Impacts of Large Dams: A Global Assessment
One of the most controversial issues of the water sector in recent years has been the impacts of large dams. Proponents have claimed that such structures are essential to meet the increasing water demands of the world and that their overall societal benef
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Editorial Board Dogan Altinbilek (Ankara, Turkey) Chennat Gopalakrishnan (Honolulu, USA) Jun Xia (Beijing, China) Olli Varis (Helsinki, Finland)
Cecilia Tortajada • Dogan Altinbilek Asit K. Biswas Editors
Impacts of Large Dams: A Global Assessment With 51 Figures and 89 Tables
Editors Cecilia Tortajada Third World Centre for Water Management Atizapan, Mexico Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Singapore International Centre for Water and Environment Zaragoza, Spain [email protected]
ISBN 978-3-642-23570-2
Dogan Altinbilek Civil Engineering Department Middle East Technical University Ankara, Turkey [email protected] Asit K. Biswas Third World Centre for Water Management Atizapan, Mexico Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Singapore [email protected]
e-ISBN 978-3-642-23571-9
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-23571-9 Water Resources Development and Management ISSN: 1614-810X Library of Congress Control Number: 2011937484 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Cover illustration: deblik Printed on acid-free paper springer.com
Preface
Up to until the 1970s, it was generally assumed that large dams overwhelmingly contributed more benefits to the society compared to their costs. This perception started to change in the late 1970s. During the 1980s, the global debate on the benefits and costs of large dams became increasingly emotional, dogmatic and confrontational. While the initial debate started primarily in the United States, it subsequently engulfed many other countries. It became especially heated during the 1990s, when the pressure from primarily single-cause activist NGOs, mostly again from the United States, contributed significantly to the reduction of funding support for the construction of large water infrastructure projects in developing countries, especially from the World Bank and the Regional Development Banks. In fact, during the 1990s, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, all these Banks considered somewhat erroneously construction of large water infrastructure projects to be a ‘sunset industry.’ Not surprisingly, the World Bank lending for hydropower projects during the decade of the 1990s fell by an incredible 90%. Concurrently, environmental and social concerns started to become increasingly important issues starting fr
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