Archived press release

Balfour beatty faces agm protest over ilisu dam

2 May 2001

DON'T BE DAMMED!
Balfour Beatty Faces AGM Challenge Over Dam Building
PHOTO OPPORTUNITY

When: 11:00 am, Wednesday 2 May
Where: Marlborough Gate, Hyde Park/The Royal Lancaster Hotel, Lancaster Terrace
Before the AGM, The Ilisu Dam Campaign and others will be building a dam from Balfour Beatty“share certificates” to highlight the company's share in social and environmental destruction. There will be continued demonstrations including with Kurdish music and dancing during the AGM.

UK construction giant Balfour Beatty faces a challenge at its Annual General Meeting today over its destructive dam building practices. Friends of the Earth has submitted a resolution calling on Balfour Beatty to change its company policy to support the principles and guidelines set out in the World Commission on Dams (WCD) recent authoritative report.[1]FOE hopes that the resolution will gain widespread support from shareholders concerned about Balfour Beatty's bad public reputation and poor environmental and social standards.

Balfour Beatty is planning to build the Ilisu Dam in Turkey on the Tigris River, forty miles upstream from the Turkish/Iraqi/Syrian border. It will flood 15 towns and 52 villages and displace up to 78,000 Kurdish people [2]. Balfour Beatty is seeking a £200 million export credit from the UK Government to build the Dam, which fails to meet WCD standards in numerous respects.

Companies are coming under increasing pressure to improve their environmental and social performance. FOE has bought its £30,000 stake in Balfour Beatty to show that it is serious in its intent to challenge environmentally and socially damaging activities and to make corporations more socially responsible. The resolution gives Balfour Beatty's investors the

chance to signal their support for higher environmental and social standards.

The WCD guidelines should be a positive opportunity for Balfour Beatty to improve their social and environmental performance in the hydro-electric sector and to demonstrate best practice in this area of their business. However, Balfour Beatty's response to the WCD so far has been lukewarm. Unlike other construction companies, the company did not get involved in the development of the principles and guidelines and is already lagging behind key competitors such as Skanska, which has adopted the WCD principles and guidelines.

Charles Secrett, Executive Director of Friends of the Earth said:
“Our resolution challenges Balfour Beatty's board to show that they care about their reputation and about their environmental and social performance. The Ilisu Dam would be an environmental disaster, a social evil and a threat to peace. No company -and no Government - which is serious about respecting international law and ethical standards should touch it with a bargepole.

Friends of the Earth is absolutely determined to push corporations to behave in a more socially responsible way. It is no longer acceptable - or even rational - for Balfour Beatty to put this year's bottom line before the long-term needs of people and the planet. The company will continue to suffer serious damage to its reputation until it learns this essential truth”.

The Ilisu Dam Campaign (01865 200550) has produced an alternative “annual report”on Balfour Beatty available from the Campaign or from FOE Press Office.

NOTES TO EDITORS

[1] The World Commission on Dams (WCD) was set up by the World Bank and the IUCN (World Conservation Union) the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in 1997 “to review the performance of large dams and make recommendations for future planning of water and energy projects”.The Commission consisted of and was supported by government representatives, the private sector,academics, respected civil servants, members of the NGO community, multilateral development agencies and affected communities.

[2] The Ilisu 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 easily be voiced for fear of state reprisals.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 dam and its proposed sister a few miles further upstream will control water flows from the Tigris into Syria and Iraq, threatening regional conflict (described by defence analysts as a “water war”).BALFOUR BEATTY BRIEF

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