For the Ilisu Dam, a Lifeline Made in China?

Will the controversial Ilisu dam project in southeast Turkey, put on the shelf after European creditors withdrew their support due to a lack of environmental safeguards, be brought back to life with Chinese help?

From a blog post by Peter Bosshard, policy director for International Rivers:

Turkey is so indebted it cannot finance the dam from its own resources. Reliable sources have told us that the Turkish government is currently discussing support for the Ilisu Dam with China. For years, the Turkish and Chinese governments have strongly disagreed over the treatment of the Uighur population, which is ethnically Turkic, in China’s Xinjiang Province. Yet in June 2009, Turkey’s President visited China and signed several cooperation agreements, including in the energy sector.

Under a plan which is currently being discussed, Andritz Hydro, the main contractor for the Ilisu hydropower project, would manufacture the turbines for the project in China rather than in Austria. Sinosure, an insurance company set up and owned by the Chinese government, would insure the bank loans for the contract. In a new twist in its emerging role, China would thus not enable its own dam builders to go abroad, but would underwrite the exports of Western dam builders which have shifted part of their manufacturing base to China.

When Chinese companies and financiers started to go overseas around the turn of the century, they held that following social and environmental standards was up to their host governments. They consequently picked up several rogue projects that had been shunned by other financiers during this period. China Exim Bank provided more than $500 million in funding for the Merowe Dam in Sudan in 2003 after export credit agencies from Europe and Canada declined to get involved because of environmental and human rights concerns. Chinese companies are also building several dams in Burma which many other actors would not touch.

Projects like the Merowe Dam have created serious conflicts with the local populations, and have damaged the reputation of the involved Chinese companies. Starting in 2006, the Chinese government asked its companies to take environmental and community concerns more into account when investing abroad. In October 2007, China’s State Council for example stressed the importance of “paying attention to environmental resource protection, caring for and supporting the local community and people’s livelihood” in such projects. An integrated policy package with specific recommendations for Chinese foreign investors is currently under preparation. Such measures indicate that China is interested in being a responsible partner in international finance.

The Ilisu Project has become an international symbol of a substandard project. China is not bound by agreements of the OECD governments, but it helped establish the World Bank standards which the dam on the Tigris is violating. The independent panel of experts which documented the violation of these standards included a well-known Chinese resettlement specialist. So far, China has not yet received an official funding request from Turkey and has not yet had to take a decision on Ilisu. If Sinosure does approve support for the project, it will be a slap in the face of the European governments who have put the interests of the environment and local people before their own export interests. Chinese support for the Ilisu Dam would endanger the efforts of a coordinated approach among international funders on the environment, and could start a new environmental race to the bottom.

You can read his full post here. For more background on the Ilisu dam project, take a look these previous posts.

The Middle East's Troubled Waters

Something worth keeping an eye is the growing dispute between Iraq, Syria and Turkey over water issues. All three countries, which share many of the same river borne water resources, are going through a period of decreased rainfall. The difference, of course, is that Turkey is upstream from Syria and Iraq, which means that it controls much of the water that eventually trickles down to the other two countries. Iraq, in particular, is accusing Turkey of taking too much of the water that flows through the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which flow through all three countries, because of its extensive dam network on the two rivers. (For more on Turkey's dam building project in the southeast of the country, take a look at this Eurasianet piece of mine.)

From a Reuters report on the brewing water crisis:

Turkey has failed to meet a pledge to release more water down the Euphrates and Tigris rivers to Iraq, an Iraqi minister said on Thursday, and called for a coordinated water policy in the region.

In June, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said Ankara will guarantee a minimum 400 cubic metres of water per second from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to help its neighbour weather a drought.

But Iraq's Water Resources Minister Abdul Latif Rasheed told Reuters that Iraq was still not getting enough water from Turkey, and said his country's agriculture and drinking water supplies were at stake.

"It isn't happening and we want Turkey to implement that agreement. The amount of water we are getting is fluctuating," Rasheed said on the sidelines of a meeting between Turkish, Iraqi and Syrian ministers to discuss water sharing from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

"The minimum requirement Iraq needs is 600 cubic metres. Sometimes it fluctuates to less than 200 cubic metres. We need two or three times that amount," he said.

Iraq accuses Turkey, and to a lesser extent Syria, of choking the Euphrates with hydroelectric dams that have restricted the flow, damaging the farm sector already suffering from decades of war, sanctions and neglect.

The dispute is a delicate diplomatic issue for Iraq as it seeks to improve ties with its neighbours. Turkey is one of Iraq's most important trading partners.

Turkish officials say flows to Iraq have been decreased by Syria, which also shares the Tigris and Euphrates basin.

But Rasheed said Iraq was getting less water since Turkey began building dams in the southeast of the country under the GAP development project....

....Turkey says it has occasionally limited the flow on the Tigris and Euphrates to less than 400 cubic metres per second to meet its own needs during extremely dry weather.

Syria's Irrigation Minister Nader al-Bunni said his country was "concerned" about the amount of water that flows out of Turkey and said neighbours sharing the Euphrates and Tigris rivers needed to find a solution that is "sustainable from a social and humanitarian point of view".

Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to abandon their land in Syria, a major farm commodities producer in the region, due to the effects of the country's worst drought in decades.

(You can read the full article here.)

[UPDATE I -- Turkey has apparently now reversed course on the issue, saying it would release more water than the minimum required, although it did not specify how much.)

Water issues and climate change are clearly going to pose major political and diplomatic challenges for the Middle East in the years ahead. For some interesting perspectives on this, take a look at the most recent edition of Bitterlemons, an online roundtable on Middle East issues. One of the articles, titled "Conflict Ahead," by Aharon Zohar, a specialist in regional and environmental planning, offers this warning:

These issues will affect stability mainly in countries and societies that are already destabilized due to ethno-religious conflict, weak economies and environmental decline. One expression of this could be violence between countries rich in water and energy resources and those without, particularly where they share drainage basins of international rivers: Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt over the Nile; Turkey, Syria and Iraq over the Euphrates; and Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel over the Jordan and its tributaries. Another instance could involve internal destabilization of moderate states like Egypt and Jordan due to water shortages....

....Readiness to counter the consequences of global warming in the Middle East demands coordination and problem-solving on a broad regional level. Yet in view of the hostility and tension that characterize regional inter-state relations, this option appears less likely than specific ad-hoc cooperation between specific countries.

[UPDATE II -- The Washington Post has an interesting piece about some environmentally suspect joint projects Israel and Jordan are undertaking in an effort to deal with their looming water shortage problems. Worth reading.)

(photo -- a dam near Sanliurfa, in southeast Turkey, part of the country's GAP dam and irrigation project. By Yigal schleifer)

A Final Crack in the Ilisu Dam Project?

Back in December, I wrote about the problems faced by the controversial Ilisu dam project in southeast Turkey, especially after its main financial backers -- Germany, Austria and Switzerland -- suspended credit guarantees for the project. Now the countries have announced that they are pulling out of the dam project completely. From Reuters:

Three Western export credit insurers quit Turkey's planned Ilisu dam on the Tigris River on Tuesday because it is failing World Bank environmental and heritage standards, throwing the 1.2 billion euro ($1.68 billion) project into doubt.

The dam is due to provide 3.8 billion kilowatt hours of electricity a year and help wean Turkey off reliance on energy imports. But it will also swallow up more than 80 villages and hamlets by the time of its planned completion in 2013.

Work on the project was halted in December when the three insurers -- Euler Hermes Kreditversicherung of Germany, Austria's Oesterreichische Kontrollbank and Swiss Schweizerische Exportrisikoversicherung -- ordered suppliers to stop working on the dam for 180 days.

"The agreed contractual conditions regarding the environment, cultural heritage and relocation could not be fulfilled," the insurers, which were providing credit guarantees for the German, Austrian and Swiss suppliers, said in a joint statement.

You can read the full article here.

Environment minister, Veysel Eroglu, said a few days ago that work on Ilisu would continue even without foreign backing, but it's not clear if Turkey has the financial or technical resources to build a dam like this. This latest news may not mean the end of the Ilisu project, but it certainly will delay its construction in a meaningful way.

For more background about the Ilisu dam project and the wider issue of water management in the southeast, take a look at this article I wrote last year for Eurasianet.

(Photo -- A view of the historic town of Hasankeyf, which would be flooded if the controversial Ilisu dam were to be built. By Yigal Schleifer)

The Looming Battle Over the Right to Water

Istanbul this week has been playing host to the 5th World Water Forum, a kind of masters of the water universe confab/trade show where global water policy is discussed, maybe determined (by who, exactly, is not clear), and big water deals are made (an estimated $400-$500 billion is invested annually in water-related projects).

The forum is organized by the World Water Council, a Marseilles-based organization that – even after spending a few days at the Forum – remains something of a mystery to me. Founded in 1996, the WWC describes itself as “An International Multi-Stakeholder Platform for a Water Secure World.” Critics of the group say it is nothing but a front for private sector interests who want to turn the world’s water resources into a market-based commodity. That might be an exaggeration, but the slickness and cool professionalism of the people working with the organization certainly don’t give it a warm and fuzzy NGO vibe.

Either way, the WWC – through the Water Forum, which is held every three years – seems to have become the main address for bringing together the major “stakeholders” dealing with water issues, from government ministers down to community activists (although they were mostly exiled to something called the “NGO Village,” located in a building that was a healthy walk from the conference’s main venue).

The debate over the privatization of water services and resources certainly hovered over the Forum, although the forces of privatization seem to have been diminished by the disastrous experience they have had in Latin America and other parts of the world over the last decade. The private water companies themselves seemed to go out of their way to present a new face at the event. I had a chance to speak at the Forum with the affable Alexandre Brailowsky, who holds the newly created position of “Social Empowerment Director” at Suez Environment (or the more ominous sounding “Social Engineering Director,” as one company press release referred to him), one of the largest private water and sanitation companies in the world. Brailowsky couldn’t tell me enough about how much the company has learned from its mistakes and how it is now interested in creating a process where “the people are involved.”

