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The Ecologist
L'Ecologiste
The Social and Environmental Effects of Large Dams - Contents, Preface, Foreword etc
Volume One: Overview
A Report to:
The European Ecological Action Group (ECOROPA), 107 Rue de la Course, Bordeaux 33000, France
Fach Henbant, Crickhowell, Powys, Wales, UK
To Katherine and Anne
ISBN No. 0 9504111 5 9
Published by Wadebridge Ecological Centre, Worthyvale Manor, Camelford, Cornwall, PL32 9TT, UK.
Edward Goldsmith and Nicholas Hildyard, 1984.
Contents
Preface
A Ballard of Ecological Awareness Foreword by Brent Blackwelder
Part I: Introduction
Chapter One. The Overt Reasons for Building Dams
The Pace of Construction
Plans for the Future: Dam them all?
Glittering Prizes: The claimed benefits of large-scale water development projects
The Lure of Hydro-Power
The Lure of Irrigation
Playing with Water: Playing with Fire?
Part II: Before the Flood
Chapter Two. Dams and Society - The Problems of Resettlement
The Scale of Resettlement Programmes
A Record of Failure
Government Insensitivity
Lack of Compensation and Inferior Land
Chapter Three. Social and Cultural Destruction
Resistance to Resettlement
Ethnic Differences Ignored
Inappropriate Housing
Housing and the Integrity of Traditional Culture
Is better Planning Possible?
The Road to the Slum
Part III: After the Flood
Chapter Four. Closing the Dam: Loss of Land and Wildlife Upstream, Loss of Silt and Fertility Downstream
Loss of Agricultural Land to Flooding
Loss of Forests to Flooding
Loss of Wildlife to Flooding
The Reduction of Fertility Downstream due to Impoundment
Loss of Silt and Coastal Erosion
Conclusion
Chapter Five. Water Losses: Exceeding Gains
Introduction
Losses to Evaporation
Loss to Transpiration: The Problem of Aquatic Weeds
Losses Due to Seepage and Over-Use of Water
Chapter Six. The Effects of Perennial Irrigation on Pest Populations
Chapter Seven. Dams and Disease
Introduction
Malaria
Schistosomiasis
Filariasis
Onchocerciasis - River Blindness
Diseases Introduced as an Indirect Result of Water Projects
Efforts to Combat Disease
Chapter Eight. The Effects of Large-Scale Water Projects on Fisheries
Short-term Successes: Long-term Failure
Dams and the Destruction of Fisheries
Pesticide Pollution and the Destruction of Fisheries
Dams, Fishing and the Net Loss of Protein
Chapter Nine. Dams, Failures and Earthquakes
Dam Failures
Earthquakes and Dams
Dams and Earthquakes: Recent Research
Chapter Ten. The Myth of Flood Control
Flood: An Increasing Menace
The Failure of a Strategy
Deforestation, Erosion and Floods
Building on the Flood Plains
Other Reasons why Structural Controls Cannot Work
The 'Trade-Off' between Flood Control, Hydropower and Irrigation
Dealing with Floods: the Ecological Approach
Chapter Eleven. Salting the Earth: The Problem of Salinisation
The Causes of Salinisation
Irrigation and Salinisation: The Intimate Connection
The Extent of the Problem
Can Salinisation and Water-Logging be Avoided?
Why No Drainage?
Salinisation: The Historical Experience
Salinity and Downstream Agriculture
Chapter Twelve. Management and Maintenance - Perennial Problems
Introduction
Management and Maintenance: A Low Priority Concern
Bureaucratic Ignorance
Lack of Accountability
The Problem of Maintenance
Co-operation and Maintenance
The Conflict between Food and Cash-Crops
The Advantages of Traditional Irrigation Systems
Chapter Thirteen. Loss of Land and Food to Plantations
The Cash Crop Economy
Cash Crops and Irrigation Projects
Pushing Peasants onto Marginal Lands
Cash Crops and the Degradation of Agricultural Land
Food for What?
Cash Crops and Rising Food Prices
Chapter Fourteen. The Loss of Land and Water to Industry and Urbanisation
Introduction
The Loss of Land to Urbanisation and Industrialisation in the USA
Loss of Land to Urbanisation in the United Kingdom
Loss of Land to Industrialisation and Urbanisation in Japan
The Failure to Take Land Losses into Account
The Aswan Dam and the Loss of Agricultural Land in Egypt
Loss of Water to Industrial and Domestic Uses: The United States Experience
Egypt: Water for Food or Water for Industry?
