A global megadam mania

Water warriors: As Brazil has already dammed and utilised its more accessible rivers, new hydroelectricity projects are planned in remote areas including the Amazon rainforests, where they endanger both ecological treasures and the livelihoods of indigenous groups. The photo shows members of the Munduruku tribe, who have recently won a rare success in blocking the fi rst of many reservoirs planned for the Tapajós river, a major contributory of the Amazon. (Photo: Amazon Watch amazonwatch.org) In December 1994, construction started on one of the largest building projects of modern times. The Three Gorges dam, which blocks the Yangtze river in the Hubei province, central China, took two decades to complete and is now fully operational, after the ship lift was completed in December 2015. It started producing electricity in 2003 and had already recouped the construction cost by 2013. It was a project to set records in many ways, for better or worse. At 22.5 GW capacity, its hydroelectric plant is now the biggest power plant of any description, anywhere. A typical nuclear reactor has around 1 GW capacity, and a modern gas-fi red plant a few hundred MW. The human cost was signifi cant, as more than 1.2 million residents were displaced from the area that is now fl ooded. Important cultural and archaeological sites were also lost. In the 2003 novel Peacock Cries at the Three Gorges, Chinese author Hong Ying gives an impression of the impact that the massive intervention had on the lives of people living in the area. It appears as a unique, gigantic force that hits the communities with corruption and abuse of power and seeds discord. The world-record breaking statistics would also give the impression that Three Gorges might be a one-off. Now, however, similar projects are underway elsewhere in China and in many developing countries around the word, and Three Gorges may not even remain the largest hydroelectric plant for much longer.