought those countries to the brink of military conflict.
A major dam being built along the Blue Nile, the river’s main tributary, is upending the status quo in the region, where Egypt has long been the preeminent nation. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD for short) is to become one of the largest hydroelectric dams ever constructed, stretching more than 1,700 meters and standing 145 meters tall, a monument many will love and others despise.
There’s no question that Ethiopia needs the electricity GERD will produce. Nearly 45% of all Ethiopians lack regular power and GERD promises to produce upwards of 5.15 gigawatts of electricity. To put that in perspective, a single gigawatt would power 876,000 households annually in the United States. Construction on the dam, which began in 2011, was 90% complete by last August when it began producing power. In total, GERD’s cost is expected to eclipse $5 billion, making it the largest infrastructure project Ethiopia has ever undertaken and the largest dam on the African continent.
It will not only bring reliable power to that country but promises a culture shift welcomed by many. “Mothers who’ve given birth in the dark, girls who fetch wood for fire instead of going to school — we’ve waited so many years for this — centuries,” says Filsan Abdi of the Ethiopian Ministry of Women, Children, and Youth. “When we say that Ethiopia will be a beacon of prosperity, it starts here.”
While most Ethiopians may see the dam in a positive light, the downstream countries of Egypt and Sudan (itself embroiled in a devastating civil war) were never consulted, and their officials are indignant. The massive reservoir behind GERD’s gigantic cement wall will hold back 74 billion cubic meters of water. That means Ethiopia will have remarkable control over the flow of the Nile, giving its leaders power over how much access to water both Egyptians and Sudanese will have. The Blue Nile, after all, provides 59% of Egypt’s freshwater supply.
As it happens, fresh water in Egypt has long been growing scarcer and so the country’s leadership has taken the threat of GERD seriously for years. In 2012, for instance, Wikileaks obtained internal emails from the “global intelligence” firm Stratfor revealing that Egypt and Sudan were even then considering directing the Egyptian Special Forces to destroy the dam, still in the early stages of construction. “[We] are discussing military cooperation with Sudan,” a high-level Egyptian source was quoted as saying. While such a direct attack never transpired, Stratfor claimed that Egypt might once again lend support to “proxy militant groups against Ethiopia” (as it had in the 1970s and 1980s) if diplomacy were to hit a dead end.
Unfortunately, the most recent negotiations to calm the hostility around GERD have gone distinctly awry. Last April, the embittered Egyptians responded to the lack of any significant progress by conducting a three-day military drill with Sudan at a naval base in the Red Sea aimed at frightening Ethiopian officials. “All options are on the table,” warned Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry. “[All] alternatives remain available and Egypt has its capabilities.”
Seemingly unfazed by such military threats, Ethiopia plans to finish building the dam, claiming it will provide much-needed energy to impoverished Ethiopians and limit the country’s overall carbon footprint. “[GERD] represents a sustainable socio-economic project for Ethiopia: replacing fossil fuels and reducing CO2 emissions,” the Ethiopian embassy in Washington has asserted.
GERD, however, falls squarely into the category of being a major problem dam — and not just because it could lead to a bloody war in a region already in horrific turmoil. Once filled, its massive reservoir will cover a staggering 1,874 square kilometers, making it more than three-quarters the size of Utah’s Great Salt Lake (after it started to shrink).
Unfortunately, GERD never underwent a proper environmental impact assessment (EIA) despite being legally required to do so. No EIA was ever carried out because the notoriously corrupt Ethiopian government knew that the results wouldn’t be pleasing and was unwilling to let any roadblocks get in the way of the dam’s construction, something that became more obvious when upwards of 20,000 indigenous Gumuz and Berta natives began to be forced from their homes to make way for the monstrous dam.
Publicly coming out against the dam has proven a risky business. Employees of International Rivers, a nonprofit that advocates for people endangered by dams, have been harassed and received death threats in response to their opposition. Prominent Ethiopian journalist Reeyot Alemu, a critic of the dam and the government’s actions concerning it, was imprisoned for more than four years under draconian anti-terrorism laws.
Electric Water Wars
While GERD has created a dicey conflict, it also has international ramifications. China, which has played such a pivotal role in bankrolling hydropower projects globally in these years, has provided $1.2 billion to help the Ethiopians build transmission lines from the dam to nearby towns. Since it has also heavily invested in Egypt, it’s well-positioned, if any country is, to help navigate the GERD dispute.
