In their decisions about using resources from rivers, governments are facing issues of land use, energy production and extraction of natural resources. Dams reveal the dilemmas that are faced while trying to meet numerous conflicting needs of humanity, and planning strategies such important projects must strive for ecologically sustianable systems that can support the earth's growing population.
B. Current Activities in the United States
D. Importance of Dams to the United States and Third World Countries
E. Justice Issues for big dams in India and China
G. Funding of Projects in India and China
H. Environmental Impact and Ecological Considerations
Recent years have seen the removal of
a number of dams across the United States, while at the same time
plans are being made for large hydro-electric dams in the developing
world. These current construction projects have enormous environmental
and humanitarian implications far beyond the scale of the dams
that are being demolished in the United States. In making decisions
about using resources from rivers, governments are facing issues
of land use, energy production, and extraction of natural resources.
The decisions about dams are a good example of dilemmas that are
faced while trying to meet the conflicting needs of humanity.
Strategies must incorporate ecologically sustainable systems that
are vital to the earth's growing population. This is an issue
of enormous magnitude and complexity, and it is important to begin
describing these challenges.
Current Activities in the United States
In the United States, the dam building
era drew to a close in 1980. Estimates of the number of dams built
range from seventy-five thousand to a hundred thousand, and most
of the potential for hydro-electric power has already been harnessed.
Twenty years later, the costs and benefits of dams are finally
becoming obvious. A few of the dams have been dismantled as a
result of this, and it is likely that more will follow. In most
cases, the usefulness of the dam is limited, and when the full
extent of the costs begin to surface, it becomes obvious that
the dam is not beneficial. For example, the Edwards Dam on the
Kennebec river in Augusta Maine produced only 0.1 percent of the
state's electricity. Meanwhile the dam was hindering ten species
of fish from reaching ancestral spawning grounds. The effect on
the fish was so extensive that a fishing industry would thrive
if the dam were removed. As long as the dam was in place it would
be impossible for a viable fishery to exist (Zipp,
1999). The dam has now been removed,
because the economic costs to fisheries were far greater than
the benefit of such a small amount of electricity.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission licenses about 2 thousand
privately owned hydroelectric dams. Now, hundreds of these dams
are coming up for license renewal (Zipp,
1999). In order for the dams to be licensed,
it must be proven that there are net benefits for keeping the
dam. Often repairs must be made, and it is possible that it makes
more sense to remove the dam if doing so yields long-term economic
benefits. A study was done in Portland, Oregon which analyzed
the economic impacts of bypassing all four dams on the Lower Snake
River. It found that the region will see a long-term economic
benefit, especially if the region works to enhance the positive
impacts of bypassing the dams (E-Wire,
1999)
Saving Salmon populations from extinction
is ultimately one of the principal economic benefits of removing
these dams. A study released in July 1999 found that the Snake
river's threatened chinook salmon may go extinct sooner than previously
estimated. "Chinook returning from their ocean travels to
spawn in spring and summer once numbered in the thousands in the
Snake River in Idaho and eastern Oregon. Now, only a few hundred
return each year (Environmental
News Service, 1999). The study is based
on fish counts in spawning grounds. These counts are the most
important ones, because these fish are the only ones that will
reproduce to sustain future populations. Jeff Curtis of Trout
Unlimited said the salmon populations have good reproduction potential,
and that they should be able to make a rapid recovery should the
dams be removed (E-Wire, 1999).
The Importance of Dams to the United States and Third World Countries
The removal of dams is something the
United States can afford to do. To a nation whose resource use
is concentrated among a relatively small number of people, losing
the benefits of dams does not have a significant effect on the
well-being of Americans. The stakes are not high, and such decisions
do not affect people a great deal. The fact that a country can
exist with or without dams indicates the existence of the soft
cushion of a strong and diverse economy which is without question
the strongest economy in the world. If more and more dams continue
to be found economically unjustifiable, they can be torn down
without severe consequences. The United States has likely constructed
many dams that were never beneficial. Others may have proven useful
at one time, but are no longer found to be useful. In a wealthy
country, mistakes will eventually be accepted and life will go
on as if they never happened.
Countries such as India and China face
an entirely different situation as they make their decisions about
dams. Government leaders might see the same potential as the United
States did when it began building dams seventy years ago. India
and China are developing nations, and dams are a good way for
them to produce the electricity that industrialization requires.
First world countries have built strong economies with the same
dam-building philosophy. Given that the United States is discovering
some of the environmental problems with big dams, it is likely
that similar problems will occur wherever a dam is built. The
net economic impact is particularly significant to developing
countries where the benefits of dams will be spread over a large
population. Instead of maximizing quality of life, cost-benefit
analysis serves to maximize the number of people that can live
on the land affected by the dam. Therefore, determining the environmental
effects of a dam has the most immediate importance where population
densities are highest.
Justice Issues for big dams in India and China
The consequences of making the wrong
decision can affect hundreds of thousands of people for one dam
alone. The biggest issue is the relocation of people from the
area to be flooded. Will the dam's benefits really make these
people better off? In order to do so, the dam must give more to
them than the land they once lived on. This is a greater task
than one might think, because the rural people's knowledge for
using the land will be lost. This knowledge has been acquired
over many years, but it can be lost in one generation. Where people
could once take care of themselves, the dam takes over all responsibility.
