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Published by International Rivers Network

World Rivers ReviewVolume 15, Number 1 / February 2000

As much of the world watched theY2K bug fizzle and New Year’s cele-brations sizzle at year’s end, tens ofthousands of people in India,

Thailand, Colombia and elsewhere wereengaging in peaceful, ongoing protests todefend their river-based communities fromthe threat of large dams. Some of these bravepeople passed the changing of the millenni-um in occupations of dam sites in an attemptto get official attention for their plights. Oth-ers protested by refusing to leave their homes,vowing to drown before they would move forprojects whose benefits are not intended fortheir communities. There were no fireworksor champagne, but there were prayers thatrivers be protected and the communities theysupport be allowed to live in peace. Therewere songs of solidarity. And after years inwhich the only sure thing in these people’slives has been relentless uncertainty, therewas speculation: Would the new centurybring any meaningful changes that wouldhelp them protect the rivers they love?

We at IRN have been wondering, too,what the 21st century has in store for theworld’s rivers and the people who dependupon them. The past 100 years were disas-trous for rivers and river peoples, and theoptimists among us here believe things canonly get better. But to really improve thestate of our rivers will require more thanfighting off a dam here and a diversionscheme there – it will require a shift inthinking about rivers and our relationship tothem. We need a river map to guide us.

So we decided to ask a number of highlyrespected people whose lives intersect withrivers in some significant way to do a littlecrystal-ball-gazing for this issue. What betterway to get the new millennium’s thinkingonto a new track than to get key thinkers totell us their hopes and dreams for the futureof rivers? On these pages, and also in thestory on page 10 by US Secretary of the Inte-rior Bruce Babbitt, we offer the beginnings ofa river map to guide us. What we need noware the hope and courage to follow it.

Medha Patkar, with others from the NBA, prayed in the rising waters of the Narmada River as it rose behindthe Sardar Sarovar Dam in last year’s monsoon. Read her thoughts on a better way, below.

Hoping for a Saner New Worldby Medha Patkar

“Millennium? What is that?” askedRanya Gonjya Padvi, an adivasi farmerfrom the Narmada valley. He has been

in the forefront of the struggle against thedam for 14 years.Respected for his wis-dom, analysis and wit,he wonders, “Why somuch celebration overthe change of some date, some year? And,pray, what really changes with your millen-nium?” I cannot easily answer.

The present millennium extravaganza canbe explained away as the dominant classimposing its preferences, culture and valueson others; they have been setting the normsof the 20th century and are also snatchingthe initiative for the next millennium.Money and the market determine what tocelebrate and when. But the real hallmarks

of this century are nothing to celebrate: alegacy of inequality in rights, power, moneyand land, and the continuous exploitationof human and natural resources.

The present development pattern, whichis the culmination of the processes of manycenturies, tends to give more importance to

money over human andnatural capital. In fact,the current develop-ment model has result-ed in a continuous

undermining of the world’s human and nat-ural capital. This is our challenge for thenew millennium – to erode the current pat-terns of over-consumption and wealth-accu-mulation, and emphasize instead the non-consumerist lifestyle.

We will have to give more value and prior-ity to our relations with nature and otherhuman beings over economic gains. Withoutthis change of emphasis, we will be missingthe basic reason for living. A Native American

Rivers for a Thousand Years

A River Map for the New Millennium

continued on page 8

Volume 15, Number 1

ISSN Number 0890 6211

Editor: Lori Pottinger

Design/Production: Jeanette Madden

Printing: West Coast Print Center

International Rivers Network

Executive Director:Juliette Majot

Staff:Monti Aguirre, Elizabeth Brink,AletaBrown, Selma Barros de Oliveira,Lorena Cassady,Yvonne Cuellar, AnnieDucmanis, Dzhennet Eshchekova,Ignacio Fernandez, Mary Houghteling,Aviva Imhof, Patrick McCully, PamelaMichael, Lori Pottinger, Steve Rothert,Doris Shen, Glenn Switkes, SusanneWong, Petra J.Yee

