Dams, Environment and Local People

Dams, environment and local people are interrelated. Large dams have several large scale advantages in irrigation, flood control, power generation, inland navigation etc. It is equally true that it has also many large scale adverse impacts inducing controversy and disputes. For example, despite enormous benefits to Canada from large scale dams, the local people of the Basin are still feeling deep resentment at the way they were treated. Hence, it is utmost necessary to thoroughly examine all the important aspects of the project particularly the environment side regarding the implementation of large dams. Large dams can be very beneficial. They can provide regulated flow to generate abundant hydroelectric energy. Similarly it would be possible to boost agriculture production by supplying regulated water for irrigation in the dry season when the demand for water is the highest. There can be several other advantages of building dams, including flood control and inland navigation. When the nature of the benefits is analyzed, we find that dams benefit mostly the downstream regions while it impoverishes people living in upstream areas. In our case, India and perhaps Bangladesh would also benefit from dams constructed in Nepal, while our country would bear the brunt of adverse environmental impacts. Unfortunately, politicians, planners and entrepreneurs in Nepal tell the public that the livelihoods of local people will be greatly improved by implementing large hydropower projects such as the West Seti, Karnali-Chisapani, Tama-Kosi, Kali-Gandaki-2, Buri-Gandaki, and Andhi Khola projects, which are storage type projects. Is it really true that the people will be better off after the implementation of large storage dam projects? Or it is merely a deception? For comparison, let us see what the river basin residents of Canada are saying now 30 years after the implementation of the Columbia River storage dam projects. Columbia River dam projects have provided enormously large benefits to Canada. Apart from the direct power benefits generated at hydropower stations in Canada, that country has received a large sum of money from the USA in return for flood control benefits to accrue to latter. In addition, Canada is receiving from the USA, in perpetuity, 50% of the additional power generated at 11 downstream hydropower stations, in return for providing the water storage. Despite the fact that Canada took full advantages of the Columbia River dam projects, the people living in the Columbia river basin still feel deep resentment at the way they were treated. The following are the excerpts from Canadian reports. Basin people in Canada bitter about projects In 1967 an American resource economist predicted that the Columbia River Treaty would provide an economic ‘shortfall’ for the Columbia Basin. Today that loss is considered incalculable. If negative environmental and social impacts are considered, the effects on the region are even more aggravated. The Basin bears the symptoms of the negative Treaty impacts with lower development and economic growth in many parts of the Basin, particularly those areas affected most directly by the reservoirs. The resentment and bitterness over how the region was treated 30 years ago is still in the minds and memories of many Columbia Basin residents. The Treaty dams created four reservoirs flooding 60,000 hectares of land in the Columbia Basin. Included in the flooded land were dozens of small communities and thousands of acres of farmland and harvestable forest. The reservoirs damaged a regional fishery already crippled by the loss to other dams on the Columbia River. The flooding destroyed precious wildlife habitat and turned pristine natural lakes into huge fluctuating industrial reservoirs. The Arrow Lakes reservoir, for example, can rise and fall seven stories in height at the beach at Nakusp. During recent drought years, Valemount residents have had to drive more than 20 miles on lake bottom from their community dock on the Kinbasket reservoir to find water. As well as destroying potential wealth, the reservoirs have acted as barriers to resource development in parts of the region. Perhaps the worst impacts were the human costs. Thirty years ago more than 2,300 Basin residents were uprooted and moved from their homes and, in many cases, from their livelihoods to make way for the reservoirs.