Science-Based ‘Greenwashing’ of Large Dams in Ethiopia: The Case of the Gibe III Dam

As an extremely water rich country with ambitions of becoming a regional power, Ethiopia has been among the most active African countries in building hydropower dams, with construction works intensifying since the 1990s to the present day. While environmental concerns related to this kind of large infrastructural project have remained largely unaddressed or only considered in terms of their impact on local livelihood activities, the construction of the Gibe III Dam in 2006 (at that time the largest dam in the country) brought these concerns into the spotlight. International advocacy campaigns criticising the social and environmental impacts of the dam forced the Ethiopian government and its private partners involved in the construction work to more explicitly take positions on the topic. This article aims to explore how environmental concerns emerged and came to be discussed with relation to large dam building in Ethiopia, as well as how the idea of environmental protection was framed differently by supporters and detractors of the dam. It shows that even when environmental concerns make it through development planning, this might simply be greenwashing and not necessarily have transformative results.