Lesotho communities allege greenwashing by project transferring water to South Africa

Communities in Lesotho have filed a complaint with the African Development Bank over a controversial initiative that transfers water from the country to neighboring South Africa, one of the biggest such schemes on the African continent.

The Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), currently in its second phase, is funded in part by the African Development Bank (AfDB). In the complaint submitted to the bank’s Independent Recourse Mechanism, seen by Mongabay, the complainants accuse the developers of promoting the LHWP as a climate mitigation project and ignoring its impacts on their communities and the environment, and call it “greenwashing.”

“Some in the community say they were better off without the project, because instead of bringing a development that is expected from such projects, it has, in fact, brought them poverty,” said Mosa Letsie, a lawyer at the Seinoli Legal Centre (SLC) in Lesotho. The center provides legal assistance and advice to marginalized communities and worked with the affected communities to submit the complaint. Letsie said women were disproportionately impacted. Falls short in every respect, from inadequate consultation to compensation to the lack of benefits.

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