The Koukoutamba Dam is a proposed 294 MW hydroelectric power station to be built on the Bafing River, which is located in the Moyen-Bafing National Park in Guinea. The dam’s development is led by the Organisation pour la Mise en Valeur du Fleuve Sénégal (OMVS), which is a regional management body of the Senegal River involving Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal. OMVS signed a commercial EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contract with Chinese company Sinohydro on February 26, 2019.

Estimated to cost about $812 million USD, the dam would be OMVS’ fourth and largest hydroelectric project with a capacity of 294 MW. Koukoutamba Dam would also bring environmental and social costs, threatening the area’s biodiversity and local communities. If built, the dam would threaten the world’s largest remaining population of the western chimpanzee, which is located in the Moyen-Bafing National Park.

Originally an offset for mining projects, the Moyen-Bafing National Park is now under threat

The Guinean government signed a decree in September 2017 to launch the process for the creation of the Moyen-Bafing National Park, in the aim of protecting the few remaining western chimpanzees left in the wild. However, the Guinean government proposed construction of the Koukoutamba dam in 2018, just one year after the national park’s creation process was launched. In fact, the park was meant to offset the loss of chimpanzees from mining projects implemented in Guinean by Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée (CBG) and Guinea Alumina Corporation (GAC). With the Moyen-Bafing National Park under threat just a few years after its creation, the Koukoutamaba Dam exemplifies the conceptual flaws of relying on biodiversity offsets as a mitigation measure, since there is no accountability for ensuring biodiversity offsets remain protected from further development, even if codified under host country law. Furthermore, the dam would mostly likely not benefit Guinean communities or improve energy access. According to the World Bank’s report and IUCN’s Primate Specialist Group, only a quarter of the dam’s electricity will be used in Guinea, much of that amount benefiting the country’s mining industry, while three-quarters of the energy will be exported.

Warnings of the potential environmental and social harm posed by the Koukoutamba Dam

Nearly 150,000 people have signed petitions to halt the project and replace it with solar power instead, as it would provide the same amount of energy for less financial costs and environment harm.  Primatologists have warned that the dam would have the largest impact on chimpanzees out of any development project thus far, killing up to 1,500 chimpanzees as a result of either flooding caused by the dam or territorial conflicts among chimpanzees that may arise if they are forced to move. Over just the last two decades, the global population of Western Chimpanzees has catastrophically declined by 80%, which prompted the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to heighten their status to critically endangered in 2016.

In addition to chimpanzees, the dam would severely threaten several other species on IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species. This includes four critically endangered vulture species as well as the critically endangered and endemic Lebbiea grandiflora plant; this plant was recently discovered in May 2017, just a few months before Moyen-Bafing National Park was created. The endangered Fouta Djallon Torrent-frog and the vulnerable leopard, hippopotamus, and black and white colobus are also present within and nearby the national park. Developing the dam would reduce their natural habitat and prey availability due to flooding and construction of access roads associated with the dam. Finally, freshwater species both up and downstream from the dam would be impacted by pollution resulting from the dam’s construction, as well as changes in the river’s flow. Current plans call for filling the reservoir within only one rainy season, an extremely short period; once built, the dam would withhold up to 90% of the river’s flow.

Such changes in the river would also jeopardize local communities whose food security and livelihoods depend on fishing. Furthermore, the dam would require the displacement of 8,700 people in the Fouta Djallon region due to flooding, including the Fulani (Puel) people, who make up the majority of the region’s population. This is in spite of the fact that the Fulani people are largely responsible for conserving Africa’s largest remaining population of Western Chimpanzee due to their cultural taboos and religious beliefs, which oppose consumption of the animal.

Notably, in 2018, the World Bank (WB), originally in support of the project, called for a moratorium of the project after reviewing its Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), which was funded by WB. The EIA stated that, even in best case scenarios, the dam would still devastate western chimpanzees. The WB also found that OMVS’ proposed measures to mitigate such harm would be inadequate in order to achieve real protection of chimpanzees. Furthermore, primate experts and scientists voiced alarm that  the EIA contained major flaws, as its projections of chimpanzee loss were grossly underestimated.