Dam Dam Dam

Big dams. Love them or hate them, we have to live with them. Environmental campaigners contend that vast schemes such as the Three Gorges in China or the Narmada in India, are social and environmental catastrophes in the making. But their backers have a different view. Big dams can provide non-polluting energy and control flooding. In the run up to the World Water Forum, Earth Report presents the case for and against big dams. We travel to China and India to examine two of the most contentious dams presently being built, and we visit Norway where the economy is almost entirely based on hydropower.

Narmada, India

The Narmada river is the fifth longest in India. It’s already been dammed in several places but the main dam, the Sardar Sarovar, is closest to the sea. The creation of the reservoir will allow water to be diverted north through a vast system of canals which will provide drinking and irrigation water to 40 million people in three Indian States.

On 20th August 2002, the Chief Minister and dignitaries of the Indian State of Gujarat in western India, gathered together for a ceremony at the head of the Narmada main canal. The blessings of the Gods are invoked and milk offered, signifying the release of water into the canal for the first time.

The people came in their hundreds to celebrate the inauguration of the Narmada Main Canal. It's the largest canal in the world, 450 kilometres long and can move more than a million litres of water per second. Down at the bottom it’s 73 metres wide and the water will be nearly 8 metres deep when it’s full. It will supply drinking and irrigation water to more than 3.5 thousand villages and 1.9 million hectare of agricultural land. Put quite simply, it's massive.

The Sardar Sarovar dam that supplies the water is also huge. When completed in 2005 it will produce 1450 megawatts of electrical power - that's about 1.5 percent of India's total electrical power production. The reservoir behind it stretches back more than 200 kilometres.

However, this hugely ambitious project has an enormous drawback. So far 245 villages have been submerged and more than a million people displaced. And now the plan is to raise the dam even higher, which will displace yet more communities.

Those displaced by the dam were mainly small farmers. Now for most of them, the only work available is on the dam itself – at least until it is completed in three years time. A senior lawyer for the anti-dam campaign asks who should decide about which communities are sacrificed for the project. Protestors have publicly opposed the dam for the past forty years. In that time the cause has gathered worldwide support led by, among others, high-profile campaigners like author Arundhati Roy.

The protestors have not only been fighting their battle on the river and in the courts. They say the displacement of so many people is a human rights issue and that the project is all about money and politics. But dam supporters say that the need for water in the region is a humanitarian issue. It’s been 40 years since the foundation stone of the dam was laid and the United Nations thinks the uncertainty associated with the slow pace of the dam building is counterproductive for everyone.

So as development plans continue and doubts persist over the rehabilitation of the displaced villagers, the question remains - for those who have lost lands and livelihoods to the dam, could there have been better compensation?

Three Gorges, China

In China another mega-dam project is being built on the Yangtze River in the Three Gorges in China. Translated in Mandarin the Yangtze means 'long river', an appropriate term for the longest river in Asia and third longest in the world. It rises in the Himalayas, partly draining that massive mountain range, the heavy rainfall in the upper reaches often causing flooding downstream. By the time it reaches the sea at Shanghai it’s travelled more than 6,000 kilometres.

Floods are the big danger in China. Historical records going back 2,000 years suggest there was one flooding incident every two years. In 1998 several river systems feeding the Yangtze overflowed their banks at the same time and thousands died. More than a million people lost their homes and livestock.

To save the cities the authorities decided to explode the embankments protecting farmland, sacrificing fields to save the cities. The floods even threatened the Da Qing oilfields, China’s chief source of petroleum, but in a race against time the army saved them. Stopping the floods is one reason why Chinese leaders have long dreamt of damming the Yangtze.

The dam takes it's name from the three spectacular gorges, which occur roughly two-thirds of the way down the Yangzte's journey to the sea. It will be the biggest hydroelectric dam in the world, stretching almost two kilometres across the river and towering 185 metres above the waters. Its reservoir will extend back more than 600 kilometres upstream.

The dam will control flooding, produce vast amounts of electricity - equivalent to18 nuclear power stations - and allow a five-fold increase in shipping. But to do all this, the dam's reservoir will submerge many towns and even whole cities, displacing more than a million people. Allegations of corruption have also plagued construction, not an uncommon occurrence in big dam projects. In this case officials from the Three Gorges Resettlement Bureau were caught embezzling 58 million dollars of resettlement money in January 2000. Even sophisticated resettlement policies run the risk of improper implementation. But in spite of the problems the Chinese Government is pressing ahead with the dam and plans to finish it in 2009.

Norway

Norwegians consume more energy per capita that any one else, about 10 times the world average. Their electrical power is cheap and they have lots of it - Norway is sixth in the world league table of big hydro producers. The country has a small population, just over 4.5 million people and hydro schemes produce 99.6% of all their energy. The dams are sited well away from human population centres and so very few people are directly affected. But Norway's programme of dam construction has encountered one big drawback - fish.

Half the population of Norway goes fishing at least once a year and it’s the most popular form of outdoor recreation. Unfortunately, without careful planning, dams interfere with fish migration. So conserve the fresh water ecology has become important to dam planners. As part of their conservation efforts they’ve built fish ladders, which act as watery staircases to allow fish to bypass the dams.

But fish aside, the Norwegians have no other major issues with their dams. With a small population, Norway has been fortunate to escape the main problem confronting big dam projects - displacing people. China and India have populations in excess of one billion people and where ever a dam is sited, it is likely to cause significant displacement. But even so is there a way for countries like India and China to reduce the human cost involved in dam building?

According to Pravin Karki of the International Hydropower Association, "the two most critical factors in developing storage projects and dams in the world today: first is that the stakeholders should be involved in the early planning stages of the project and secondly, you have to make sure that all the people, all the affected people who live in the area are the first to benefit from the development of such a project."