Interns & Volunteers:Betty Ann Webster, Naomi Beymer,Zola DeFirmian, Juliette Hayes, PeterJarausch, Belle Kevin,TeerapongPomun, Joanna Silber, Pia Sorensen,Camille Warren, Phoebe Wayne

Board of Directors:Paul Strasburg (Chair),Philip Williams (President),Dan Beard, Patricia Chang, Bob Hass,Dorka Keehn, Lauren Klein, JoshuaMailman,Walter Sedgwick, Brian Smith,Francesca Vietor

Contact Information:International Rivers Network 1847 Berkeley WayBerkeley, CA 94703 USATel: (510) 848-1155Fax: (510) 848-1008E-mail: irn@irn.orgWorld Wide Web: http://www.irn.org

Page 2 World Rivers Review February 2000

espite all the hype surrounding the millennium, the Year 2000 has at least provid-ed a good excuse to reflect on the state of the world’s rivers and river peoples. Sowe put together this special issue, entitled “Rivers for A Thousand Years,” to lookat where we are, where we’ve come from, and where we want to go in our effortsto protect rivers from large dams and other harmful river-engineering schemes.

Some clear messages emerge from the articles herein. First, the current development patternmust be changed, so it no longer benefits the rich at the expense of poor communities and theenvironment. The emphasis needs to be on democratic development, which can only comewhen people affected by development projects are full participants. Finally, dams are not forev-er, and now is the time to move toward removing or at least re-operating dams in ways thatwill restore ecosystem functions, species-diversity and community links to their rivers.

Read about where we’ve come from in a brief history of the anti-dam movement, beginningon page 4. This powerful people’s movement has for the past 20 years fought against dams, butit is not just an anti-dam movement – it also advocates for more sustainable, equitable and effi-cient technologies and management practices for rivers, and more transparent and democraticdecision-making processes for river projects. These are the stories we wish to remember as the20th century winds to a close, and where we turn for inspiration and strength.

The article on “living rivers” on page 6 explains where we are in terms of riverine health,and describes the kinds of changes that are required to restore “dam-aged” rivers as we moveaway from the era of large dams. The author, a hydrologist and civil engineer, explains howwe must “free ourselves from the legacy of engineering decisions made 60 years ago” andembark on large-scale restoration of the world’s rivers, so they may once again function ashealthy ecosystems.

This issue’s cover story, which pulls together various river-luminaries’ predictions for theworld’s rivers, shows where we hope to go in the next millennium. The compilation of essaysreveals that river-protectors everywhere have great hopes that the changing millennium willalso bring a changing of attitudes toward rivers and those who depend upon them. Theauthors hope that in the coming century, rivers will no longer be treated as “utilitarianresources” merely to be exploited for profit; that communities who depend on rivers will notbe shunted aside when projects are proposed, and that we need to make more use of theexisting water supply we already have, rather than developing new dams. “The big task ofthe coming century will be to restore rivers, wetlands and fisheries,” says US Secretary of theInterior Bruce Babbitt, in an exclusive article for WRR (see page 10).

We’ll toast to that.

Lori Pottinger

News Flash: Flood Wall StreetIn other news, IRN has developed a new web site that we hope will help slow progress on

the world’s most destructive dam, China’s Three Gorges project on the Yangtze River. Thenew site, www.floodwallstreet.org, includes a petition calling on Wall Street investmentbanks to stop financing the project.

While shareholder activists have been putting pressure on major banks involved inThree Gorges Dam, it is critical that before April 2000 these banks’ customers voice theirconcerns about this destructive project. In addition to signing the petition, if you are aDiscover or Citibank credit card holder, or if you’re a customer of Merrill Lynch, MorganStanley Dean Witter, Chase Manhattan Bank or Citigroup (which includes Smith BarneyMutual Funds, Primerica Financial Services and Traveler’s Insurance), write a letter express-ing your concerns about their involvement in Three Gorges Dam. Remind them, too, thatyou can take your business elsewhere. Information on who you should contact can befound on the new web site.

