The move towards greater and cleaner energy production for the people, more harmful than helpful? - China's Three Gorges Dam project
By Whitney Nekoba
Swarthmore College ‘08
Spring 2007
Upon its foreseen completion in 2009, China’s Three Gorges Dam will be the largest hydroelectric dam in the world (Wu, Huang, Han, Xie, & Gao, 2003; Dai & Sullivan, 1999). The necessity for hydroelectric power spawns from China’s current status as the world’s fourth greatest producer and consumer of electric power. The dam, constructed on the Yangtze River, is the result of years that China’s Communist leaders invested in campaign since the 1950s (Dai & Sullivan, 1999). Through its planning and construction stages, the Three Gorges Dam and its supporters have encountered and combated much opposition from energy officials, Congress delegates, environmentalists, anthropologists, the native civilians, and analysts abroad. The Three Gorges Dam project is a premier case of how overpopulation produces a need to further industrialization, which is now causing an overtly negative impact on the natural environment and its people, who originally caused the need for industrialization.
First suggested in the 1920s by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, a founder of the People’s Republic, the Three Gorges Dam would mark the change from China’s traditional water management system to the adoption of modern hydraulic engineering (Ryder & Barber, 1993). Before hydropower was taken as a serious solution, China adopted coal as an energy source for industrial and residential needs. Government officials believed coal and oil reserves were unlimited and were driven by the increasing nation’s population and its demands (Dai & Sullivan, 1999). Yet, Chairman Mao endorsed the Three Gorges project again in 1958, but the Cultural Revolution, economic struggle, and political changes stalled the project for decades (Ryder & Barber, 1993; Hong, 1993). Three decades of environmental abandon by Chairman Mao and his “grain-first” policy led China to an ecological crisis with massive deforestation and influx of agriculture (Ryder & Barber, 1993). In 1992, the National People’s Congress approved the Three Gorges Dam project and resettlement movements were implemented immediately (Ryder & Barber, 1993; Dai, 1998a). Today, the Three Gorges project is needed for the Yangtze River’s flood control, navigational improvement, and the country’s necessity for greater generation of electricity (Luk & Whitney, 1993). Now heavily reliant on coal, China currently contributes largely to carbon emissions. In 1996, China’s total emissions were determined to be 806 million tons (13% of the world’s total), making it the second greatest nation polluter, trailing only to the United States (Dai & Sullivan, 1999). The demand for the Three Gorges Dam has increased with the electricity demand and the disdain for increased pollution that China’s developing population continues to produce – through the Three Gorges project completion date of 2009.
Originally postulated for a $6 billion cost total in the 1980s, the estimates have risen to $13.5 billion (with $1.4 billion in foreign costs) in 1993, and up to $25 billion in 1998 (Paranjype, 1993; Dai & Sullivan, 1999). These estimates attempt to include the variations by inflation and country rate exchange, but these predictions remain low and hopeful. In addition, Dai predicts that although the electricity generating system will be complete by 2009, normal operation will on commence until 2013, losing even more valuable time in a time of need for hydroelectric power (Dai, 1998). Of the three reasons for the Three Gorges project (flood control, navigation, and electricity production), only the increase of hydropower will produce direct revenue that will be able to finance the massive loans that China has taken out to construct the dam (Luk & Whitney, 1993). The Three Gorges Dam is over 2 kilometers long, and 185 meters high, thus ensuring its grandiose size in comparison to all other dams in the world (Fearnside, 1993; Wu, Huang, Han, Xie, & Gao, 2003). The Three Gorges Reservoir Area covers 58,000 sq. km. – the reservoir will grow to a surface of 1080 sq. km. and will convert over 100 mountaintops into land-bridges and islands (Wu, Huang, Han, Xie, & Gao, 2003). In 1985, it was estimated that the Three Gorges project would supply the 40-50 billion kWh per year that China has fallen short of for its people. In 1993, the estimate was raised to 85 billion kWh, or 10% of the country’s capacity. However, the amount of electricity production shortfall is increasing rapidly (Luk & Whitney, 1993; Dai & Sullivan, 1999).
