When the dam started to be built in 2006, global human rights organizations and indigenous groups complained of the effects the dam would have on the natural flood cycle of the river, which was crucial to traditional livestock grazing and flood-retreat farming. Global financiers and Ethiopian authorities were protested against and appealed to by claiming the dam will lead to forced displacement, hunger, and loss of tradition. Despite there being a mass outcry and environmental warnings, the Ethiopian government proceeded, oftentimes muzzling opposition and marginalizing Indigenous voices during consultations. In 2010, a resurgence of protestors came to fight for their land outside of the construction site of the Gibe III Dam, and were ultimately given further compensation and moving accommodations after the Dam had finished construction. However, by the time it was opened in 2016, its effects like land degradation and low water flow to Kenya's Lake Turkana had already begun to affect the most vulnerable in the region. It was decided the compensation was not enough to justify the ecological damage the dam had caused.

The Gibe III Dam in Ethiopia along the Omo River, which harbors the way of life of several indigenous peoples, the Mursi, Karo, and Bodi communities among them is another prime example of slow violence. They depend on seasonal flooding of the river for agriculture and pasture for cattle. The disruption of flood cycles through the completion of the dam had adverse impacts on food security, cultural activities, and social structures. Faced with apparent harm, the Ethiopian government proceeded with construction, justifying the project as a path to national electrification and economic development. International organizations and NGOs protested against human rights violations and environmental harm, but the Ethiopian state, with its highly centralized and authoritarian political structure, made little response to such protests.

Sahabat Alam Malaysia in 1997 demanded a public review, with dire socio-cultural, economic, and environmental problems. The Coalition of Concerned NGO's on Bakun demanded the cancellation of the project due to its disastrous impact. Construction proceeded in defiance. In 1998, about 10,000 indigenous residents, comprising predominantly Kenyah and Kayan, were resettled at Sungai Asap in Belaga. Promises of decent housing, arable land, and compensation soon unraveled. They were given much less land than was promised. Often barren, stony, and often hours away from their new homes, and many of them went deeply into debt for substandard housing. In 2011, affected communities challenged the expropriation in Malaysia’s Federal Court, alleging violations of ancestral land rights. The Court unanimously dismissed their appeal—deferring to arbitration and effectively upholding the state’s actions in taking land from communities lacking formal title. In 2010, RTV Malaysia censored a documentary exposing the hardships of displaced communities; protests in Kuala Lumpur followed, demanding media freedom and transparency.

In the 1980s and revived in the 1990s, the Bakun Dam project was originally planned as a massive hydroelectric scheme to power industrial development in Peninsular Malaysia. The site chosen was in Sarawak, on the island of Borneo, home to several indigenous communities, including the Orang Ulu. Over 10,000 indigenous people were relocated from their ancestral homelands and resettled in poorly designed housing estates with diminished access to nature's resources.

slow violence