Chapter Fifteen. Dams, Pollution and the Reduction of Food Supplies
Introduction
The Export of Hazardous Industries
The Effect of Pollution on Crop Growth
Pollution and the Reduction of Fish Yields
Chapter Sixteen. Sedimentation: The Way of All Dams
Introduction
Sedimentation Rates in Temperate Areas
Sedimentation Rates in the Tropics
Chapter Seventeen. Are These Problems Inevitable?
Part IV: The Politics of Damming
Chapter Eighteen. Social and Environmental Impact Studies
Chapter Nineteen. The Politics of Damming
Politics or Oversight?
The Aswan Experience
Power-Broking, Pork Barrel and Corruption
States within States
Chapter Twenty. Fudging the Books
Cost-Benefit Studies: The Record of Falsification
Over-estimating Benefits: Under-estimating Costs
Conclusion
Part V: Traditional Irrigation: Learning from the Past
Chapter Twenty-one. The Qanats of Iran
Chapter Twenty-two. The Traditional Irrigation System of the Sonjo
Chapter Twenty-three. The Traditional Irrigation System of the Chagga
Chapter Twenty-four. Traditional Irrigation in the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka's Tanks
The Importance of the Tanks
Irrigation as a Way of Life
The Sustainability of the Traditional System
Deforestation: Jeopardising the Future
Land Tenure: Traditional vs. Modern
The Growth of the State and the Breakdown of the Traditional System
Chapter Twenty-five. Traditional Irrigation in Mesopotamia
Minimising the Effects of Salinisation
The El Shabana
The Earliest Historical Experience in Mesopotamia
The Modern Experience
The Lessons of Mesopotamia
Chapter Twenty-six. The Lessons of Traditional Irrigation Agriculture; Learning to Live with Nature
Introduction
Size: A Critical Factor?
Why Small is Not Enough
Seasonal vs. Perennial Irrigation
The Preservation of Forests
Balancing Water Consumption with Water Availability
Design and Management: Village Elder vs. Distant Bureaucrats
Food for Local Consumption rather than for Export
The Need for a new 'World View': The Ecological Approach
Part VI: What Should be Done?
Chapter Twenty-seven. Recommendations
Appendices
Appendix One. Reservoirs with Dams greater than 100 metres high
Appendix Two. Distribution of Saline and Alkaline Lands
References
Note: the References are transposed to the individual chapters in the internet edition.
Tables and Figures
Table 1: Proposed Massive Water Diversion Projects, Selected Countries
Table 2: Potential and Current Hydro-power Development of Different Continents
Table 3: Areas Inundated by Selected Dams
Table 4: Estimated Amounts of Nile Sediments and Total Nutrients Deposited Annually by the Nile Flood
Table 5: Reservoir-induced changes in Seismicity
Table 6: Damage caused by Floods in India, 1953-81
Table 7: Effects of Watershed Loss on Erosion and Surface Run-off
Table 8: The Impact of Water-logging on Crop Yields, Shaanxi Province, China
Table 9: Water Requirements for Selected Industries in USA
Table 10: Estimated Water Use and Projected Water Requirements for India (1973/74 and 2000)
Table 11: Approximate Year when Water Demand in India will Exceed Ultimate Utilisable Resources (by State)
Table 12: Annual Rates of Siltation in Selected Reservoirs in India
Figure 1: Bororo Village Model
Figure 2: The Colorado River Basin
Figure 3: The All-America Canal
Figure 4: The North American Water and Power Alliance Proposals
Figure 5: A Qanat.
Preface
This report is an attempt to provide an overview of the social and environmental effects of building large dams. It is the first of three reports on this subject. The other two will provide, respectively, a collection of case-studies, and an annotated bibliography. They are due out in late 1985.
The work has been financed by the Ecological Foundation to which we are very grateful.
We would also like to thank Peter Freeman, Robert Goodland and Robert Mann for their encouragement and for all the information they have provided us; Victor Kovda, Jean Pierre Rothe and John Waterbury for kindly reading and correcting chapters dealing with their particular field of expertise; and Brent Blackwelder and Philip Williams for correcting the proofs of the report as a whole.
