The Meroë Dam Project

The Merowe Dam (also known as the Hamdab Hydro Project) opened in 2009 with great publicity: it was the largest contemporary hydropower project in Africa. 9km in length and soaring to 67m high, the dam holds back a reservoir extending over 170km upstream. 10 vast MW Francis turbines are expected to generate an annual yield of 5.5 terawatt hours (TWh), necessitating the upgrading of the national grid to cope with the extra supply. 

            The plan for a dam at the Fourth Cataract is not a new one. It was proposed several times in the early 20^th century, and revived again in 1979. Feasibility studies took place but lack of investor interest stalled proceedings until 2002. Construction began in 2004 with the China International Water and Electronics Corporation constructing the dam, the German firm Lahmeyer International managing the project and providing civil engineers, and Alstom (a French company) supplying the generators and turbines. The project cost $1.2 billion, with the majority of funding coming from the Middle East and the China Import Export Bank.

            Whilst Sudan’s need for a reliable electricity supply is not debated, the environmental, human and archaeological damage caused by the dam and, more especially, the reservoir it has created have been of ongoing concern. The reservoir has increased the surface area of the Nile by an estimated 700km², increasing water loss due to evaporation by as much as 1.5 billion m³.  Although an official plan was in place to re-house 60,000 people who would be affected by the flooding, the UN expressed concern in 2007 that many displaced people had received neither information nor assistance from the government as the reservoir’s water level rose. Those who were forcibly resettled argued that the land they were given was of inferior quality and that compensation for assets (notably homes and date palms) was inadequate. The compensation scheme only covered the settled population, and so nomads have been excluded from help entirely. 

            As with the Aswan Dam to the north, the Merowe Dam has also heralded an archaeological disaster. A significant area between the Fourth and Fifth Cataracts was submerged, drowning beneath the waters archaeological sites dating back to the Stone Age. The Merowe Dam Archaeological Salvage Project (MDASP) was established in 2006 in a bid to salvage some of the most important sites, but unlike with Lake Nasser they lacked the time, money and publicity necessary to have a significant impact. A number of key historical sites have now been lost.

The Price of Tea

The Darjeeling district of West Bengal clings to the southern slopes of the Himalayas, nestled between Nepal, Bangladesh and India. Best known for the 10,000 tonnes of premium grade tea it produces each year, the region is wholly dependent on the tea industry for survival. Tea production comes at a high environmental price, however, and new strategies are required to protect the hillsides, forests and fauna from destruction. Numbers of red pandas, snow leopards, Himalayan black bears, Tibetan wolves, deer, wild dogs and civet are all declining due to deforestation and the encroachment of man.

There are over 90 tea estates in Darjeeling with some 22,000 hectares of land under tea cultivation. Commercial planting began in Darjeeling in 1841 with plants introduced from China, and since then large areas of virgin rainforest have been cleared to expand the tea plantations. Tea can be grown up to 7000 ft and terracing is widely used to maximise space on the hillsides and provide tea pickers with easy access to the bushes. The removal of tree cover and preference for terraced estates would not be such a problem if it were not for the fact that Darjeeling receives an annual rainfall of 110.9 inches. Almost a third of this falls in July alone, taking with it the top soil and causing devastating land slips. Not only does this wipe out fields of tea but also homes, roads and wildlife habitats. The desire to increase cultivation is in fact threatening the very survival of the hillsides that support the tea industry. 

The only way to stem the destruction of habitats in Darjeeling is to take a wider, more ‘holistic’ view of how a tea estate should be run; financial gain cannot be the sole priority if the industry is to survive in Darjeeling long-term. Rajah Banerjee, owner of the Makaibari Tea Estate, is spearheading a new approach to tea production and has made a name for himself across the subcontinent (and further afield) as one of India’s ‘Green Heroes’. Rajah runs Makaibari in accordance with the principles of bio-dynamism, believing that healthy soil, diverse flora and fauna, a satisfied community and high-quality crop production go hand in hand.

When he took control of the estate in the 1970s the first thing that Rajah did was to stop the clearing of trees for the expansion of tea planting. Today 2/3 of the 1574 acre estate is still under virgin rainforest, which provides habitats for wildlife including endangered snow leopards, red pandas and wolves, and helps keep the hillside intact; not a single landslip is visible in Makaibari in stark contrast with neighbouring estates. The rainforest provides a diverse and regular supply of vegetable matters that can be spread as mulch between the tea plants.  The ground between the tea plants is never weeded (a practice known as perma-culture) and so they break down with the added mulch into a compost rich in minerals, it protects the soil underneath from the assault of wind and rain, and it also provides a fertile breeding ground for insects. A giant earthworm unseen for the past 120 years has made its reappearance in Makaibari’s soils, and the Tea Deva, a variant of the Preying Mantis that is camouflaged to accurately imitate a tea leaf, has evolved on the estate. 

Makaibari’s workers, all of whom are stakeholder partners in the estate, are encouraged to take individual responsibility for their environment. Instead of stripping the forests for firewood each family cares for a cow, whose manure is added to biogas converters to provide fuel for cooking and can also be spread on vegetable gardens as fertiliser. Workers are given financial incentives to bring live specimens of rare insects and invertebrates to the attention of management so that they can be examined by experts before re-release back into the estate. This has allowed study to take place of breeding habits, preferred habitats, population numbers and so on. 

Rajah and his workers encourage diversity of organisms at Makaibari by using only organic fertilisers and no pesticides. The estate was the first in Darjeeling to be certified as organic (1988) and since then many others have followed in their tracks, recognising the appeal of organic farming to consumers and also its importance for good environmental practice. The alternative fertilisers used on Makaibari are all recommended in the theories of Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian Philosopher challenged to rejuvenate Europe’s soils after the ravages of WWI. They include cow manure, a not uncommon choice for a natural fertiliser, but also more unconventional products such as ground quartz, oak bark, cow horns and stag bladders. Whatever the theoretical reasons behind their use, on the Makaibari estate this unorthodox approach is certainly paying dividends: a Makaibari white tea has held the world record price for tea sold at auction ever since 2006 and soil samples taken on the estate have shown higher nitrate levels and greater biodiversity than anywhere else in Darjeeling. 

Photos C. Tracing Tea 2008