Immediate recognition of pollution results from the Three Gorges Dam project – shore, air, and noise pollution, in addition to alterations of the native landscape and heightened risk of disease cause an obvious red light to the project (Wang, 1993). Upon the Yangtze River, where the Three Gorges Dam project has begun, an important biodiversity hot-spot in south-central China will be claimed by the effects of industrialization without proper conservation action. Quaternary glaciations has spared is rich ecosystem, and boasts one of the highest densities of genera and families in the world (Wu, Huang, Han, Xie, & Gao, 2003). The dam will affect the ecological state and treasured biodiversity of the region with the immediate loss of habitat and will increase the isolation of the remaining minimized habitat plots through the future (Wu, Huang, Han, Xie, & Gao, 2003). Doctors of the Laboratory of Quantitative Vegetation Ecology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shen and Xie (2004) call for on-the-spot monitoring stations to assess the impact of ecosystem fragmentation, as well as more areas designated as protected parks or reserves, and a landscape-based approach to suggest and evaluate the phases of the Three Gorges Dam project. Once construction on the dam ceases, the aquatic ecology will alter with an influx in species and individual quantity of zooplankton and phytoplankton, as well as a loss of spawning sites for domestic fish downstream. Also, the dam would block migration routes of fish upstream and downstream (Wegner, 1993). The increase in surface area of the reservoir suggests an increase in amphibious animals, altering the natural ecosystem structure. In addition, the density of rodents would severely increase in farming areas and possibly affect human health (Wang, 1993). Needless to say, the ecological niches – whether terrestrial or aquatic – will be significantly altered by the construction and productivity by the Three Gorges Dam for years to come. The reservoir and the changes in land-use automatically increases the accessibility for humans to mountaintops, which will pressure the natural ecological biosphere (Wu, Huang, Han, Xie, & Gao, 2003). Citizen resettlement, as well as tourism (even ecotourism) will increase biosphere frequency and irritation without environmental avail. Furthermore, the Three Gorges Reservoir Area is home to many important Chinese historical relics and cultural antiquities, especially that of the Ba culture in the Han dynasty and Western Zhou (1100-771 B.C.). The anthropological artifacts are needed to study the comparisons of the two cultures, and are important to all Chinese natives (Dai, 1998b). The environmental and ancient anthropological impacts of the Three Gorges Dam project is immense and these facts must be taken into serious consideration by the government, the economists, the construction teams, as well as the scientists, environmentalists, and anthropologists involved in the project.
Due to China’s move toward hydroelectric power, the country now relies on and produces 20% of the electricity output through hydropower. With over 300 dams in the country, at least 10.2 million natives have been relocated due to the reservoir’s toll on the land. It is noted that most of the ‘reservoir relocatees’ were from small villages and are now poorer and worse off after moving (Jing, 1997). At least 380 million people (more than one-third of China’s population) reside, and greater than half of China’s agriculture prospers, on the banks of the Yangtze River (Topping, 1995). Population resettlement, due to the Three Gorges Dam’s construction, began in 1993. Several thousand individuals were relocated during the first phase, and tens of thousands followed in the next four years. Newspapers immediately reported the problems that the resettlers faced moving into new territory. Hill-dwelling citizens were pushed into rice-paddy communities where they did not know how to grow rice or ride a bicycle. Other villagers were moved into government-provided high-storey housing (Jing, 1997). By completion in 2009, the dam project will commit over 13 cities, 329 towns, 1351 villages, and 955 business enterprises through flooding, and eventually 2.5% of the country’s landscape (Jing, 1997; Tian, Lin, & Ling, 1993; Qi, 1998). It is approximated that 1.9 million individuals must be relocated (Qing & Lawrence, 1999; Topping, 1995). Relocation, in its essence is difficult, but the Chinese government is pushing villages up in elevation and into mountainous and sparse land regions above the reservoir area. In doing so, the government is creating a population overflow on land that has already reached its carrying capacity and will eventually deteriorate due to overpopulation (Qi, 1998). Many resettlers already saw their ill-fated future played out with earlier dam projects and now the Three Gorges project will force them out of fertile and arable land, as well as implement a lifestyle change from rural to urban living. These individuals and families remain up in arms about these ideas and refuse to obey with government orders (see disc. in Ding, 1998). Unfortunately, history seems to be repeating itself with the Three Gorges Dam project with the project planners’ idealistic claims and actions.
Currently, the Three Gorges Dam project has completed the dam’s external construction, and is now waiting for more generators to be installed. As a nation, there is a need for an energy alternate from coal and fossil fuel technology because of the amount required by China. The country’s heavy industry results in high, yet wasteful, energetic need (Smil, 1993). Transportation by rail through China also requires high amounts of coal burning, worsening the air and water pollution condition. Li Peng, China’s premier political elite, argues that the Three Gorges Dam (with a planned 18 000 MW capacity) will correct the disparity in coal and hydropower production (Dai & Sullivan, 1999). The reduction of coal burning, in any sense, does promote positive and needed anti-pollution measures by the country’s government officials and looks towards China’s prosperous future in industry, but to what extent? Opponents to the Three Gorges Dam project have argued that smaller, medium-sized projects would be substantial and produce the same amount of electricity and flood control without the added predicament of enormous population resettlements (Topping, 1995). It almost remains ironic that China’s growing population produced the need for a larger source of clean energy production, and now must lament the adverse impact that the dam has created through habitat displacement and agriculture loss. The debate continues about the benefits and drawbacks of the world’s largest hydropower dam, but its construction is almost finished. The world must wait to see the effects that this monster of industrial technology will bring to China and the Earth.
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