Archived press release

ETHICAL FOREIGN POLICY - A "DAM DISGRACE" Labour Challenged to End Backing for Kurdish Dam Disaster

1 March 1999

Labour Challenged to End Backing for Kurdish Dam Disaster
The Government faces growing calls to scrap Government support for a major dam project which threatens to destroy scores of Kurdish towns and villages. Friends of the Earth,which released details of the plan today, has described it as a “dam disgrace”. FOE has written to Stephen Byers MP, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, demanding that Government support for the dam to be withdrawn and calling the decision “the key test for Labour's 'green' and 'ethical' foreign policy”.

The Ilusu dam project will cost £1 billion. It will be built by a consortium including Balfour Beatty, the lead contractor in the notorious Pergau Dam project in Malaysia. The company is seeking guarantees worth hundreds of millions of pounds from the Export Credit Guarantee Department (ECGD), part of the DTi.

The proposed dam is on the Tigris River, forty miles from the Turkish/Iraqi/Syrian border.It will flood 15 towns and 52 villages and displace up to 20,000 Kurdish people. The Ilusu project is part of the South East Anatolia Project (GAP), which has already displaced hundreds of thousands of Kurdish people, many without compensation. Because of the war between the Turkish army and Kurdish guerillas, local opposition to such schemes cannot be voiced for fear of state reprisals.

The towns which will be lost include Hasankeyf, the only Anatolian town to have survived since the Middle Ages. In 1978, the Turkish Government's Department of Culture gave the town “complete archeological protection” (decision A-1105). The World Bank has refused to back the project, partly because it violates UN rules aimed at preventing border disputes between states that share water resources. Turkey refused to support the 1997 UN Convention on the Non-Navigational Uses of Transboundary Waterways.

Friends of the Earth has discovered that the ECGD has no rules in place requiring environmental assessments of large projects before guarantees are given. A Written Answer to Cynog Dafis MP (Hansard Written Answers, 11 Feb 1999, column 411) claimed that the ECGD “is undertaking further work ... to determine the best means of further enhancing its policies and procedures and of raising the awareness of UK exporters, investors and overseas buyers on its approach to environmental issues. Relevant documents will be

placed in the Library of the House when this process is complete”.

The ECGD has claimed that a “full Environmental Impact Assessment study [was] produced by Hydro Concepts Engineering, Switzerland” and submitted to the Swiss Government.[Hansard Written Answers, 11 Feb 1999, column 411). The Swiss Government review of this assessment was given to the ECGD in July 1998. Neither the study nor the review has been published. Balfour Beatty is quoted in today's Guardian as claiming only that “preliminary environmental assessments ... have been made and they should not be published”. The UK Foreign Office is believed to be angry that the DTi has gone ahead with the project without proper consultation. Only two weeks ago, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook claimed that “we strengthen our environmental policy by having a foreign policy that stands up for democracy, human rights, accountability and openness. If people have no voice,their leaders have no interest in the environment”.

Commenting, Tony Juniper, Policy Director of Friends of the Earth, said:

“This story is a dam disgrace. The Ilusu project will wreak environmental and social havoc and wreck the lives of thousands of Kurds. British Government support for this project is a direct intervention in a war zone - the DTi plans to pour hundreds of million's of pounds' worth of petrol onto a blazing fire. Only a fortnight ago we heard about Labour's plans for a 'green' and 'ethical' foreign policy. My Byers should never have allowed the plan to get so far. And if Mr Cook is retain any credibility whatever, he must now ensure that British Government support for this dam stops at once.”

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust