Big Dams

The World Commission on Dams (WCD) report focused attention on the question of how those displaced by large dams can be adequately compensated and properly resettled. An important debate from the Dams and Development Forum concerned the appropriate roles of different stakeholders, and the question as to how governments and 'external stakeholders' such as international institutions, financial investors and non-government organisations (NGOs) can be encouraged to implement the WCD recommendations and international standards on resettlement and environmental protection. This article analyses the actions of three European Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) aimed at improving the outcomes of the Ilisu Dam and hydroelectric power project in Kurdish-populated southeast of Turkey. It also explores the role of NGOs within the process of achieving best practice and preventing poor outcomes. Even though the ECAs’ efforts to meet World Bank project standards were unsuccessful and ended in July 2009 with their withdrawal, this was the first case in history where ECAs tried to implement specified social and environmental project conditions. This article aims ultimately to analyse the reasons for the failure to meet the ECAs’ conditions, and the lessons to be learned from this process.

Large dam construction has significant environmental and social impacts at different scales. As the largest developing country in the world, China has built about half of the world’s large dams, and more are expected to be built over the next two decades to meet the country’s rapidly growing demand for energy. This book summarizes and updates information about the history, distribution, functions, and impacts of large dams, both globally and at China’s national level. It then addresses the environmental and social-economic impacts of large dams in China with particular emphasis on the impacts of large dams on relocated people and associated compensation policies. Lastly, it introduces an integrated ecological and socio-economic study conducted in areas affected by dams along the Upper Mekong River, China. This book has the following three goals.
The first goal is to summarize and update information on large dams globally and at China’s national level (Ch. 2). We examine large dam problems from different perspectives, ranging from their spatial and temporal distributions and their environmental and social impacts, to discussions and debates centered on them. We also incorporate the results of an empirical investigation of the environmental and socio-economic impacts of large dams on the Upper Mekong River, China, and draw conclusions out of the analysis (Chs.3 & 4).
Our second goal is to provide an analysis framework to help understand the environmental and social-economic impacts of dam construction and the resulting environmental degradations and social inequities at different scales (Chs.3 & 4), as well as to offer recommendations for mitigating these impacts within China’s socio-political context (Ch. 5). The significant environmental effects resulting from dam construction include damage to ecological integrity and loss of biological diversity. The most significant social consequences brought by dam projects are their negative impacts on relocated people. Our analysis framework provides approaches to help comprehensively understand these impacts.
Our third goal is to provide clues and suggestions for further studies of large dam problems both globally and in China (Ch. 5). The construction of large dams is proceeding rapidly in different parts of the world despite the heated debates on whether they should be built at all. The decision-making process related to building large dams involves considerations of economic viability, environmental sustainability, and social equity. Therefore, interdisciplinary collaborations are required in large dam research and development projects in order to reconcile the interests of different stakeholders and avoid harming ecosystems, biodiversity, and human welfare. Overall, we hope our book facilitates future examinations of large dams by providing summaries of existing data and research related to large dams, and offering a framework for better understanding and analyzing their environmental and social impacts.

Recent studies within the field of Development Induced Displacement and Resettlement (DIDR) suggest the need to develop suitable methodologies grounded in sound social theory that can reveal the perspectives and priorities of oustees, whose voices are too often marginalised or unheard in the resettlement planning and evaluation process. With reference to the literature of the Nubian minority in Egypt who were resettled four times over the course of the twentieth century by dam construction on the Nile, this paper examines the potential for writer-activists to articulate the experiences, concerns and demands of those most affected by development and bring these into the political process. As such, it shall argue that literature constitutes a crucial nexus for agency, activism and resistance in a situation of radical power imbalances between governments, development agencies and corporate interests on the one hand, and marginalised oustees on the other.

This paper focuses on Nubian literary representations of the 'slow violence' inflicted on generations of Egyptian Nubians who were forcibly displaced from their ancestral homeland to make way for the Aswan High Dam in 1964. In a political context where the disastrous impacts of megadams on the human cultures, communities and environment they submerge are concealed behind hegemonic narratives focusing on  "the redemptive megadam as spectacular symbol of rational deliverance from irrational rivers and irrational cultures" (Nixon 2011, p.172), Nubian writer Haggag Hassan Oddoul refocuses attention onto the catastrophic local costs of development from poverty and underdevelopment, to the threat of cultural assimilation and  even extinction. This paper will examine how Oddoul reframes the concept of disaster to include the long-term, cumulative impact of development-induced displacement on communities transformed overnight from 'residents' into 'uninhabitants' in his short story 'Adila [Farewell], Grandmother' from the collection 'Nights of Musk: Stories From Old Nubia' (2005).