Where environmental impact is felt directly when people work closely
with the land, the environmental impact of a dam must be determined
by experts who perform impact analysis. A big dam is ambitious,
and it carries with it this enormous responsibility that must
be understood by the governments involved. The dam building projects
in India and China are highly controversial. In each case, the
government supports the project while many of their countries'
citizens do not. Those who favor the projects tend to be elite
and middle-class, or have been convinced that the dam's benefits
justify the forced resettlement of thousands of people in the
land that will be flooded. The alteration of people's lives is
described well by Arundhati Roy in her essay about the Sardar
Sarovar dam project in India:
"Instead of a forest from which
they gathered everything they needed - food, fuel, fodder, rope,
gum, tobacco, tooth powder, medicinal herbs, housing material
- they earn between ten and twenty rupees a day with which to
feed and keep their families. Instead of a river, they have a
hand pump. In their old villages, they had no money, but they
were insured. If the rains failed, they had the forests to turn
to. The river to fish in. Their livestock was their fixed deposit.
Without all this, they're a heartbeat away from destitution (Roy, 1999)."
When a project puts people "a heartbeat
away from destitution" it needs to provide many benefits
in order to justify it. Unfortunately, dams rarely fulfill their
lofty promises. Their environmental impact and limited effectiveness
make them hard to justify. Yet construction continues in India,
China, and many other places. Why are the warning signs being
ignored?
Roy estimates that 33 million people have been displaced by 3
300 dams built in India (a conservative estimate). It is unlikely
that any of these people were in favor of the project. The International
Rivers Network, an all-volunteer nonprofit activist organization,
estimates that the Sardar Sarovar will uproot almost half a million
people. In 1995, the Indian Supreme Court suspended construction
of the dam, but it was lifted in February 1999 when the Supreme
Court allowed the dam height to be increased (International
Rivers network, 1999). The dam is "…so
controversial that earlier this decade the World Bank, in an unprecedented
move, withdrew from the project, citing a lack of believable resettlement
plans for those being displaced (Marquand,1999)."
As with the Sardar Sarovar, the Three
Gorges Dam in China will displace many people. Village homes and
town apartments of up to 1.5 million people will be submerged.
The reservoir behind the two-kilometer-wide barrier will be longer
than Lake Superior. Flood control is said to be a benefit of the
project, and the hope is to prevent the massive flooding in the
Yangtze basin similar to the flood in the summer of 1998 that
killed more than 4 000 people and caused nearly $40 billion in
damage (Fennell, 1999). One argument against the flood control benefit
suggests that it is better to avoid building permanent structures
on floodplains instead of building dams to enable settlement closer
to the river. In the United States, private insurance companies
used to refuse to insure buildings on flood plains. This prevented
people from building on land that was likely to be flooded (Devine, 1995).
Avoiding construction on flood plains is possible where population
density is low enough, but in China the risk of being flooded
would be accepted when there isn't any good land elsewhere. While
flood control might be achieved by building dams, one has to ask
whether it isn't more reasonable to relocate people away from
flood plains than it is to flood land upstream from the dam and
force people there to relocate.
Though it is scheduled for completion
in 2009, the Three Gorges Dam is also having complications with
funding. The World Bank walked away from this project as well,
and it remains to be seen whether it will be completed on schedule
and if it will need to be scaled back. The Bank's move was prompted
by Chinese and international experts who warned of serious environmental,
social and human rights risks. Furthermore, they say it may not
be economically viable. China was forced to find funding elsewhere
(Aslam, 1999).
Funding of Projects in India and China
In August 1998, Wang Jiazhu, deputy general manager of China Three Gorges Corp (the company building the dam), was confident that the project will stay within budget. He said they were trying to raise 20 per cent of the financing ($ 5 billion) from overseas. In addition, they began borrowing from three of China's leading commercial banks (Harding, 1998).
Canada has played a vital role in the
project's progress. It was originally made possible when a $14
million feasibility study was funded by the "Canadian International
Development Agency. Furthermore "(w)hen the World Bank and
other international agencies refused to fund Three Gorges, [Premier
Li Peng] turned to Canada. In 1994, the Export Development Corp.
agreed to back nearly $177 million in loans, allowing General
Electric to land a $153 million turbine contract. Since then,
says Jayne Watson, EDC'sdirector of communications, government
agencies in other countries, including Germany and Japan, have
jumped in. Canadian firms are also bidding for new multimillion-dollar
contracts (Fennell, 1999)." One has to wonder why these projects
are getting any funding from first world countries that are becoming
aware of the problems associated with dams.
The World Bank's refusal to fund the
dams in China and India does reflect the changing view of dams
in first world countries. However, the attitude that gave rise
to dam building in first world countries is presently behind the
projects in India and China. The skepticism towards dams does
not seem to be present yet in governments of developing countries.
