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dam-l PR: New Dams Report Criticises the track record of European firms



PRESS RELEASE From Corner House, UK.
27 March 2000

New dams report criticises the track record of European firms

European firms are violating people’s rights, ruining local environments and enriching themselves by building dams overseas, despite a litany of failures and abuses examined in a report published this month.

The report – Dams Incorporated: The Record of Twelve European Dam Building Companies, by Dorset-based group The Corner House – calls for laws to curtail the industry’s “power to oppress”, including holding them to the same environmental, social and economic standards when working overseas to which they are at home.

The report is to be submitted for consideration to the World Commission on Dams .

The twelve firms – ABB (UK-based, Swiss), Balfour Beatty (UK), Coyne et Bellier (Fra), Electrowatt (Swiss), Impregilo (Ita), Knight Piesold (UK), Kvaerner (Swed), Lahmeyer (Ger), Siemens (Ger), Skanska (Swed), Sogreah (Fra) and VA Tech (Austria) – have built, or are building, some of the most destructive dams in the world.

These dams include:
* Ilisu – a Turkish dam project that opponents say is being used to eradicate the Kurds as an ethnic group;
* Lesotho Highlands – where a $2m case of dam bribery involving 20 or more foreign firms is now being prosecuted in a local court;
* Itaipu and Yacyreta – the most infamous examples of hydro-corruption, on the border of Paraguay and Argentina. The combined cost of the two dams was more than $30 billion – it should have been a little over $7 billion;
* Chixoy – where Guatemalan armed forces massacred more than 400 Maya Achi indigenous people;
* Pangue and Ralco – in Chile, where local people were not consulted before the projects were started;
* Three Gorges – where 1.3 million Chinese people will be forced from their homes.

Europe’s dam builders are exporting technology that has been discredited at home. They are increasingly looking to private sector funding, often underwritten by export credit guarantees. “Not only have the companies continued to remain involved in projects where human rights abuses have been demonstrated or where resettlement plans have been inadequate,” the report says, “they have in many cases actively promoted such projects against local opposition and often in contravention of their own corporate environmental guidelines.”

 “It is hoped that the report will provide local communities, host governments and potential investors with information to help assess the probity, reliability and ethical standards of the companies involved.”

“Many dam-affected communities are now calling for reparations. It is time to hold Europe’s dam building companies accountable for their past. Documenting their record is key to that process,” the report says. “It is also hoped that a knowledge of the record of European dam builders could help European citizens who are demanding that the companies which operate from their countries, often with the backing of their tax-payers’ money, and certainly with their governments’ blessing, are held accountable for their actions abroad.”

The introduction to the report calls for a range of policy changes that should be made if the European dam building industry’s power to oppress is to be curtailed.

For further media inquiries, please contact:
Nick Hildyard +44 (0)1258-473795, email cornerhouse@gn.apc.org
or Matthew Grainger +44 (0)1865-249392, email katmatt@gn.apc.org