Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

The dam building boom: right path to clean energy?

By David Biello - posted Thursday, 5 March 2009


And, ultimately, human-caused climate change may send these modern monoliths into obsolescence faster than anticipated by changing river flows, most notably by speeding the melting of glaciers. Should the glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan plateau largely disappear in the coming century, for example, not only will the drinking water supplies of more than 1 billion people be affected, but flows vital to water storage and hydropower production on rivers such as the Yangtze would be significantly reduced. Chinese scientists have found that the more than 46,000 glaciers on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are shrinking by an average of 7 per cent annually: the bulk of water in China’s two major rivers - the Yangtze and Yellow rivers - comes from glacial melt.

“Climate change is going to very adversely effect big dams,” says anthropologist Thayer Scudder of the California Institute of Technology, who has been a consultant on dam projects to the World Bank since the 1960s and is a member of the World Commission on Dams. “These dams are going to meet relatively short-term needs. What’s the situation going to be 30 to 50 years from now, which is when they think the glaciers may be gone?”

And, while the Chinese government continues to construct dams at a feverish pace inside China, it has also taken over a role once reserved for international development banks, such as the World Bank: funding dam-building in developing countries from Asia to Africa. In fact, China is now involved in funding or building more than 200 dams around the world. According to Scudder and other analysts, the goal is not combating climate change or even fostering development. Instead, they say, China is building dams in exchange for access to natural resources, such as metals, fossil fuels, and even farmland - as well as lucrative construction contracts.

Advertisement

For example, the China Export-Import Bank has helped launch the funding for a new 1,500 megawatt dam on the Zambezi River in Mozambique, the Mphanda Nkuwa. Building the dam would eliminate any hopes of rectifying the impacts of a previously built dam on the Zambezi river delta, which has shrunk by half as sediment and water have been choked off, crippling local fisheries and reducing fertile farmland downstream. That dam, the Cahora Bassa - built in the 1970s - required the relocation of more than 10,000 people.

Richard Taylor, executive director of the International Hydropower Association, ascribes the worldwide flurry of dam building to the run-up in the price of fossil fuels, concerns over climate change, and the desire of nations to become less dependent on foreign sources of energy. Producing electricity has become the main reason for building new dams, supplanting issues of water storage, irrigation, or flood control.

“Where hydropower is feasible,” says Taylor, “it can be the most benign and long-term economic option to meet electricity supply needs”.

In China, some analysts say that the dam building boom could mean that hydropower will one day supplant coal as the country’s chief energy source.

“Within 30 to 50 years, hydro will be the main energy we [China] should rely on,” says Lai Hun Sen, a professor of sustainable development at Chongqing University and a municipal government official who has studied the Three Gorges Dam. “It is a choice we made when we had no other choice.”

But "there are many problems," Lai says, including massive relocations of people, natural disasters such as mudslides, and water quality issues. "When the water drops, areas are exposed in the reservoir in summer, as much as 400 square kilometres,” says Lai. “When [water pollution] deposition is exposed under the sun and temperatures, some disease will spread. This will happen every year."

Advertisement

What’s happening on the Jinsha is typical of the frenzy of dam building throughout China, where the southwestern corner of the nation may soon have as many as 114 dams on eight different rivers. The dam projects on the Jinsha may eventually generate some 33 gigawatts of potential hydropower, equivalent to roughly 730 large coal-fired power plants.

Many of these dams must be built for another reason besides electricity generation: to keep Three Gorges in business. The problem is silt, which will rapidly build up behind the megadam unless it is captured by other dams upstream. In other words, building one dam means building many more.

And, ironically, the conflicting goals of local, regional and national development means more dams are being built than may ultimately prove useful, with one dam effectively depriving another of water.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. Page 2
  4. 3
  5. All

First pubilished in Yale Environment 360 on February 23, 2009.



Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

5 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

David Biello has been covering energy and the environment for nearly a decade, the last three years as an associate editor at Scientific American. He also hosts 60-Second Earth, a Scientific American podcast covering environmental news.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by David Biello

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Article Tools
Comment 5 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy