Real Risk

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PHANDA

KUWA IS

a hydroelectric dam planned for

construction on the lower Zambezi River in

Mozambique. Its reservoir will inundate an area of

approximately 100 square kilometres, displacing about 1,400

people.

People and families displaced by the dam are entitled

to compensation for their loss; however those individuals living

downstream of the dam site will receive no compensation at all.

The total project is expected to cost around USD2.165 billion,

while the power generated from the project is marked for use in

energy-intensive industries such as coal mining and aluminum

smelting, and for export. None of the power to be generated by

the project is aimed at rural electrification. In April 2006, the

Import-Export Bank of China (Eximbank) agreed to finance the

Mphanda Nkuwa dam.

Community risk assessment

In 2006, Justiça Ambiental conducted community risk assess-

ments in two of the bairros

located in close proximity to the dam

site as part of the World Commission on Dams recommendation

to adopt a rights and risks approach to dam construction.

The

research made use of participatory exercises such as community

and resource mapping, threat listing and ranking, seasonal calen-

dars, transect walks, semi-structured interviews, and numerous

focus group discussions. Research involved living in the field for

around three weeks and making extensive use of observational

techniques and informal discussions.

The bairro

– Geographically, the study sites comprise numer-

ous isolated homesteads. The area has a well-defined summer

rainfall season but rains are variable, resulting in very arid condi-

tions during times of drought.

The bairro is characterized by its exceptionally remote nature.

The nearest significant town, Tete, is accessible by a 25km walk

and subsequent 70km minibus ride, or a one- to two-day dug-out-

canoe trip. Such a level of isolation has resulted in very limited

access to formal state infrastructure and institutions. This has in

turn resulted in reliance on informal or ‘grey’,

mechanisms for

social control, and on the extended family as a vital means for

coping during times of stress. The bairro is also highly gendered

in terms of access to resources. It has access to only rudimentary

technologies, is dependent on the local Nyungwe dialect, and has

limited access to cash which results in inadequate access to goods

and services that cannot be produced locally.

Livelihoods

– Every member of the bairro is reliant, to some

extent, upon subsistence agriculture. Vegetables are grown year

round where people have access to perennial rivers, and season-

ally where access to water is limited. Vegetables are grown in the

degraded river channel as regulated flows from Cahorra Bassa

have removed the possibility of recession agriculture, and have

also reduced the fertility of the floodplain as a whole.

Although

every individual undertakes farming to some extent, inequalities

in access to land mean that many find themselves in some form

of remunerative agreement, often working the land of more

wealthy individuals for some part of the year. Farming is also

supplemented by activities such as fishing, basic carpentry,

pottery and basketry, wild fruit and honey collection, hunting,

spiritual and medicinal guidance, and livestock. As such, the

people of the area and their livelihoods are intimately connected

with the state of the environment.

Impacts and risk

The cash-strapped, self-regulated (by grey social control), rural,

isolated bairro and its agrarian economy stands to be impacted

heavily by the massive social and environmental changes that will

be wrought with the construction and operation of the dam at

Mphanda Nkuwa.

The construction phase of the project will result in the arrival

of a large male migrant labour force at the dam site, comprising

both urban and rural migrant labourers from across Southern

Africa and accompanied by a host of other individuals looking to

make a livelihood out of the secondary economic impacts to be

felt at the dam site. Such an event will destabilize the admittedly

un-utopian, but currently functioning social system for several

reasons.

The system’s self-regulation will battle to cope with the newly

arriving migrants who neither know nor respect the existing insti-

tutions of power in the bairro. This will be compounded by the

fact that newly arriving migrants will be cash earners, substan-

tially shifting the axis of power in the cash-strapped bairro. The

lack of amenities in the area, into which cash has suddenly been

injected, will likely give rise to unsavoury elements such as

substance abuse and transactional sex. The uneven distribution

of cash in the gendered bairro will likely further compromise

women’s already precarious position in sexual relationships.

These activities will probably impact heavily on HIV infection

rates, for which Tete Province already has the highest in

Mozambique – such problems will be exacerbated in the context

of limited knowledge about treatment and testing.

The inevitable destabilization of the community, in the context

of rapid modernization, will also stress dramatically the already

fragile notion of community and the existing sense of family. As

such, the local economy and existing informal, social safety nets

will come under intense pressure. Such impacts are likely to be

felt most acutely by those groups which are already most vulner-

able: women, children and the elderly.

Livelihoods at risk:

the case of The Mphanda Nkuwa dam

James Morrissey, New College, Oxford