“Frackquakes” that are man-made injection-induced earthquakes increase sharply in the booming areas of oil and gas field development in the United States of America. The hydraulic fracturing practices usually trigger only tiny earthquakes (or rather “acoustic emissions(AE)” in other words) smaller than magnitude 2 in tight impermeable shale layers. However, massive underground wastewater injections into permeable formations are more likely to drive widespread underground pore pressure fluctuation that may provoke instability of existing faults and trigger larger “injection-induced earthquakes”. The growing human activities such as oil, gas and other mineral developments, geothermal developments, large-scale reservoirs, irrigation and drainage system and groundwater management affect the widespread underground pore pressures and increase the risk of induced seismicity. The largest man-made induced earthquake is the 2008 M8 Sichuan earthquake triggered by a dam reservoir in a large-scale fault zone in China. The 2011 M9 Great East Japan earthquake was a natural fluid injection-induced earthquake. The M7-8 New
Madrid earthquakes shaked central United States in 1811 and in 1812 reactivating an old mid-continental rift structure “Reelfoot rift”. The hydraulic fracturing and wastewater injection should be cautious not to reactivate another old mid-continental rift structure “Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen”. The Griffith inclusion model of fault, the effective stress control of hydraulic fracturing and the Coulomb failure stress on fault are discussed to analyze the mechanism of induced earthquakes. The “man-made” induced earthquake is actually an artificially accelerated natural earthquake. The geological and geophysical survey of natural critical faults, estimation of underground stress state, properties of underground rocks and investigation of underground fluids and groundwater regime are important to minimize the risk of induced seismicity.
http://co2.eco.coocan.jp/

Despite a significant increase in the number of dam reservoirs in the world in the last century, the effects of these structures on the evolution of river channels above them are poorly understood. Constructed in 1997 in the Polish Carpathians, the Czorsztyn Reservoir (CR) has raised the base level of the single-thread, gravel-bed Dunajec River. An analysis of five sets of aerial photographs and orthophotos from the period before (1977, 1982, 1994) and after (2003, 2009) the construction of the CR allowed me to investigate the temporal and spatial impact of the raised base level of the river upstream of the reservoir on the evolution of the river channel. Comparison of channel width changes in the backwater river section with changes observed in the control section unaffected by the presence of the reservoir has shown that in the pre-dam period differences in the evolution of the river channel in the backwater section and in the control section were not statistically different. In the periods without major floods, both channel sections were dominated by channel narrowing or a relative stability of channel width. In the post-dam period, a major flood in 1997 caused more than two times greater channel widening in the backwater section than in the control section. The extent of channel widening in the longitudinal channel profile reached farther upstream of the reservoir than the extent of the backwater itself. In the later part of the post-dam period without major floods, channel narrowing were similar in the backwater section and the control section, as had been the case in the period before the reservoir construction. The comparison of changes in width of the channel in the backwater and control sections indicates that channel widening in the backwater, interpreted as an early stage of backwater channel adjustment, was reinforced by the flood of 1997. This study shows that the use of a control section makes it possible to isolate reservoir effects from flood effects in the context of channel dynamics.

Man certainly will win against nature. And will do so thanks to a science, a technology, an administration that will not be rented out to anyone.
Before bending nature to our ends, we will have had to have bent the sinister social forces which enslave us more than millions of cubic meters of grave stones and which condemn the replies of today’s experts to great rewards and grasping profits. We must dam the floods not of water and earth, but of filthy lucre.

The purpose of this research is to analyse and understand the role of state power in transboundary water relations, providing an in–depth analysis of the evolution of interstate relations in Central Asia in the field of water in the period 1991-2011. Taking as a case study the planned construction of the Rogun and Kambarata dams in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, the research looks at the various forms of overt and covert power shaping interstate relations and at the way hegemonic and counter-hegemonic measures are put in place in an international river basin. The overarching hypothesis driving this study is that the intimate correlation between the concepts of power and hegemony can offer key insights to the analysis and understanding of transboundary water relations. While, on the one hand, the analytical focus is placed on state power, on the other hand, hegemonic and counter-hegemonic tactics represent the ways in which power is wielded and observed.
This research makes an original contribution to the literature on hydropolitics in Central Asia, offering fresh theoretical interpretations to the subjects of power and counter-hegemony in the Aral Sea basin and presenting the original “circle of hydro-hegemony”, an analytical framework in which the various forms of power are “connective” in the function of hegemony. A further value is added by three timelines expressly created for the research and that represent, at the time of writing, the most detailed reference-supported collection of events of this kind for the Central Asian region in the period 1991-2011.

