Activists Protest Greenwashing of Dams at World Water Forum
For immediate release March 14, 2012
Activists Protest
Greenwashing of Dams at World Water Forum
Call for Compliance with
the World's Highest Standards
Marseille,
France – Activists created a living river and
inflated a large dam in central Marseille today
against the corporate greenwashing of dams at this
week's 6th World Water Forum in Marseille,
France. The colourful manifestation of over 100
protestors from China, Turkey, Brazil, Vietnam,
France, and others called attention to how dams are
destroying the world's freshwater biodiversity and
causing irreversible losses to the world's cultures.
Ronack Monabay
of Friends of the Earth – France, stated that “large
dams are not green. 60% of the world's rivers are
dammed, and freshwater ecosystems are losing species
and habitats faster than any other type of ecosystem.
Millions of people have been displaced because of dams
worldwide. These are the reasons why we are protesting
today. Life depends on healthy rivers.”
Caterina
Amicucci of CRBM continued: “Yet, the world's banks
are rushing to finance big dams. Since 2003, the
European Investment Bank alone has spent close to 1
billion euros in financing dams in the global south
under the guise of clean energy access, though the
dams primarily benefit manufacturers and large
industries looking for cheap electricity to produce
export goods.”
The protestors
warned that the World Water Forum has turned into a
trade show for corporate initiatives to greenwash the
dam industry. At the Forum, the International
Hydropower Association (IHA) presented the Hydropower
Sustainability Assessment Protocol, a voluntary
self-policing scorecard for dam builders.
“The Hydropower
Sustainability Assessment Protocol is a greenwash of
the world's dam industry,” said Zachary Hurwitz,
Policy Coordinator of International Rivers. “The
Protocol allows dam builders to claim they are
sustainable while they continue to violate
international and national environmental and human
rights law. In order to not repeat the errors of the
past, dam builders must be held accountable to the
highest social and environmental standards.”
One of the World
Water Forum's twelve priorities for action, “Harmonize
Water and Energy,” calls for 20 countries to adopt the
Protocol by 2015. The IHA is lobbying governments, the
European Union, and international agreements, such as
the EU Emissions Trading System and Water Framework
Directive, to use the Protocol in place of existing
high standards.
Instead of
adopting the IHA Protocol, the protestors are calling
on corporations, governments and international
financial institutions such as the World Bank and
European Investment Bank to comply with the
recommendations of the World Commission on Dams, and
international standards such as the Conventions of the
International Labor Organization (ILO) and the United
Nations Declaration on Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
They also call on governments and international
financial institutions to stop to finance large dams
and to diversify their energy portfolio towards more
sustainable energy alternatives.
Electricité de
France (EDF), a founding sponsor of the IHA Protocol,
is currently in negotiations to build dams in
Southeast Asia’s Mekong basin, one of the world’s
great repositories of freshwater fish species. EDF has
already built the controversial Nam Theun 2 in Laos
with funding from the EIB and World Bank, and expects
to build more dams in the basin.
Nguyen Viet
Dung, the Deputy Director of Vietnam's Pan Nature,
said “the future of millions of people who depend on
the Mekong basin cannot be traded off. They are not
second-class citizens. Dam builders should adhere to
the same strict social and environmental standards
there as they do at home. The IHA Protocol does not
require that they do.”
The action is
one of over 100 occurring simultaneously in more than
40 countries across the world, as part of the
International Day of Action for Rivers.
Media contacts in Marseille:
Ronack Monabay, Amis de la Terre, France: +33 (0)6 38 89 81 05 ronack.monabay@amisdelaterre.
Caterina Amicucci, Campagna per la
Riforma della Banca Mondiale, Italy:
+39 349 852 0789 camicucci@crbm.org / www.crbm.org
Zachary Hurwitz, International
Rivers, United States:
+ 33 (0)6 46 54 02 46 zachary@internationalrivers. |
International
Rivers
2150 Allston Way, Suite 300,
Berkeley, CA 94704, USA Tel: +1 510 848 1155 | Fax: +1 510 848 1008 | info@internationalrivers.org | www.internationalrivers.org |
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