We would also like to thank Hilary Datchens for helping us with the report in all sorts of ways - not least by typing its many versions; Rita Marshall of Rita Marshall Editorial Services for producing the final version on her word processor; and also Ruth Lumley Smith, past Managing Editor of The Ecologist and Maria Parsons, her successor, for undertaking to do the proof-reading.
Finally, we would like to make it absolutely clear that the conclusions we have come to are not necessarily those of the people who have helped us produce it. We are alone responsible for them.
Edward Goldsmith and Nicholas Hildyard.
A Ballad of Ecological Awareness
The cost of building dams is always underestimated
There's erosion of the delta that the river has created,
There's fertile soil below the dam that's likely to be looted,
And the tangled mat of forest that has got to be uprooted.
There's the breaking up of cultures with old haunts and habits loss,
There's the education program that just doesn't come across,
And the wasted fruits of progress that are seldom much enjoyed
By expelled subsistence farmers who are urban unemployed.
There's disappointing yield of fish, beyond the first explosion;
There's silting up, and drawing down, and watershed erosion.
Above the dam the water's lost by sheer evaporation;
Below, the river scours, and suffers dangerous alteration.
For engineers, however good, are likely to be guilty
Of quietly forgetting that a river can be silty,
While the irrigation people too are frequently forgetting
That water poured upon the land is likely to be wetting.
Then the water in the lake, and what the lake releases,
Is crawling with infected snails and water-borne diseases.
There's a hideous locust breeding ground when water level's low,
And a million ecologic facts we really do not know.
There are benefits, of course, which may be countable, but which
Have a tendency to fall into the pockets of the rich.
While the costs are apt to fall upon the shoulders of the poor.
So cost-benefit analysis is nearly always sure.
To justify the building of a solid concrete fact,
While the Ecologic Truth is left behind in the Abstract.
Kenneth E. Boulding.
From T. Farvar and J. Milton, The Careless Technology , Tom Stacey, London, 1973.
Foreword
Popular thinking holds big dams to be of great economic and social benefit because they produce clean power, stop damaging floods, and help combat world hunger by providing water for irrigation. Edward Goldsmith and Nicholas Hildyard have pulled together an unparalleled assemblage of data demonstrating that big dams and water projects have not only failed to achieve those basic objectives but are also leaving a legacy of unsurpassed cultural destruction, disease, and environmental damage. This remarkable study of large water development schemes from around the world shows the dramatic difference between the rhetoric of project promoters and the grim reality of the 'super-dams'.
Goldsmith and Hildyard present telling evidence of the extensive range of problems which large dams have caused throughout the world - from engineering mistakes and operational errors to severe social disruption and the spreading of disease: to the elimination of forests and significant wildlife habitats; to the destruction of estuaries and endangered species; to the ruination of the very land designed to be made productive.
Because the pace of large-scale dam building is increasing exponentially, it is imperative that industrialised nations take the warnings in this book to heart. The case against irreversible manipulation of river systems on a global scale is so overwhelming that we proceed with funding of these superdams at our own peril.
A significant percentage of water development in the United States has been a sad mistake, but developing countries seem intent on replicating our mistakes. America's Tennessee Valley Authority is often held up as a model of how to make the economy of a valley flourish. In fact, people from all over the world come to see what TVA has done. Unfortunately, the TVA story is really a myth. [See William U. Chandler, 'Water: Stewardship and Development', in Volume II - Case Studies. Available from The Ecologist , Worthyvale Manor, Camelford, Cornwall, U.K. Price £25 for institutions, £15 for individuals.]
The Environmental Policy Institute's analysis of the costs and benefits experienced by TVA's water projects during its first 50 years showed that the flood control and navigation objectives have yet to pay for themselves by any reasonable standard of accounting. Furthermore, areas in the Southeastern United States which did not receive financial aid from TVA did as well as or better than the TVA region, even though they were as poor, or poorer, to begin with.
One outstanding feature of Goldsmith and Hildyard's work is the discussion of ancient or traditional irrigation societies, whose sustainability over centuries stands in stark contrast to the short-lived, poorly-designed irrigation projects which industrialised countries have funded throughout the Third World.
The staggering array of problems created by large-scale water development is so alarming and widespread that an international network has been established to halt the destruction and to propose sensible alternatives. Goldsmith and Hildyard's book stands as a landmark in providing the most comprehensive information and analysis to date on the tragic impacts of the superdams.
Brent Blackwelder, Ph.D., Director of Water Resources at the Environmental Policy Institute.
Washington DC, 1984
