The agreement gives some hope to the 170,000 members of the Ngäbe Buglé community who risk losing their land and culture.
Panama's government
agreed to suspend the highly contested Barro Blanco hydroelectric dam
Thursday after meeting with Indigenous leaders who have
mobilized
against the project over concerns that their rights have been violated
and their land, culture and livelihoods are threatened.
As a result, the government will meet representatives of the European
banks funding the project on July 6 in a bid to explore various options
with Panamean mining company GENISA, in accordance with a previous deal
reached with Indigenous authorities signed on August 10, 2015.
The
Ngäbe Buglé
communities affected by the project have argued that their rights to
free, prior and informed consent under International Labor Organization
Convention 169 have been violated and that they never gave permission
for the dam.
The government will then meet again with Indigenous authorities to seek a solution to their concerns.
The banks include
Germany's DEG, Deutsche Entwicklungsgesellschaft, which has invested
about US$22 million in the project.
“DEG is a bank
whose projects should aim at favoring the development of the countries
where they are carried out. But throughout this process, started in
2011, there have been conflicts without effective answers,” Guadalupe
Rodriguez from the German nonprofit group Rettet den Regenwald, or Save
the Jungle, told Deutsche Welle.
Nevertheless, she
recognized that DEG and Netherlands Development Finance Company,
another European funder, finally set up a mechanism meant to receive the
complaints of affected communities. However, she argues that they have
still failed to appropriately address other matters.
The Barro Blanco dam was suspended in 2015 in light of
Ngäbe Buglé
protests in anticipation of a full agreement, but the company still
moved ahead with work on the project.
On May 24, the
company opened the floodgates on the dam to start filling the reservoir.
At the same time, authorities forcibly removed nearly three dozen
people and demolished their nearby encampment, according to M-10, a
movement representing affected communities.
However, thanks
to the Indigenous mobilization, the dam did not exceed 90 meters above
sea level, traditional authorities of Ngabe Bugle community stated.
According to the
Center for International Environmental Law, filling the reservoir will
flood nearly 15 acres (6 hectares) of Indigenous lands surrounding the
site of the dam on the Tabasara River.
Government
officials claim that the communities were informed of the impending
eviction and plan to move forward with testing the reservoirs, Prensa
Latina reported. A government spokesperson offered communities an
apology for any “confusion” that may have occurred.
Critics of the dam
fear that the project will displace tens of thousands of people, harm
the local agricultural sector, and flood
Ngäbe Buglé land and
traditional sacred sites. The Tabasara River is fundamental to the
livelihoods of the local
Ngäbe Buglé people, who rely on it for water,
fishing, and agricultural production along its fertile banks.
Source:
TeleSur TV
Clementina Pérez, Ngäbe Buglé