Military analysts in the United States argue that China’s involvement with the dam is part of a policy meant to put the U.S. at a distinct disadvantage in the race to exploit Africa’s abundant rare earth minerals from the cobalt caverns of the Congo to the vast lithium deposits in Ethiopia’s hinterlands. China, the world’s “largest debt collector,” has indeed poured money into Africa. As of 2021, it was that continent’s largest creditor, holding 20% of its total debt. The growth of Chinese influence internationally and in Africa — it has large infrastructure projects in 35 African countries — is crucial to understanding the latest version of the globe’s imperial geopolitics.
Most of China’s African ventures are connected to Beijing’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” a program of this century to fund infrastructure deals across Eurasia and Africa. Its economic ties to Africa began, however, with Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s push in the 1950s and 1960s for an “Afro-Asian” alliance that would challenge Western imperialism.
So many decades later, the idea of such an alliance plays second fiddle to China’s global economic desires, which, like so many past imperial projects in Africa, have significant downsides for those on the receiving end. Developing countries desperately need capital, so they’re willing to accept rigid terms and conditions from China, even if they represent the latest version of the century’s old colonialism and neo-colonialism that focused on controlling the continent’s rich resources. This is certainly true in the case of China’s hydropower investments in places like Ghana’s Bui Dam and the Congo River Dam in the Republic of Congo, where multi-billion-dollar loans are backed by Congo’s crude oil and Ghana’s cocoa crops.
In 2020, the U.S. belatedly inserted itself into the GERD feud, threatening to cut $130 million in aid for Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism efforts. The Ethiopians believed it was related to the dam controversy, as they also did when, in June 2023, the Biden administration directed USAID to halt all food assistance to the country (upwards of $2 billion), claiming it wasn’t reaching Ethiopians, only to reverse course months later.
The dispute over Ethiopia’s enormous dam should be a warning of what the future holds on a hotter, drier planet, where the rivers that feed dams like GERD are drying up while the superpowers continue to jockey for position, hoping to control what remains of the world’s resources. Hydropower won’t help solve the climate crisis, but new dam projects may lead to war over one thing key to our survival — access to fresh, clean water.
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Omar Says US Must End Arms Sales to Saudis Over Alleged 'Ghastly' Crimes Against Migrants
Citing the alleged "systematic murder, rape, and torture" of Ethiopian migrants by Saudi border guards, the Minnesota progressive urged the U.S. to pursue "full accountability and justice for those responsible."
Aug 22, 2023
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on Tuesday called for an end to U.S. security assistance—including arms sales—to Saudi Arabia following the publication of a Human Rights Watch report in which Ethiopian migrants describe massacres, torture, and rape allegedly committed by Saudi border guards.
The HRW report alleges Saudi forces killed at least hundreds of migrants including many women and children seeking to enter the wealthy kingdom from Yemen between March 2022 and June 2023. Witnesses said Saudi border guards used both small arms and light artillery to kill migrants. Some survivors claim that scores of migrants were massacred at a time; others said they were subjected to or witnessed torture or were forced to rape other migrants.
HRW said that if the attacks were carried out as official policy of the Saudi government—which has denied allegations of mass migrant killings in the past—they would amount to crimes against humanity.
"The systematic murder, rape, and torture of migrants is a ghastly violation of international law and a potential crime against humanity," Omar (D-Minn.) said on the social platform formerly known as Twitter. "If we truly put human rights at the center of our foreign policy, we should be pursuing full accountability and justice for those responsible, and ending all security assistance (including weapons sales) to the Saudi regime."
Omar has repeatedly pushed to hold Saudi Arabia—a key Middle Eastern ally governed by a fundamentalist monarchy and widely considered one of the world's worst human rights violators—accountable. In 2021 she introduced legislation to sanction Saudi Crown Prine Mohammed bin Salman over his role in the murder of journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi. That same year she unveiled a resolution to block a $650 million U.S. arms sale to the kingdom over its documented and alleged atrocities in Yemen, a war backed by the United States. Neither measure passed.
Most recently, Omar in March introduced the Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act, which would impose "universal human rights and humanitarian conditions on security cooperation with the United States."
"I cannot remain silent in the face of children being bombed in buses in Yemen," she explained.
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'Like Killing Fields': Report Says Saudi Border Guards Killed Hundreds of Ethiopian Migrants
"If committed as part of a Saudi government policy to murder migrants, these killings, which appear to continue, would be a crime against humanity," said Human Rights Watch.
Aug 21, 2023
Saudi border guards allegedly killed at least hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum-seekers—including women and children—who tried to enter the kingdom from Yemen between March 2022 and June 2023, sometimes by blowing them to bits with mortars and rockets, Human Rights Watch revealed Monday.
