This year seems to be a spectacular year for corporations, especially energy-related entities, to screw over millions of people, various cultures, a megaton of the world’s most pristine environments and earn some MONEH~. The media is silent & most people are either too preoccupied or just don’t care to know about certain projects – such as dams – that will damn millions to generations-spanning lives of hardship. Here are some of those:
For the purposes of attaining a greater abundance of electricity, a dam (dubbed “Lower Se San 2 Dam”) has been proposed for construction on the Se San River, a Mekong tributary in Cambodia.
The dam, if built, will displace tens of thousands of people. The resulting effects of the dam being built include the flooding of more than 30,000 hectares of farmland, significantly scarce fishery resources & the destruction of multiple livelihoods & cultures.
But of course, governments and companies involved have dismissed concerns saying that the benefits of a dam that may or may not last for 2 decades far outweigh the negatives of the dam and future dam projects.
Meanwhile, in Latin America, energy & construction companies are re-enacting fervent European imperialism by staking claim to indigenous lands and building destructive dams wherever they well damn please.
ENEL is currently constructing a dam in El Quimbo, Colombia. Once the dam is complete, 1,500 kilometers of land along the course of the river it sits on will become completely infertile while almost 100,000 hectares of the Amazon rainforest will be flooded.
Moreover, ENEL is employing a private construction company called Impregilo which has a fearsome reputation for faulty dams that have broken in the past.
ENEL-ENDESA is also building another dam in the Chilean Patagonia called “Hydroaysen” & another in Guatemala which will utterly destroy the local ecosystems & shove people who live off of the land out of the picture.
Norte Energia will also be building a dam in Brazil which will severely disrupt the livelihood of millions of farmers, indigenous Kayapos & others.
In all of these cases and more, indigenous peoples such as the Ixil, the Hicholls & the Kayapos have never been consulted about the construction of dams on their land as required by international law.
In any case, despite valid concerns and actual protests, governments of the concerned countries and their corrupt corporate partners have either ignored pleas or actually utilized the local military or police in repressing protesters.
(Cover Photo: Lowly Interpreter)
