Rogun Dam is an embankment dam under construction on the Vakhsh River in southern Tajikistan. It is one of the planned hydroelectric power plants of Vakhsh Cascade. The Rogun hydropower project was first started 40 years ago. But the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Tajik civil war and problems in securing investments have delayed construction. Due to its controversial state, construction was suspended in August 2012 pending World Bank reports. The dam has drawn complaints from neighbor Uzbekistan, which fears it will negatively impact its lucrative cotton crops. The dispute over the project has contributed significantly to bitter relations between the two former Soviet republics. The organization Human Rights Watch writes in a report that "Tajikistan is counting on Rogun to solve its annual winter energy crisis. The proposed project will have an installed capacity of 3,600 Megawatts, 30 percent more than the capacity of Tajikistan’s next largest dam and major energy supplier, Nurek HPP. The World Bank has not committed to funding the project, but it has commissioned two feasibility studies on Rogun, the final drafts of which were published on June 18, 2016. Tajikistan, meanwhile, has committed to complying with the Bank policy on involuntary resettlement. Rogun is emblematic of the large-scale hydropower projects that the Bank has recently re-embraced. The Bank has acknowledged that the need to resettle so many people to make way for Rogun will be one of the most negative impacts of building the dam"[1] She also reports that "Since 2009 the government has resettled over 1,500 of the roughly 7,000 families slated for relocation. [...] The government had given the people to be resettled compensation for their homes and the use of an assigned plot in a resettlement village, and left them to build their new homes. But the low payments and rising costs of supplies made it difficult for them to get what they needed, let alone to hire qualified laborers."[1]. At the contruction site, local inhabitants lamented that blasting for these materials has damaged their homes, shattering all of their windows and cracking their walls, and these demages were not compensated by the government.
Relocation and controversial compensation measures are main drivers of protests by local peoples and concerns of international organizations such as Human Rights Watch. Even at the resettlement sites, people had to give up cultivation for lack of water for irrigation and even drinking tap water was not always available. The researcher also denounces that "Tajikistan uses forced and child labor in some of its cotton fields during the autumn harvest across the country, and that was one more unpleasant surprise for relocated children who began attending an existing school in Dangara. Children who refused to work were slapped or hit with switches and humiliated at the morning roll call. When parents protested, school officials refused to stop the practice. Instead, they began paying the children a token sum, a fraction of the already low wages adult laborers receive for harvesting cotton."[1] According to a Human Rights Watch report, "Various parties, including the government of neighboring Uzbekistan, have raised other concerns about the Rogun Dam project, such as the feasibility of its height or composition, its potential environmental impacts – including their potential to further harm human rights – potential political consequences, and where Tajikistan will procure the estimated US$2 to $6 billion required for its construction.”
Many of Tajiki citizens have migrated abroad and remittances build almost half of the country's GDP. HRW report observes that "Resettled individuals who would otherwise earn income from employment abroad are faced with the dilemma of leaving their families in an unfinished home to earn money for construction or staying while spending their savings."[2] On June 17, 2014, the World Bank published the final draft of its Rogun Dam studies for consultation, as well as its own draft paper, “Key Issues for Consideration on the Proposed Rogun Hydropower Project.” The World Bank acknowledged that the required resettlements would have a major impact on building the Rogun Dam, that the project would result in economic, as well as physical, displacement, and that restoring livelihoods during and after resettlement would be a critical element of the resettlement process. However, while the draft Environmental and Social Impact Assessment importantly considers international environmental treaties and international water laws, it does not consider relevant international human rights instruments regarding resettlement. As these studies are finalized, the World Bank, its consultants, and its economic and social panel of experts should be guided by international human rights standards.
At the same time, last summer Italy-based infrastructure company Salini Impregilo won the contract to complete the dam at a cost of $3.9bn.
Some electricity could flow from 2018, but it will take another seven and a half years for the dam to reach its full height, the contractors say.
Pakistan and Afghanistan have already offered to buy part of the energy produced by Rogun and other nearby countries will likely do the same. Proof of this is the fact that a few weeks ago a parallel project was launched to modernize the power grid linking Tajikistan to Pakistan, an additional way of taking Rogun’s electricity outside the country.
(See less)