The $30 billion dam, now in its second phase of construction, is plagued with problems,as WRR readers are well aware. Corruption and technical problems are increasing the proj-ect’s costs, and casting doubt on its final completion.

So take this opportunity to speak up, spread the word, and sign the petition. The dam isdesperate for foreign money. Don’t let it be yours.

Doris Shen

How Now,Y2K?

D

International Rivers Network is an affiliate organization of Friends of theEarth International.

World Rivers ReviewRivers for a Thousand Years

World Rivers Review February 2000 Page 3

Africa

T he Himba of Namibia, the Batongaof Zambia and Zimbabwe, theBasotho of Lesotho, the Xhosa andZulu and Amangwane of South

Africa, the Swazi of Swaziland: these SouthernAfrican peoples have different languages, cus-toms and nationalities. But they all share acommon experience: large dams have affectedtheir lives and cultures. And all were giventhe opportunity to speak out about theseexperiences at the Southern African Hearingsfor Communities Affected by Large Dams,held in Cape Town in November 1999. Thetwo days of testimony revealed that people’sexperience with large dams in the region haslargely been one of trauma, immeasurablelosses and broken promises.

The hearings were hosted by two SouthAfrican NGOs, Environmental MonitoringGroup and Group for Environmental Moni-toring, and IRN. It was held to gather infor-mation from the region to be submitted tothe World Commission on Dams (WCD) forincorporation into their final report.

“This is our time – when we as a peoplecan be heard.” Thus began ChiefSyankusule’s account of being forcibly movedin 1957 along with 57,000 other Tonga fromthe Zambezi River valley to make way for theKariba Dam. “They came into our villagewith large trucks to take the elderly peopleand children. We said we want to knowwhere we are going, what kind of soils wewill have, what will happen to our livestock,our property, our graves. Some said, ‘No, wewill not go.’ So they sent the soldiers andkilled some of our people because they didnot want to move from the river. Then we allmoved – all except our ancestors who are stillburied under the water.”

Each successive presentation wove anotherthread in the cloth of common experiencesthat connects dam-affected communities. Thetrauma of being relocated, such as when thethen-apartheid South African governmentordered Mrs. Mbalula and her fellow farmworkers along the Orange River to pack theirbelongings and vacate their homes that sameday to make way for the Gariep Dam. The lackof participation in the decision-makingprocess, such as the Namibian governmentthreatening to resettle Chief Kapika and otherHimba to make way for Epupa Dam despite

the fact that the Himba say they will not leavetheir lands. The loss of livelihoods that cannotbe regained, such as that of Anna Moepi ofLesotho, whose precious agricultural land wassubmerged by Katse Dam and replaced notwith more land but with some cash andpromises for a new livelihood that still has notcome these many years since she was resettled.The promises that are broken, such as thatmade by the Department of Water Affairs toPatrick Mphalala of South Africa that he wouldget a new home to replace the one he lost toWoodstock Dam in 1977. He and his commu-nity continue to live in corrugated tin houses.

The flow of disturbing accounts wasinterrupted only once by one with a happyending. Olive Sephuma of Botswanadescribed how communities living in theOkavango Delta strongly objected to thegovernment’s plans to dredge several chan-nels and construct two dams in the delta.The government listened to the communi-ties’ opposition, and commissioned an inde-pendent review of the project, whichshowed that the project was fatally flawed.This independent study revealed the proj-ect’s flaws and resulted in the governmentcancelling the project.

Sephuma’s story highlighted two of therecommendations that participants identi-fied as critical in considering future damprojects: that affected communities musthave a voice in deciding whether or not aproject should go ahead, and that proposedprojects should be independently evaluatedto verify claims of project benefits.

