134 - Protecting the Lower Congo River from large hydro-electric dam developments

134 - Protecting the Lower Congo River from large hydro-electric dam developments

Latest version in this language: Version as sent to Plenary | Published on: 04 Oct 2021

AWARE that the World Commission on Dams (WCD) (2000) provided seven strategic priorities and related policy principles for future development of dams that include: gaining public acceptance, comprehensive options assessment, sustaining rivers and livelihoods;

NOTING the poor implementation of the WCD recommendations, with almost 500 million river-dependent people potentially impacted by large dams, the need for more comprehensive assessments of dam costs and benefits, and the social inequities between dam beneficiaries and those disadvantaged by dams;

NOTING that large dams have already displaced ca. 80 million people and compromised the livelihoods of 472 million more;

RECOGNISING that Resolution 5.089 Dams and hydraulic infrastructure (Jeju, 2012) called for IUCN Members and Commissions to provide advice on plans for hydraulic infrastructure options and to join formal processes around dam and hydraulic infrastructure options;

ALARMED that large hydropower schemes continue to be proposed as ‘green’ or ‘clean’ energy, despite aforementioned studies showing that their benefits are far outweighed by their negative impacts on the environment, people and climate;

RECOGNISING that hydropower can bring significant environmental load in terms of aquatic and riparian ecosystem and species loss, as well as loss of livelihoods dependent on those resources;

NOTING that a recent call (Rivers for Recovery, 2020) recommends upgrades to existing hydropower projects to increase efficiency instead of building new dams, and development of green infrastructure that protects and restores freshwater ecosystems, biodiversity and livelihoods;

NOTING a new example of hydropower development (Inga 3, Grand Inga - Inga 4-8, Pioka and Matadi) that could substantially impact one of the world’s largest river catchments, in the region of the Lower Congo;

RECOGNISING that legal, socially beneficial and responsibly operated activities such as the construction of large infrastructure can nonetheless cause, or are likely to cause, severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment;

ALARMED that development could be detrimental to the Lower Congo’s rich freshwater biodiversity, displace ca. 6,300 people (International Rivers, 2014) and disturb the ecology of the marine Congo canyon; and

CONCERNED that the development plans for the Congo could bypass procedures to ensure that projects are awarded transparently and via competitive bidding (CORAP, 2021);

The IUCN World Conservation Congress, at its session in Marseille, France:

1. CALLS ON Commissions and Members to review the recommendations of the WCD and other more recent documents and synthesise this into a contemporary set of recommendations for good practice;

2. CALLS on the Director General to send a memo to the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo encouraging him to:

a. support protection and restoration of Lower Congo ecosystems;

b. balance development by enacting legal protections and governance for the Lower Congo; and

c. ensure that all contracts involving major infrastructure projects impacting the Lower Congo include a provision for local stakeholders to be included in planning, and have their concerns incorporated into further discussions, according to Resolution 7.008 Protecting rivers and their associated ecosystems as corridors in a changing climate (Marseille, 2020), and require all investors to adhere to the performance standards of the International Finance Corporation; and

3. ASKS the Species Survival Commission (SSC) to send a memo to the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo urgently informing him on the potential threats to the ecosystems of the Lower Congo that could be caused by the development plans for the dams.

In 2000, the World Commission on Dams concluded that the benefits derived from large dams often come at an unacceptable, environmental and social price1. The same conclusion applies today2, and the objective of this Motion is to highlight actions to address this. However, specifically, this Motion is catalyzed by the need to urgently address development plans for the Lower Congo region2, from Kinshasa to the coast. It occupies 2% of the Congo Basin but contains nearly 30% of the basin's fish species3: about 446 species, and ca. 30% are endemic4. They are highly adapted to the turbid, fast-flowing waters of the rapids, which drive high levels of speciation3. The Lower Congo is the second-highest center of threatened freshwater species in Central Africa5. It is a freshwater biodiversity hotspot, in terms of species richness, endemism, and threats. The Congo River is one of a few, long, substantially free-flowing rivers left in the world6 and it should not be a target for hydropower development.

In June 2021, Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) was given exclusive rights to the Grand Inga projects by the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), bypassing key procedural requirements to ensure projects are awarded transparently and through competitive bidding. These projects would threaten the freshwater species present3. The full Grand Inga scheme would divert 83% of the Congo River’s average flow, raise water levels as far as 180 km upstream, create a reservoir of about 40 km2, and permanently displace ca. 6,300 people7. Lessons should be learned from Inga I and II, which displaced thousands, destroyed livelihoods, and impoverished generations while plunging the DRC into debt8,9. Despite all this, 81% of people in the DRC still lack access to electricity10.

The river’s large sediment load also creates the Congo Plume, a plankton-rich fan water extending 300,000 km2 into the Atlantic Ocean. It is a carbon sink of global importance, which could collapse if the sediment flow which sustains it is interrupted11.

FMG plans to use Grand Inga’s power to generate hydrogen and ammonia which could be sold to European markets, leaving a small fraction of the generated electricity to the people of the DRC.

FMG also has interests in two other dam sites in the Lower Congo. One at Matadi, potentially threatening migratory fishes that are probably important for subsistence fisheries. The dam at Pioka would substantially block the river, creating a 140 km long reservoir that would submerge suburbs of Kinshasa12, destroy several ecologically important rapids, and potentially affect a Ramsar site south of Brazzaville13.

Sources:
1 World Commission on Dams (2000). https://archive.internationalrivers.org/sites/default/files/attached-files/world_commission_on_dams_final_report.pdf
2 Richter & Postel (2010). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46093706_Lost_in_Development's_Shadow_The_Downstream_Human_Consequences_of_Dams
3 Research Outreach (2019). https://researchoutreach.org/articles/fishes-lower-congo-river-extreme-case-species-divergence-convergent-evolution/
4 IUCN (2021). IUCN Red List
5 Brooks et al. (2011). https://www.iucn.org/content/status-and-distribution-freshwater-biodiversity-central-africa-0
6 Grill et al. (2019). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1111-9
7 International Rivers (2014). https://archive.internationalrivers.org/resources/congo-river-death-by-a-thousand-cuts-8222
8 International Rivers (2008). https://www.riverresourcehub.org/resources/community-history-of-inga-1-and-inga-2-3622/
9 International Rivers (2008). https://www.riverresourcehub.org/resources/inga-1-and-inga-2-dams-3616/
10 World Bank (2019). https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS?locations=CD
11 Showers (2009). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12685-009-0001-8
12 Deng et al. (2020). https://www.gei-journal.com/en/upload/files/2020/1/202001003.pdf
13 Ramsar (2021). https://rsis.ramsar.org/ris/1857
  • A Rocha International [United Kingdom]
  • Culture and Environment Preservation Association [Cambodia]
  • Derecho, Ambiente y Recursos Naturales [Peru]
  • Dynamique des Groupes des Peuples Autochtones [Congo (DROC)]
  • Femmes Solidaires [Congo (DROC)]
  • Fisheries Action Coalition Team [Cambodia]
  • Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales [Argentina]
  • HUTAN [France]
  • New Mexico BioPark Society [United States of America]
  • Royal Society for Protection of Nature [Bhutan]
  • Synchronicity Earth [United Kingdom]
  • The WILD Foundation [United States of America]
  • Wetlands International [The Netherlands]

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