If the Bakun Dam is built, 10,000 indigenous people will be forcibly resettled. Is the economic basis on which the dam is to be built really justified?
The Bakun Hydroelectric Project in Sarawak in Malaysia is an enormously ambitious engineering project which will combine the Bakun Dam itself with a proposed 650-km (400 miles) long underwater cable across the South China Sea. If completed, that would be the longest such cable in the world and it then connects with another twice as long to take the power created by the 2,400 MW dam to the power-thirsty residents of Malaysia’s cities and industrial parks. Not only are the engineering feats startling, so too is the price – initial estimates of US2 billion are floating around and, as is the way with these things, that price would seem set inevitably to rise as work continues. After all, the cable sections are set to cost more than US$3 billion or more on their own.
Yet it is not only the cost that is controversial, so too is the environmental impact and the effects on human society. Some 10,000 indigenous people are set to be forcibly removed from their homelands and resettled elsewhere in order to build the dam. Many of these people have very strong associations with their land and the ancestors they have buried there and to whom they continue to feel deep connections. Further, their livelihood is also closely related to knowledge about the land and its resources which is very specific to the location. In addition, around 70,000 hectares of jungle land are being cleared in order to make way for the dam. It is increasingly apparent, with the continued onset of global climate change, what role the jungles have in regulating the atmosphere. Rumours abound of another 200,000 hectares which have been earmarked for plantation use, again changing the ecology of the region.
Opposition to the dam, in common with many other dams across East Asia, has been led by international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as Friends of the Earth, as well as local people affected by the project. The NGOs have gained some success over the years by raising awareness of the issues involved with dam-building and the often questionable assumptions that underlay many economic decisions about whether or not to build. In particular, it is clear that the World Bank’s previous enthusiasm for dam-building has been significantly tempered and the efforts to complete environmental impact assessments taken rather more seriously now than before. The Bakun HEP still seems likely to go ahead in one form or another, but even if it does, it should do so on a rather more transparent and open manner than before.