Declaration to WCDParticipants had other recommendations, in adeclaration signed by all affected people inattendance and submitted to the World Com-mission on Dams. The declaration stated thataffected communities must become “share-holders” of dam projects, so that project ben-efits accrue directly to them, and that “Gov-ernments should compensate us for outstand-ing losses and damages caused by largedams.” It further stated that communitiesmust be empowered and funded to partici-pate effectively, including informing them oftheir rights; and that all project documentsmust be made publicly available, includingbudgets. The communities said that project

developers (including governments and fun-ders) must take responsibility for all aspects ofproject development and enter into bindingand enforceable contracts for compensationand resettlement programs. “Resettlementand compensation issues must be resolved tothe satisfaction of communities before con-struction begins,” the statement reads.

The hearing drew a number of notablespeakers from the region. In closing remarks,Justice Albie Sachs, of South Africa’s Consti-tutional Court, drew connections betweenthe communities’ dam-related human-rightsstruggles with that against apartheid. He saiddam-affected communities, like those affect-ed by other struggles, had been denied thedignity of being treated like human beingsand the justice of participating in an appro-priate process that would affect their futures.He also stressed the need to make repara-tions for redressing past injustices.

Another speaker, Ronnie Kasrils, ministerof South Africa’s water affairs department,said, “I am not a Luddite, and I know howmuch progress has been made by engineersand industrial development, but it has becomeabundantly clear to all of us that the costs ofill-considered developments have beenextremely high … Water management is notan end in itself. Its purpose is to contribute toa just society. A society in which all peoplecan live in dignity, in which all are providedthe building blocks for a decent life.” ■

“We as a people can be heard”Cape Town Hearings Give Dam-Affected People a Chance to Speakby Steve Rothert

Hearings Report AvailableThe submission to the WCD fromparticipants at the conference is available on the IRN web site(http://irn.org/programs/review/000121.safrica.html).The hearingsreport, which includes all submissions,speeches and other information gath-ered for the event, is available for R75 (US $12.50) plus postage from Environmental Monitoring Group,Attn: Liane Greeff, PO Box 18977,Wynberg, South Africa.E-mail: liane@kingsley.co.za Tel: +27.21.761.0549;Fax: +27.21.762.2238

It was the worst of times … but it led to the best of times.

The 20th century devastated theworld’s rivers like no other period in

history. In addition to other industrial-ageinsults, large dams took a terrible toll. In thepast 100 years, some 40,000 large dams (atleast 15m in height) were built on theworld’s rivers, and few major rivers remaindam-free. Dam reservoirs have flooded per-haps a million square kilometers (one per-cent of our planet’s land surface) and dis-placed up to 60 million people, most ofwhom became permanently poorer as aresult. The environmental toll was equallyshocking: estuaries were degraded, fisheriesdecimated, forests destroyed. Poor nations’economies were weighted with debt, andcorruption often marred the decision-mak-ing process. The projects that did all thisharm rarely delivered the amount of benefitstheir promoters promised. And those whoreceived the greatest share of benefits tendedto be the already well-off.

But the reaction to this human hubris hasbeen a strong and growing people’s move-ment to save rivers and riverine communi-ties. Actions by groups large and small,together with the poor economics of dambuilding, are making it increasingly difficultto build dams in most of the world. Con-struction of large dams is dropping fast,

from a peak of around 540 a year in the1970s to 200 a year in the 1990s.

This people’s movement is comprised ofthousands of environmental and humanrights groups on all the world’s continentsexcept Antarctica. Dam builders bemoan itseffectiveness. Wolfgang Pircher, then Presi-dent of the International Commission onLarge Dams, warned in 1992 that the indus-

try faced “a serious general counter-move-ment that has already succeeded in reducingthe prestige of dam engineering in the pub-lic eye, and it is starting to make work diffi-cult for our profession.”

This movement is not just anti-dam; itsbroader mission is to advocate for more sus-tainable, equitable and efficient technologiesand management practices for rivers, and

This brief history of the damming of theworld’s rivers reveals that as more and moreconcrete was poured around the world, anincreasingly large people’s movement arose to defend rivers.

The Boom Years of Dam Building1902: Britain builds the first of many dams on theNile, the Low Aswan Dam. Its water is used to irrigatecotton for English mills. Peasant farmers who grewcrops for local consumption are displaced.

