Uganda

Earlier this year, several officials of the Ugandan government received large concessions for land suitable for afforestation and reforestation under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (see WRM Bulletin 74).

In August 2003, US-based power producer AES Corp pulled out of the World Bank sponsored dam project in Uganda, based on economic reasons. The decision --which implied that the company wrote off $75m it had invested in the project-- has raised questions about the future of the controversial dam.

Recently, a joint venture company between Heritage Oil & Gas --a subsidiary of the Canadian-based Heritage Oil Corp-- and South Africa's Energy Africa have announced the preliminary results from trial drilling. The exploration for oil has been going on for some time now near the country's western border and the results point to billions of barrels' worth of oil deposits along the western arm of the East African Rift Valley in the Semliki.

As we have already informed in previous bulletins (see WRM bulletins 36, 42), the $550 million Bujagali hydroelectric dam project on the Victoria Nile proposed by the US-based AES Corporation --counting on loans from the International Finance Corporation (IFC)-- has encountered strong opposition by local groups supported by international action. The detrimental impact of the project has been acknowledged by the Inspection Panel, the World Bank's independent investigative body (see WRM bulletin 59).

The Batwa (so-called Pygmies) are the Indigenous peoples of south-west Uganda. According to historical records and oral histories, only the Batwa inhabited this area until at least the mid sixteenth century. They have been mostly hunter-gatherers, some in the mountainous forests, and some in forest savannah or lake environments.

In July 2001, Ugandan civil society groups had filed a complaint with the World Bank's Inspection Panel, claiming that the Bujagali dam project violated several World Bank policies and that it would cause social, economic, and environmental harm to the local people. As a result, the Panel took up the case and on May 30 submitted a confidential report to the Executive Board, which concludes that the planned Bujagali dam --detailed in WRM bulletin 42-- violates five key World Bank policies. The Panel report suggests a series of corrective measures to rectify the project's problems.

Commissioned by the Global Forest Coalition This report is based on 21 country case studies, including Australia, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czech republic, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya,Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand/Aotearoa, Papua New Guinea, Russia, South Africa, Suriname, Uganda, United Kingdom, and Uruguay

The Ugandan government --backed by the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank, the US agency Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), and a number of European export credit agencies (ECAs)-- is promoting the construction of a huge dam which, if implemented, will destroy the living space of thousands of local dwellers together with the scenic beauty and historical sites at the Bujagali falls region on the Upper Nile River. Responsible for the construction of this U$S 530 million hydroelectric dam is US-based AES corporation.

  The story is not new. Dam megaprojects, presented to Southern governments and local communities as a token of prosperity and progress, bring disaster with them. The promotion of foreign investments disregarding the protection of the environment and the peoples' claims is now menacing the survival of Bujagali Falls in Uganda. The government is promoting the construction of a huge dam which, if realized, will destroy the scenic virgin beauty of the Bujagali falls, and the living space of thousands of people.

Forestry companies worldwide are enthusiastically trying to implement the idea of establishing tree plantations in Southern countries under the Clean Development Mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, allegedly as a way of sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere to mitigate the effects of global warming ... and of making good profits at the same time. Even if presented as "environmentally friendly", the whole idea of plantations as carbon sinks is based on weak scientific arguments and does not constitute an effective way of reducing CO2 concentrations in the air.