Human Rights and the Environment

Case Study: Hydropower Project

Country: Angola, Namibia

Region: Africa

Issues: Public Participation, Infrastructure, Displacement, Indigenous People

The environmentally damaging plan of the governments of Namibia and Angola to construct the Epupa Falls Hydropower Project on the Kunene River in Namibia may result in human rights abuses against an indigenous people. The Namibian government has been planning for years to construct the dam at the Epupa Falls. The indigenous Himba people have fiercely opposed the project because the dam promises to flood at least 12,000 out of their ancestral homes. The Himba, a pastoral people who have lived and tended their flocks in this desert area for over 500 years, received a temporary reprieve in 1999 when Namibia and Angola failed to reach an agreement on a site for the proposed dam.

Although a consortium of Namibian, Swedish, Norwegian and Angolan consultants prepared a feasibility study that concluded that the Epupa Falls site would be more economically viable than smaller alternative sites, the study is seriously inadequate. For example, the study states that the Himba people have not been consulted and the study fails to address under international and Namibian law the dam's adverse affect on the Himba people's rights, among others, to life, health, water and culture, including destruction of sacred gravesites.[1]

[1] See Epupa Verdict Put Off, The Namibian, Nov. 1, 1999, at http://irn.org/programs/epupa/991101.meeting.html (last visited at Feb. 16, 2001); Sidney L. Harring, Commentary on the Environmental Assessment Report of the Feasibility Study on the Proposed Lower Cunene Hydropower Scheme, Dec. 1997.

Last Updated: 09/09/05