US Congress passes National Reclamation Actestablishing the Bureau of Reclamation and enabling biggovernment-funded irrigation projects in western US.1932: Dneprostroi Dam inaugurated in the Ukraine.Then the world’s largest hydropower dam, it isdescribed by its chief engineer as “the mighty founda-tion of socialist construction.”

1933: President Roosevelt establishes Tennessee Val-ley Authority. By 1979,TVA had built 38 large damsand inspired numerous projects around the world.1936: World’s first megadam, Hoover, is completed.Elsewhere in the US, more multipurpose megadamsare under construction, including Bonneville, FortPeck, Shasta and Grand Coulee.1948: World Bank makes its first loan to a develop-ing country – for three dams in Chile. Since then theWorld Bank has made loans to more than 600 damsin 93 countries.1949: Communist Party wins power in China andbegins massive campaign of dam building.Today,around half the world’s large dams are in China.1957: Construction of Sanmenxia Dam on China’sYellow River begins.Three years later, it is crippled bysedimentation. After two redesigns it finally starts gen-erating 250 MW in 1973 – one-fifth its expectedcapacity. 40 years later, the majority of the 400,000resettled for the dam still live in extreme poverty.57,000 Tonga people are evicted from their landsalong Zambezi River to make way for World Bank-funded Kariba Dam. Colonial police shoot at those

who refuse to move, killing 8. More than 40 yearslater, most resettlers still live in poverty.

UN sets up a committee to plan dams on theMekong; the dams are supposed to help stop thespread of communism. In subsequent years, US engi-neers design 7 dams for the Mekong mainstreamwhich would store one-third of the river’s flow andresult in massive forced resettlement. Hundreds moreare planned for tributaries in Thailand, Laos, Cambodiaand Vietnam. Most plans are shelved during the war,but many are being seriously considered today.1961: Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru laysfoundation stone of a dam on the Narmada River,now called Sardar Sarovar. Families displaced in the1960s have still not been properly compensated.1962: South Africa’s apartheid government approvesthe multi-dam Orange River Development Project.Theambitious scheme was planned to restore internationalconfidence in South Africa in the aftermath of theSharpeville massacre.The project cost four times origi-nal estimates and irrigated half the land planned.1963: A massive landslide into Vaiont Reservoir inthe Italian Alps creates a huge wave which overtops

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A Stream of ConsciousnessThe Anti-Dam Movement’s Impact on Rivers in the 20th Centuryby Patrick McCully

Time Out For Rivers

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Last year’s “Rally for the Valley” drew thousands to India’s Narmada valley, where anti-dam activism is strong.

Rivers for a Thousand Years

more transparent and democratic decision-making processes for river projects. Struggleswhich started with the aim of improvingresettlement or stopping a specific dam havematured into movements advocating anentirely different model of development.Transparent decision-making is now seen bymany dam opponents as being as importantas the decisions themselves.

Below is a brief history of the anti-dammovement in the past century. Space permitsus to run just a few of the many inspiringstories of this movement, but other signifi-cant events are touched upon in the time-line below.

Eastern Europe:Authoritarian DamsIn the first public demonstration since thebrutally crushed uprising a generation before,15,000 Hungarians took to the streets ofBudapest in October 1988. The demand wasnot an end to Communist rule, but an end tothe damming of the Danube. Yet one resultof this anti-dam campaign was that it helpedbuild confidence among Hungarians to speakout against, and ultimately overthrow, theirCommunist rulers. A similar story lies behindthe fall of authoritarian regimes elsewhere inEurope, with environmental protests – andopposition to dams in particular – acting as alightning rod for public mobilization againstdeeply unpopular regimes.

In the early 1980s, Hungarian scientistsbegan to question the proposed dams’ envi-ronmental impacts. These unaccustomedchallenges to Party wisdom provoked a back-lash, and in 1984 the authorities banned all

public speaking on environmental issues andall media coverage of the dams.

