IAid generally called "development aid" enriches corrupt and repressive governments while the poor suffer at their hands. This kind of aid doesn't protect the environment or ameliorate poverty. [Full story]
Three Gorges
If completed, the Three Gorges dam will be a tragedy for the nearly two million people who will be moved, for the environment, and for the Chinese economy. Rapid technological advances make big dams, including Three Gorges, obsolete and expensive, especially when compared to cleaner and more readily available alternatives. [Full story]
Mekong
The 4200-kilometre long Mekong river is the tenth largest river in the world. Now, plans for more than 50 giant hydroelectric dams and diversion schemes threaten to destroy many species, and millions of farming and fishing communities. Promoting these dams are the Canadian government, Canadian companies, the Canadian International Development Agency, the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and the World Bank.
Fortis and Belize
Belize needs a free energy market, not more dams (by Grainne Ryder)
The price of power from the Chalillo dam is well above the market rate but that doesn't upset the buyer of the power, Belize Electricity. Fortis is the majority owner of Belize Electricity, which can pass on the cost of its dams to its captive ratepayers.
The Export Development Corporation (EDC) is a Crown corporation which facilitates Canadian exports through the provision of financial services. It guarantees loans and issues insurance to Canadian exporters where in many cases the risk is extreme. As a result EDC makes otherwise uneconomic investments proceed. It has become clear that a number of the larger EDC-supported projects are socially and environmentally destructive. Alarmingly, these harmful projects are made possible thanks to Canadian taxpayers. In addition it is the Canadian public that foots the bill when EDC loans go unpaid.
CIDA
Over the past decade funding and aid institutions such as the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) have faced growing criticisms that projects have ridden roughshot over the property rights and economic interests of local communities and often end up doing great environmental harm. Women and children, in particular, are seen as vulnerable to the upheavals wrought on their land and social structures by development such as mines, forestry, road building, power plants and hydroelectric dams.
Asian Development Bank
Probe International, together with citizens' groups and rural communities across Asia, urges the Manila-based Asian Development Bank to stop financing environmentally damaging development projects and hydro dams that flood people off their land, create poverty, and destroy people's resources and livelihoods. We also urge the Canadian government, as the seventh largest shareholder in ADB, to take its share of responsibility for the damages inflicted on individuals and communities by ADB-financed schemes
World Bank
The World Bank causes environmental havoc, financial ruin, and social harm throughout the Third World. The World Bank has financed dozens of disastrous dam projects, has supported road-building projects through the heart of the Amazon rainforest leading to massive deforestation, and has helped support toxic mining operations. Through it all, the Bank has shown a blatant disregard for the rights of the people most affected by its projects.
Odious Debts
The phrase "odious debts" was first coined by Alexander Sack, a legal scholar on the obligations of successor nations. His theory of the debts of successor nations has come to be known as the "doctrine of odious debts":
If a despotic power incurs a debt not for the needs or in the interest of the State, but to strengthen its despotic regime, to repress the population that fights against it, this debt is odious and due for cancellation for the population of the State.
Mining
Canada leads the world in mineral exploration. Canadian mining interests have grown to cover 8300 mineral properties worldwide. In the Third World entire communities are forced off their lands to make way for mine projects while many more people are put in harm's way of toxic mine pollution. Fueling this are taxpayer funded agencies like the Export Development Corporation, CIDA, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank.
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