Sur le thème du Rhône, d’Orange à la mer, traité sur les sept derniers siècles (de 1300 à 2000), cet ouvrage est un apport à l’histoire du climat par deux historiens de l’environnement, Georges Pichard et Émeline Roucaute. L’étude hydrologique repose sur un millier d’événements (crues, étiages, glaces fluviales) qui mettent en valeur la violence de huit crises périodiques durant la période du Petit Âge Glaciaire. La première partie est consacrée à la dynamique fluviale à travers les inondations et les métamorphoses des lits fluviaux d’après les cartes anciennes. La deuxième partie étudie les pluies et les sécheresses, avec invasions de sauterelles et étiages exceptionnels, comme celui de 1639. Les grands hivers avec glaces flottantes et arrêtées y font également l’objet d’une étude statistique. Enfin, la troisième partie traite, par l’approche monographique, d’une dizaine d’événements hydroclimatiques extrêmes depuis le XVIe siècle dont l’étude s’en trouve ainsi renouvelée, notamment pour la crue centennale de 1856. L’ouvrage présente les principaux résultats d’une prospection dans les archives préparée de longue date par les recherches universitaires des auteurs. Les lecteurs retrouveront l’ensemble des sources d’archives de cette vaste enquête réunies dans une grande base de données mise en ligne avec le soutien du Laboratoire SiGeo du Cerege-CNRS (http://histrhone.cerege.fr/). Ce travail, hébergé ici grâce à la revue Méditerranée, est issu d’un projet FEDER co-financé par la DREAL Rhône-Alpes, le CNRS, la Compagnie Nationale du Rhône et les régions Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur et Languedoc-Roussillon.

Despite the ubiquitous existence of dams within riverscapes, much of our knowledge about dams
30 and their environmental effects remains context-specific. Hydrology, more than any other environmental variable, has been studied in great detail with regard to dam regulation. While much progress has been made in generalizing the hydrologic effects of regulation by large dams, many aspects of hydrology show site-specific fidelity to dam operations, small dams (including diversions), and regional hydrologic regimes. A statistical modeling framework is presented as a predictive tool to quantify and generalize hydrologic responses to varying degrees of dam regulation at large spatial scales. In addition, the approach provides a method to expand sample sizes beyond that of traditional dam-hydrologic-effect analyses. Model performance was relatively poor with models explaining 10-31% of the variation in hydrologic responses. However, models had relatively high accuracies (61-89%) in classifying the direction of hydrologic responses as negative or positive. Responses of many hydrologic indices to dam regulation were highly dependent upon regional hydrology, the purpose of the dam, and the presence of diversion dams. In addition, models revealed opposite effects of dam regulation in systems regulated by individual dams versus many upstream dams, suggesting that the effects of dams may be countered by other dams in basins experiencing intensified cumulative disturbance. Results also suggested that particular contexts, including multipurpose dams, high cumulative regulation, diversions, and regions of unpredictable hydrology are all sources of increased error when predicting hydrologic responses to dams. Statistical models, such as the ones presented herein, show promise in their ability to generalize the directionality of hydrologic responses to dam regulation and provide parameter coefficients to inform future site-specific modeling efforts

Hydropower development continues to grow
worldwide in developed and developing countries. While the
ecological and physical responses to dam construction have
been well documented, translating this information into
planning for hydropower development is extremely difficult.
Very few studies have conducted environmental assessments
to guide site-specific or widespread hydropower development.
Herein, we propose a spatial approach for estimating
environmental effects of hydropower development at multiple
scales, as opposed to individual site-by-site assessments
(e.g., environmental impact assessment). Because the complex,
process-driven effects of future hydropower development
may be uncertain or, at best, limited by available
information, we invested considerable effort in describing
novel approaches to represent environmental concerns using
spatial data and in developing the spatial footprint of hydropower
infrastructure. We then use two case studies in the US,
one at the scale of the conterminous US and another within
two adjoining rivers basins, to examine how environmental
concerns can be identified and related to areas of varying
energy capacity. We use combinations of reserve-design
planning and multi-metric ranking to visualize tradeoffs
among environmental concerns and potential energy capacity.
Spatial frameworks, like the one presented, are not meant
to replace more in-depth environmental assessments, but to
identify information gaps and measure the sustainability of
multi-development scenarios as to inform policy decisions at
the basin or national level. Most importantly, the approach
should foster discussions among environmental scientists and
stakeholders regarding solutions to optimize energy development
and environmental sustainability.

The Gambia River of West Africa is a large unobstructed river, characterized by a natural flow regime and lateral connectivity across its floodplain. Construction of a major dam, however, is planned. We compared patterns of fish diversity, habitat use, assemblage structure,
and the distribution of trophic position and body morphology in riverine and floodplain habitats in Niokolo Koba National Park,
located downstream of the planned dam site. A total of 49 fish species were captured, revealing a lognormal distribution as expected
for species-rich assemblages. Fish species exhibited a range of habitat use patterns, from generalist to highly habitat-specific, and
appeared to migrate laterally among habitats between seasons. Species richness was homogenous among habitats in the wet season yet appeared to increase with isolation from the main river in the dry season. Fish assemblage structure was best explained by the interaction between habitat type and season, underlining the importance of the natural flow regime and lateral connectivity among floodplain habitats. The abundance of fishes having elongate bodies increased with isolation from the main channel in the wet season only. The distribution of fishes having compressed cross-sectional morphology decreased with isolation from the main channel in the dry season only. These patterns of trait distribution support the conclusion that variation in hydrologic connectivity structures the fish assemblage.
Our results suggest that altered flow regimes and loss of floodplain habitats after damming could lead to both decreased taxonomic and
functional diversity of the fish assemblage.