In a report entitled 'They Fired on Us Like Rain': Saudi Arabian Mass Killings of Ethiopian Migrants at the Yemen-Saudi Border, HRW described how "Saudi border guards have used explosive weapons to kill many migrants and shot other migrants at close range, including many women and children, in a widespread and systematic pattern of attacks."
"In some instances, Saudi border guards asked migrants what limb to shoot, and then shot them at close range," the report states. "Saudi border guards also fired explosive weapons at migrants who were attempting to flee back to Yemen."
"I saw people killed in a way I have never imagined. I saw 30 killed people on the spot."
"If committed as part of a Saudi government policy to murder migrants, these killings, which appear to continue, would be a crime against humanity," HRW said.
One 14-year-old Ethiopian girl from the Oromia region said: "I saw people killed in a way I have never imagined. I saw 30 killed people on the spot."
One migrant said that out of 150 people in their group, "only seven people survived that day" after they came under heavy fire, and that "there were remains of people everywhere, scattered everywhere."
Another survivor said he was part of a group of 170 Ethiopian migrants who were attacked while trying to cross the border.
"I know 90 people were killed, because some returned to that place to pick up the dead bodies—they counted around 90 dead bodies," he said.
One Ethiopian interviewed by HRW said he went to the Saudi border to retrieve the body of a girl from his village who was killed while trying to enter the kingdom.
"Her body was piled up on top of 20 bodies," he said. "It is really impossible to count the number. It is beyond the imagination. People are going in different groups day to day. The dead bodies are there."
A 17-year-old boy said Saudi border guards "forced him and other survivors to rape two girl survivors after the guards had executed another migrant who refused to rape another survivor."
Mustafa Soufia Mohammed, a 21-year-old Ethiopian who is not in the HRW report, told the BBC he attempted to enter Saudi Arabia last July in a group of about 45 people seeking work in the wealthy kingdom when border guards opened fire on them.
"The shooting went on and on," Mohammed said. "I didn't even notice I was shot, but when I tried to get up and walk, part of my leg was not with me."
Mohammed lost one of his legs and is now back in Ethiopia.
"I went to Saudi Arabia because I wanted to improve my family's life," the father of two said, "but what I hoped for didn't materialize. Now my parents do everything for me."
Last year, a group of United Nations experts wrote to the Saudi government expressing alarm over "what appears to be a systematic pattern of large-scale, indiscriminate cross-border killings, using artillery shelling and small arms fired by Saudi security forces against migrants."
In July, the Mixed Migration Center—an independent branch of the Danish Refugee Council—said in a report that Ethiopians were being "systematically" killed by Saudi state forces.
The Saudi monarchy rejects reports of mass migrant killings by its border guards.
"Based on the limited information provided, authorities within the kingdom have discovered no information or evidence to confirm or substantiate the allegations," the government said in response to the U.N. experts' letter.
HRW refugee and migrant rights researcher Nadia Hardman said in a statement Monday that "Saudi officials are killing hundreds of migrants and asylum-seekers in this remote border area out of view of the rest of the world."
"Spending billions buying up professional golf, football clubs, and major entertainment events to improve the Saudi image should not deflect attention from these horrendous crimes," asserted Hardman, who in a separate BBC interview described "sites that sounded like killing fields."
Connor Echols of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft wrote Monday that "the accusations come at a particularly sensitive time for the Saudi monarchy, which has embarked on a massive public relations push in order to burnish a global image tarnished by alleged war crimes in Yemen and the grisly 2018 murder of Saudi journalist and Washington Post opinion writer Jamal Khashoggi."
Echols continued:
The report also raises uncomfortable questions for the Biden administration, which is considering giving "security guarantees" to Saudi Arabia in order to entice its leaders to normalize relations with Israel. Among the proposals on the table is a mutual defense treaty that would obligate U.S. troops to defend Saudi Arabia in case of attack. American officials are also mulling whether to help Riyadh develop a civilian nuclear program, a move that many experts worry could be a first step toward a Saudi nuclear weapons push.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, told Echols that U.S. backing emboldens Saudis to commit atrocities with impunity.
"Saudi Arabia feels empowered to act as recklessly, inhumanely, and unlawfully as it wants—including lobbing mortar attacks on desperate migrants seeking safety—because it knows it has U.S. support," she said.
"We can expect that its reckless belligerence will only increase with the added security of a U.S. security guarantee," Whitson added. "The Biden administration should take responsibility for its role in knowingly aiding and abetting Saudi security forces."
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