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For those who missed last series a little history lesson may first be required. The story so far...
Debts and Dams This week’s programme started after we made a show in the last series about the Export Credit Guarantee Department (ECGD). The ECGD are a government department, run out of the Department of Trade and Industry, which uses taxpayers’ money to provide insurance for companies exporting goods abroad. So if the country they are exporting to defaults on a loan, the UK taxpayer via the ECGD pays up. The country that has defaulted then has the amount of the loan transferred to its national debt. In fact, it is estimated that the ECGD is responsible for 95% of developing country’s bilateral debt owed to Britain. On the programme we made on the last series we mentioned a hydroelectric power project in Turkey; the Ilisu Dam. The area around the Ilisu dam, the Kurdish region of South East Turkey, has been devastated by 16 years of armed conflict The dam will force up to 78,000 people from their homes and will flood the 10, 000 year old town of Hasankeyf. There has been no agreed resettlement plan and minimal consultation of local people. With other planned dams it will also control 50% of the downstream flow of the river Tigris into Syria and Iraq. A British construction company, Balfour Beatty, part of the consortium bidding to build the dam, had asked the ECGD for £200 million of insurance for their role in the project.
COMEDIAN TURNED COMPANY DIRECTOR? After the programme on the Ilisu Dam, Mark was asked to attend a public meeting in the House of Lords, organised by the Kurdish Human Rights Project, a charity committed to the protection of the human rights of all persons within Kurdish regions. He went in as a comic and came out as campaign director of the Ilisu Dam Campaign, having been bounced into his new role by Lord Eric Avebury, the Liberal Lord and Human Rights Campaigner. The Ilisu Dam Campaign website is here:
Ilisu Dam Campaign The campaign created a coalition of forces opposed to the building of the Ilisu Dam, from environmentalists and human rights lawyers to construction workers and archaeologists. The campaigners also bought shares in Balfour Beatty and attended two Annual General Meetings. Mark nominated himself for the board.
DAMS: ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY The general perception of dams has for years been that they are cuddly, natural, environmentally friendly things which harness the world’s natural resources to provide sustainable electricity. Studies have recently shown that this is not the case. The World Commission on Dams published a report last year which said that no one, not even the construction companies themselves, could claim that dams were “environmentally friendly”, especially if you include humans as part of the environment, which as Mark points out, you kinda have to.. Dambuilding involves the often forcible displacement of the people who live in the area, the destruction of habitats, damage to downstream flows of water and associated ecological problems. For example, the Three Gorges Dam in China will affect 1.4 million people. Additionally, large bodies of standing water can cause outbreaks of malaria.
TURKEY – EUROPE’S TOP TORTURERS Turkey’s record on human rights is not great. The Turkish government are not big on consulting with minorities such as the Kurds affected by the Ilisu dam. They have the worst human rights record in Europe, with the most number of cases heard by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The ECHR have stated that torture is “endemic” and “state policy” in the south east region of the country. Amnesty International describe torture as “widespread” nationwide.
WE SHALL OVERCOME In November 2001 Balfour Beatty pulled out of the project. The company said that it had made a “thorough and extensive evaluation of the commercial, environmental and social issues inherent in the project. With appropriate solutions to these issues still unsecured and no early resolution likely, Balfour Beatty believes that it is not in the best interests of its stakeholders to pursue the project further.” The Swedish firm, Skanska, the Italian firm, Impreglio and Switzerland’s largest bank, UBS, also pulled out. The campaigners were quite pleased with themselves. So all's well that ends well? Not quite...
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