Controversial
€100m hydropower project likely to lose funding after Bern Convention warns of
‘decisive negative impact’ on the critically endangered lynx
Friday
30 October 2015 11.11 GMTLast modified on Friday 30 October
201511.35 GMT
A controversial €100m (£71m) dam project in a Macedonian national park is
expected to be scrapped after independent experts called for a halt to all
funding and construction work because of risks to critically endangered
species, including the Balkan lynx.
A
Bern Convention mission to the Mavrovo national park reported that the planned
hydropower dam there was “not compatible” with protection of the park’s status,
ecosystems or species.
The
European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has put up €65m in loans
for the project but its environmental guidelines forbid the funding of projects
prohibited by the Bern Convention, a legally-binding pact between 51 states.
If the report is approved by its standing committee
in December – usually a formality – the EBRD will then have no option but to
pull out of the project.
A
bank spokesperson declined to comment until the committee’s vote. But Ivana
D’Alessandro, the secretary of the Bern Convention warned that they should be
prepared to reconsider their funding.
“If
I was a decision-maker in the EBRD I would really think carefully about the
next step,” she told the Guardian. “It would not be good for the bank’s image
to finance something which 51 countries, with scientists and policy-makers,
consider dangerous for biodiversity.”
D’Alessandro
added that the draft recommendations would almost certainly be adopted, putting
“political pressure” on Macedonia –
a signatory – to find another location for the dam, not least because the
secretariat would now be monitoring the park’s situation.
“It
seems that we are on the verge of a historic success in the fight against hydro
dams in Mavrovo national park,” said Ulrich Eichelmann, the founder of
River Watch, an Austrian NGO that campaigns on this issue. “It is very important
for all the national parks under threat from these types of project.”
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