What struck me as the emerging defining debate regarding water is over the question of the right to water. To put it simply: is access to sufficient clean water a basic universal human right? Few would disagree with that notion (at least not in public), but the real question is what does enshrining a right to water mean in practical, legal and financial terms. This was clearly something that many of the “stakeholders” at the Forum were grappling with, considering that most agreed that fresh water resources are diminishing.

From my article about the issue in today’s Christian Science Monitor:

With fresh water resources becoming scarcer worldwide due to population growth and climate change, a growing movement is working to make access to clean water a basic universal human right.

But it's a contentious issue, experts say. Especially difficult is how to safely mesh public-sector interests with public ownership of resources – and determine the legal and economic ramifications of enshrining the right to water by law.

"It's an issue that is snowballing," says Tobias Schmitz, a water-resources expert with Both Ends, a Dutch environmental and development organization. Some 30 countries have a constitutional or legal provision ensuring individuals' access to water, up from a handful a few years ago, he says.

"Everybody is grappling with the issue, knowing that we need to secure this right. But the question now is over the practical application of this right," Dr. Schmitz says.

Government officials and leaders of numerous nongovernmental organizations and companies working on the water issue are meeting this week in Istanbul as part of the World Water Forum, which takes place every three years in a bid to shape global water policy.

One of the thorniest issues governmental officials at the forum have struggled with has been this question of the right to water. A declaration to be signed by the ministers of some 120 countries attending the forum is expected to refer to access to water as a "basic need," rather than a right….

…."This is not a semantic issue. If we can determine that water is a right, it gives citizens a tool they can use against their governments," says Maude Barlow, a senior adviser on water issues to the president of the UN General Assembly.

"If you believe it is a human right, then you believe that you can't refuse to give it to someone because they can't afford it," she says.

You can read the rest of the article here. For more information about the issue, visit this site, put up by a coalition of groups working on question of the right to water.

Turkey-Israel Water Deal Back on the Table?

Today's Jerusalem Post reports that a stalled plan for Israel to import water from Turkey may be revived. Turkey and Israel were in negotiations for several years over a plan that would have Israel buying water from the Manavgat river on Turkey's Mediterranean coast. Ankara even went as far as to build a kind of water storage facility on the river. [For some interesting background on Turkey's Manavgat plans, read Scott Peterson's Christian Science Monitor article from 2000.] But the deal ultimately never materialized, mostly because of problems in finding an easy and affordable way to transport the water and because, in recent years, Israel has moved towards building desalination plants as the technology associated with them became less expensive. 

But according to Post's report, officials from the quasi-governmental Jewish National Fund (JNF) recently told a government committee looking into Israel's growing water crisis about some possible future plans, among them going back to the Manavgat:

[Russell Robinson, the organization's chief executive officer] and several of the other JNF officials told the committee that an Israeli innovation could be worth looking into in conjunction with importing water from Turkey.

Inventor Roni Yafe has invented a cloth sleeve that he says can hold fresh water and transport it over long distances. Fresh water is lighter than salt water, so the sleeves float and can be towed by ships.

Yafe has tested a 60,000 cubic meter bag, but said he believed a load of 300,000 cu.m. could be towed. He also has said he could import 500 million cubic meters of water per year using this method, the equivalent of five large desalination plants.

The Water Authority has remained skeptical of Yafe's invention, awaiting further tests before seriously considering it. The government also prefers desalination over dependence on a foreign country, especially one whose relations with Israel occasionally resemble a roller coaster ride.

Foreign Ministry legal advisor Ehud Keinan told the water crisis committee Thursday that plans to import water from Turkey had not been implemented because of high costs, technical difficulties and internal Turkish issues. Keinan handled negotiations on the issue from 2000 to 2006.

Worth noting is that Turkey has, for the last few years, been experiencing water shortages of its own. In fact, following a drought two years ago, the famous water falls on the Manavgat river itself went dry after water managers were forced to restrict the river's flow.

Cracks in the Ilisu Dam Project?

The Ilisu dam project in southeast Turkey has been one of the country's most controversial energy and infrastructure plans for years. The proposed dam, which would be Turkey's 2nd largest, would lead to the displacement of tens of thousands -- mostly Kurdish villagers -- and the flooding of Hasankeyf, a unique, historic town on the Tigris River. The Turkish government claims the dam is an important part of a larger plan to bring economic development to the struggling region, but locals believe the damage caused by the project will outweigh any of its benefits. 

The project might now be in danger. According to an article in today's English-language Hurriyet, some of the Ilisu dam's main financial backers -- Austria, Germany and Switzerland -- are considering pulling out of the project because Turkey has failed to meet certain criteria regarding the dam's impact on the environment and human rights. Turkey could still move ahead with building the dam without the three countries' loans, but their backing out would still be a major blow and an important victory for the dam's opponents.

I visited the area around Hasankeyf last summer and filed this report for Eurasianet, looking at the Ilisu project and the larger economic development plan for the region.

UPDATE -- The German government has now officially withdrawn its support for the Ilisu dam.

(Two children in Hasankeyf fishing in the Tigris River. The town, which contains ruins dating back to Assyrian and Roman times, would end up mostly underwater if the Ilisu dam project is realized. By Yigal Schleifer)