Greenwashing Hydropower

by Aviva Imhof and Guy R. Lanza

Big dams have a serious record of social and environmental destruction, and there are many alternatives. So why are they still being built?

On a hot May day, a peasant farmer named Bounsouk looks out across the vast expanse of water before him, the 450-square-kilometer reservoir behind the new Nam Theun 2 dam in Laos. At the bottom of the reservoir is the land where he once lived, grew rice, grazed buffalo, and collected forest fruits, berries, and medicinal plants and spices. Now there is just water, water everywhere.

"Before the flood I could grow enough rice to feed my family and I had 10 buffalo," he says. "I like our new houses and I like having electricity in the new village, but we do not have enough land and the soil quality is very poor. Now I can't grow enough rice to feed my family, and three of my buffalo died because they didn't have enough food."

Bounsouk is one of 6,200 indigenous people whose lands were flooded to make way for the Nam Theun 2 Hydropower Project in this small Southeast Asian country. His story is one that is heard over and over again in the project resettlement area. People are generally happy with their new houses, electricity, and proximity to the road, but are concerned about how they will feed their families in the long term. The poor quality of land and lack of viable income-generating options in this remote area make their prospects bleak.

Big dams have frequently imposed high social and environmental costs and longterm economic tradeoffs, such as lost fisheries and tourism potential and flooded agricultural and forest land. According to the independent World Commission on Dams, most projects have failed to compensate affected people for their losses and adequately mitigate environmental impacts. Local people have rarely had a meaningful say in whether or how a dam is implemented, or received their fair share of project benefits.

Read more at: http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6344
Source: Worldwatch Institute