Review of The Dammed by Fred Pearce
The Impact of Big Water Projects in Developing Countries
Mar 21, 2009
The meager benefits of Third World dams and large-scale water projects are outstripped by disastrous side effects. Promises of greater crop yields and limitless hydroelectric power are seldom fulfilled. Many projects destroy flood plains and fisheries, cause salinization of croplands, and send millions of peasants to urban shantytowns. From an ecological, agricultural, humanitarian and economic standpoint, big dams make little sense.
Environmentalists in Brazil, China, India and Thailand would each read that as a summary of their own national water projects. But in The Dammed, Fred Pearce, a former staff writer for New Scientist magazine, arrives at these conclusions after scrutinizing the impact of big dams all over the world.
These are some of the unforeseen consequences he discovered:
*China's Sanmenxia Gorge Dam was supposed to operate for 50 years when it opened in 1960s. Within two years, silt knocked it out of commission. It has since been dynamited and rebuilt twice, yet now produces only one-quarter of the electricity originally promised.
*In India, the most dammed country on earth, 16 million people in the previous 25 years have been moved from their homes to make way for dams.
*Since the construction of the Akosombo Dam in Ghana, the incidence of schistosomiasis in the local population has increased from less than 5 percent to over 80 percent. The potentially fatal disease is caused by a parasite that thrives in the stagnant water behind the dam.
*When the James Bay hydroelectric dam in Quebec was completed, it was found that the new reservoirs converted harmless soil mercury into poisonous soluble methyl mercury. Cree Indians living downstream, who had already been resettled from their 5,000-year-old homeland, now are prohibited from fishing there--for the coming 100 years.
*Construction of unpopular dams has fueled revolutionary movements in the Philippines, Iran, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
China's Mekong Dams
By the time Pearce addresses the proposed chain of dams along the Mekong River [China has since built three of them] and its tributaries, the reader knows what could happen next. Farming and fishing in the Mekong Delta will be severely damaged because of the loss of silt. The dams intended to replace the flood control mechanisms of Tonle Sap Lake will play havoc with Cambodian fisheries and agriculture.
Like Bangkok today, Saigon and Phnom Penh will swell with more rural refugees. Like little countries elsewhere, Laos [now constructing a second huge one with Chinese aid] will be disappointed when hydropower sales don't automatically usher in prosperity. Even worse, it could find its political independence subordinated to the energy needs of its more powerful neighbors. And regardless of the promises, the life spans of the dams will be decades less than what government officials claim.
Mao, Nasser and Dams
Strangest of all, despite the wastage of billions of dollars in the past 25 years, the world's poorest countries hav retained an unshaken faith that spending millions more on yet another plumbing project will somehow clean up the existing messes. Or maybe it's not so strange. One wishes that Pearce had pursued the explanation of a Nigerian geographer, one that could be fleshed out by environmentalists the world over: Big construction projects provide incredible opportunities for corruption.
Nonetheless, Pearce is also correct when he says that leaders with inferiority complexes see big dams as powerful symbols of grown-up nationhood (the other symbols, incidentally, are national airlines and enormous convention centers). And there's a persuasive logic that mega-problems demand mega-solutions. For Stalin, Nasser and Mao, dreams of national security and prosperity were so wrapped up with big dams that it was treasonous to have doubts about them.
Bombing Three Gorges
It's an indication of a dam's symbolic power that China is building the world's biggest superdam across the Yangtze River near Three Gorges. Brave Chinese engineers have publicly voiced objections to this $20 million solution to flood control and power shortages. Yet Premier Li Peng was so mesmerized by the prospect that he wasn’t even deterred by the military implications.
After all, a single bomb to the dam could end up drowning 350 million people downstream. In other words, these aren't the sort of leaders to be inhibited by anything as mundane as the coming climate change, even as the rich countries they envy are frantically reassessing all their assumptions about future water supplies.
Iran's Qanat System
Pearce's alternatives are mundane too. He believes run-of-the-river dams could supply sufficient local electricity. He discusses how power and water could be better conserved. He calls for a rediscovery of ancient water systems, such as qanats, the underground water tunnels of Iran. Then there are the reservoirs and walls that harvested water in India's western deserts and the extensive canal system for flood control and irrigation in present-day Bangladesh.
He tries to detect a hopeful trend in recent grassroots movements that have defeated dam plans. However, save for a few small victories in India, none have occurred in developing countries, which are where practically all large dams are built nowadays. As for the much-maligned multilateral banks, they now shy away from major water projects, but commercial banks have stepped in with low-cost loans to fill the void. Eager to provide work for domestic contractors, Japanese and French development agencies have done so as well.
"In most places, at most times," Pearce acknowledges with a sigh, "even acute water shortages have failed to concentrate minds on water conservation."
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