Damocracy aims to unite dam-affected communities

A Malta-based company has linked dam-affected communities in the Amazon and Turkey through an international movement it created called Damocracy.

East to West Communications devised the Damocracy concept to unite dam-affected communities and organisations fighting to protect the world’s last free-flowing rivers, founding partner Caroline Muscat explained.

A week ago Damocracy released a same-named 34-minute documentary on the internet.

The Damocracy film focuses on the cultural and natural heritage the world stands to lose as the foundations of two large-scale dams are being laid despite widespread resistance – the Belo Monte dam in the Amazon, and the Ilisu dam in southeast Turkey.

“The film production idea came about after the Rio+20 Earth Summit last year when world governments failed to provide real solutions to climate change and ignored the devastation being caused by these massive dams,” said Ms Muscat, whose communications company is dedicated to campaigns for social and environmental change.

The production involved a team of dedicated people working in different parts of the world.

Award-winning film-maker Todd Southgate travelled from the Amazon rainforest in Brazil to the mountains and plains of southeast Turkey, visiting communities threatened by the two major dam projects.

The Ilisu dam will flood the ancient city of Hasankeyf and the surrounding Tigris Valley, an area that meets nine out of 10 Unesco World Heritage Sites’ criteria. The Turkish Government has consistently refused to apply for Unesco status for the area.

Built on the banks of the Tigris in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia, Hasankeyf is thought to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world, with evidence of settlements dating back 12,000 years.

Over 30,000 people will be displaced if the Ilisu dam is built. Its impact will be felt as far as the marshes of Basra in Iraq.

Work on the Ilisu dam continues in defiance of court rulings halting the dam, and the withdrawal of funding from European credit agencies in 2009 when the Turkish Government failed to meet almost all the criteria to protect the environment, cultural heritage and local communities.

In Brazil, Belo Monte’s two reservoirs and canals will flood a total area of 668 square kilometres, of which 400 square kilometres are standing forest.

Up to 40,000 residents will be displaced, including 25,000 indigenous people. A permanent drought will be caused on the river’s Big Bend.

Scientists fear that the hundreds of dams planned in the Amazon Basin, including the Belo Monte project, may cause the extinction of one-third of all fish species in the area.

Damocracy argues that large-scale dams should not be considered clean energy at all.

Interviewed in the film, Philip Fearnside of the National Amazon Research Institute says forests flooded by Belo Monte’s reservoirs would generate enormous quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Apart from the internet, the documentary will be shown at international film festivals as other versions in different languages, including Portuguese, French, and Italian are in the making.

It can be viewed at www.youtube.com/DamocracyTV. Visit www.damocracy.org for more information.