በቀላሉ የመሥሪያ ማገናኛዎች

Environmentalists Ask Bank to Stop Funding Gil Gel Gibe III.


International Rivers, a California-based environmental organization that monitors dam construction and water usage around the globe, has asked the African Development Bank to stop funding construction of the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation’s the Gil Gel Gibe III dam in southern Ethiopia. They charge that, among other concerns, the construction threatened the survival of Lake Turkana in Kenya and the fishing culture of the people who depend on the lake.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said in a press conference in Addis last month that environmental approval of the dam comes from no less than the African Development Bank, whose environmental assessment of the environmental impact of the Gil Gel Gibe III dam being built on the Omo River established that the project poses no major environmental threat to the region.

The bank is the primary funder of the dam which costs $407 million, would be the deepest dam in Africa and, according to the government, would double the power-generating capacity of the nation with 1800 megawatts of power.The government also hopes to earn much-needed hard currency by selling excess power to Djibouti, Yemen, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and Egypt.

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