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In June this year the Mozambican government is expected to give the green light to plans to construct a barrage on the Zambezi River. However, the project’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has not yet been finished.
The Mpanda N’Kuwa dam is to be built downstream of Africa’s fourth largest artificial lake, the Cahora Bassa. There have been ongoing discussions since 2006, but they have been met with criticism from several environmental Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). It will cost two billion dollars and is designed for a 1,500 megawatts capacity.
Over 70 per cent of the population in Mozambique does not have access to electricity. It is expected that 20 per cent of the energy produced by the Mpanda N’Kuwa dam will serve the population’s demands. The remaining 80 per cent will be sold to South Africa in order to boost the country’s economy.
Activists are concerned that the new dam could have similar impacts to Cahora Bassa, which brought an end to much of the agriculture in the surrounding Tete province.
The company that runs the project, HMNK, argues that one should not compare a barrage built in the 1960s with a project that follows today’s environmental guidelines.
Lori Pottinger, from the Californian NGO International Rivers, warned the barrage has not been designed with climate change in mind. “That means it could become more dangerous in terms of flood and not economically viable in terms of drought,” she says.
A pré-study of environmental viability was written in 2009, but Mozambique-based NGO Justiça Ambiental claims they did not have access to it. Nonetheless, this report was still approved by the Ministry of Environment.
Now a consortium of companies - COBA (from Portugal), IMPACTO (from Mozambique) and international ERM – are working on the final EIA which should receive official consent in the early summer.
Justiça Ambiental is concerned about the project since the legislation in Mozambique does not allow projects of this magnitude to be approved without the existence of a social and environmental impact study.
Pottinger says building the Mpanda N’Kuwa dam would require relocating the population. “Giving them money and new jobs is not really the solution here,” she says.
According to the activist, much of the problem relies on the fact that Mozambique had to recover from a civil war and start from scratch. She added: “They built an energy department based on the only kind of energy development they had ever had in their country – large hydropower. So they populated their energy sector with dam engineers.”
Image courtesy of Moongateclimber on Wikimedia Commons.
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