The United States is at a stage where it can pursue refinement,
while developing countries are determined to realize the same
benefits that are experienced by the first world, and rightly
so. However, it may not be possible for densely populated countries
such as India and China to realize first world prosperity without
permanently damaging its environment.
Environmental Impact and Ecological Considerations
Environmental impact must be given the
most serious consideration. Given the enormous ecological damage,
it is difficult to imagine that the projects can be justified.
"They lay the earth to waste. They cause floods, water-logging,
salinity, they spread disease. There is mounting evidence that
links big Dams to earthquakes (Roy,
1999)." The tunnel vision of economic
development in highly populated developing nations is the subject
of some harsh criticism. "Professor Vaclav Smil, of the University
of Manitoba in Canada, said blind economic development at the
environment's expense would cause China's ecology to collapse.
China would face the problems of insufficient food supply, energy
shortages and frequent natural disasters if the Government did
not act soon, he said in Hong Kong. 'China is losing some of its
best farmland to industrial development and that can be a very
serious problem'… (Chow Chung-Yan,
1999)."
This critic cited ecological reasons
for opposing projects such as big dams. While much of the debate
about dams can become deeply rooted in politics, ecology is the
reality that must eventually dictate more government decisions.
As more is learned about ecology and biological diversity, it
is becoming obvious that a sustainable environment will need to
factor into any decision that relates to resource use. Hopefully,
stable ecological systems will be the goal of many new policies
in the near future. Such consideration is necessary for human
activity to be sustainable. These concerns are echoed by many
ecologists. Charles Southwick suggests that basic ecological principles
must be observed to ensure sustainability of human-dominated ecosystems.
"Perhaps our greatest educational need is to realize that
we are not exempt from the laws of nature, however far we may
bend and stretch them (Southwick,
p 332, 1996)."
Though realizing our connection to the
laws of nature is important, it is only one part of the process.
We will only see changes if we change the way our societies are
structured. Human domination over the earth was preceded by human
domination of humans. Indeed, our ecological crisis has its origins
in social relations that exhibit hierarchies based on age, gender,
ethnicity, race and economic class. Hierarchical social systems
gives rise to domination of the biosphere (Moran,
p 32, 1999). The attitude that seeks
domination of the biosphere can only begin to change if we become
aware of the social systems of domination. The interconnectedness
of social and environmental issues is made clear when Arundhati
Roy writes this about dams: "They're a Government's way of
accumulating authority (deciding who will get how much water and
who will grow what where). They're a guaranteed way of taking
a farmer's wisdom away from him. They're a brazen means of taking
water, land and irrigation away from the poor and gifting it to
the rich. Their reservoirs displace huge populations of people,
leaving them homeless and destitute (Roy,
1999)." Roy's writing makes it
clear that domination of the poor by the rich is very intertwined
with domination of land. Such disparity of wealth, and related
issues of racism and oppression of women must be addressed simultaneously
with environmental issues. It is the way humans relate both to
each other and their environment that is to blame for current
ecological destruction.
Overpopulation is certainly a factor
that increases the pressure on the natural environment, yet too
often it is considered the only cause. "Overpopulation does
not cause ecological dislocations; rather, the way people organize
their societies is to blame, regardless of population size. Similarly,
science and technology are not to blame-the problem is the uses
to which society… puts science and technology (Moran, p. 32, 1999)."
It is valuable to consider where population is the primary cause
of pressure on the environment, and where the cause is due to
gross misuse of science and technology. Comparing the first world
with developing countries is revealing. "In terms of diet,
transportation, energy use, solid waste and pollution generation,
mineral requirements, and standard of living, each individual
in the United States and Canada produces far greater environmental
impact than each individual in India and China. The United States
alone, with less than 5 percent of the world's population, uses
about 30 percent of the world's energy resources (Southwick,
p. 92, 1996)."
Such a comparison can tell us a lot about
the differences between resource uses (such as dams) in the first
world versus the developing world. The demand for the resources
generated by dams in the first world is excessive given the population
size. Dams in India and China are touted to benefit many people,
and the population size is perhaps a more significant cause of
ecological stress. While it is obvious that dams do not have a
net benefit, it is important to be aware of the intensive resource
pressure that is demonstrated by the numerous dams in the United
States and Canada. A similar level of resource use in a highly
populated country seems more defensible, though it is still problematic.
Resource use in either extremes of population density or intensive
impact per capita is not justifiable.
The social hierarchies that lead to environmental domination are present in both first world countries and developing nations, and pressure on ecological systems is too high. Dams are one of many dominating methods of resource extraction that are causing severe and permanent damage to ecological systems. Such damage is not sustainable, and is making humanity's future very uncertain. We must learn to respond to our natural environment and obtain our resources in a way that allows ecological systems to retain their biodiversity. Failure to do so is evident in projects such as the big dams in India and China, and the United States where governments are discovering the inefficiency, and even impossibility, of manipulating natural systems without regards to ecology. Land, energy, and other natural resources must be used carefully and creatively in order to be most effective and have long-term viability. Big dams have become obsolete, and it is time to take an ecological approach to how we relate to each other and the environment.
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