Three Gorges Dam in China

World Water Council Director : Dams are necessary to solve "chronicle water scarcity" Daniel Zimmer was interviewed by the French daily Liberation on May 20, in an unusual position. The interviewer reminds that « many experts think that the fears about Three Gorges Dam or other large dams are rich countries fears. In the developing countries, ‘there are billions of people to feed it’s unthinkable to stop building large dams! If we do nothing, they will die out of hunger’ So explains one of the most famous French geologists, Ghislain de Marcilly. ‘If you take the Aswan dam, of course it had a disastrous environmental impact, but it enabled Egypt to double its population without famine.’” Here follows the interview Will the Three Gorges Dam be the last large dam of this type? Of course not! You just need to look at the situation in the developing countries to understand why. In Africa, for example, they store only between a few dozens and a few hundred of cubic meters per capita and per year. In the United States and in Europe, this figure is going up to 5000 cubic meters per year, when those regions need less water than Africa! There is a 1 to 100 proportion! We can therefore understand that developing countries want large dams and send us back to our own economic development when we talk about environmental risks! As for us, we have water for our consumption, for irrigation and even for leisure. Do the international institutions share this viewpoint? When the polemic began on large dams, the World Bank changed its infrastructural policy, refusing to launch other projects. Today, it recognizes this was an error. She renewed its estimation of the benefits from large dams and completely changed its strategy. For the Bank, if you want that the countries suffering from chronicle water scarcity get a minimum of water reserves to resist drought periods, it’s imperative to go back to those projects. On the condition, of course, that we take into account and we solve the social, human and environmental problems associated with them. Today, happily, we made big progresses on those points. But there are still very strong tensions around the Three Gorges Dam… Of course, there are always tensions around constructions like that. But once again, you need to keep in mind this colossal dissymmetry between the developing countries that need to store water to compensate for the hazards of climate, and the developed countries, where that need is less strong. That’s an injustice for which the countries from the South are reproaching us more and more and that we can no longer tolerate. Is there any alternative to large dams? In Western Africa, for example, we try to manage small reservoirs, more upstream, to delocalize water storage. Another possibility is underground storage rather than surface storage. That’s not always possible but if so, it is an interesting alternative.
(Original Source : ICOLD Official Site, Photo Source : upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/ThreeGorgesDam-China2009.jpg)