But a small group of dam opponents werenot silenced. After the crackdown they ille-gally set up Duna Kor (Danube Circle), thenone of the very few independent citizens’groups in the Eastern bloc. The initial aim ofDuna Kor was to break the secrecy surround-ing Nagymaros Dam. Their first campaignactivity was to covertly circulate a petitionasking for the Hungarian parliament todebate the project; more than 6,000 signa-tures were collected.

In 1985, Duna Kor published the firstenvironmental impact study of Nagymaros.The next year, they held an unprecedentedpress conference on the project’s environ-mental problems. Activists were subsequent-ly arrested and interrogated when theyannounced plans for a protest march. Themarch went ahead, with marchers being metby tear-gas and clubs.

In May 1989, the government suspendedwork at Nagymaros. A parliamentary resolu-tion abandoning the project was passed inOctober. The first free elections in Hungarytook place the following spring. “The break-through to political change,” says AndrasBiro, “occurred when the government sus-pended work on the dam.”

India:The Long StruggleMedha Patkar first came to the Narmada Val-ley in 1985 to study the villages to be sub-merged by the Sardar Sarovar Dam. As herresearch progressed, Patkar grew increasinglyhorrified by the treatment of villagers at the

hands of the project authorities. Over thenext few years, Patkar quit her research totravel through the submergence zone, livingwith the people to be displaced and urgingthem to organize.

Along with organizing at the village level,Patkar and other activists also began to ana-lyze official documents. They found that cru-cial environmental studies had not beenconducted, that the number of people to bedisplaced was unknown, that estimates ofthe amount of land to be irrigated were wild-ly optimistic, and that funds to build one ofthe project’s most-touted elements, thewater-supply infrastructure, had been leftout of official cost estimates.

In 1989 the increasing number of groupsof affected people and their supporters unit-ed into a single movement – the NarmadaBachao Andolan (NBA). In 1990 the NBAadopted the position which has remained atthe heart of their struggle: that the projectbe suspended pending the completion of anindependent, participatory review. Until thishappens villagers will refuse to move toresettlement sites, even if it should meanthat they drown under the rising reservoir.

One of the major victories for the NBAcame in 1991, when a “Long March” ofthousands of NBA supporters and a 21-dayfast by activists forced the World Bank tocommission an independent review of theproject. The review, the Morse Report, wassavagely critical of the project and the Bank’srole in it. In 1993, the Bank canceled itsfunding for the project.

World Rivers Review February 2000 Page 5

the dam and kills 2,000 downstream.The dam, thefourth highest in the world, still stands, much of itsreservoir filled with rock.

Glen Canyon Dam begins filling, drowning anirreplaceably beautiful desert canyon upstream of theGrand Canyon.1965: Volta Reservoir, the world’s largest, starts fillingbehind Akosombo Dam, flooding 4% of Ghana anddisplacing 84,000 people.The project is driven by USaluminum interests, the World Bank and Ghana’s Pres-ident. A few years later, 90% of children living near thereservoir are afflicted with schistosomiasis, comparedwith less than 10% before the dam.The dam gener-ates around half of its predicted electricity and irri-gates none of the land promised.1972: High Aswan Dam completed.The project dis-places 113,000 and results in the erosion of 5-8meters of delta coastline annually and a 70% drop infish catches.The area of land irrigated in Egypt was nogreater in 1989 than before the High Aswan Dam.

Construction begins on Yacyretá, which eventu-ally goes $9bn over budget and is called “a monument

to corruption” by Argentinean President CarlosMenem.The project has still not been completed.1975: Two large and many smaller dams break inChina’s Henan Province, killing 230,000.1976: Wyoming’s Teton Dam collapses, killing 11 andcausing $1bn in damages.

The Rise of the People’s Movement1981: Philippine government drops plans to dam theChico River.The World Bank-funded plans sparked offviolent resistance among the region’s indigenous people.1982: Chixoy Dam in Guatemala begins to fill. Some400 Maya are killed by government-backed paramili-tary forces for resisting forced relocation.1983: Activists seeking to preserve one of India’s lastremaining areas of undisturbed rainforest force govern-ment to shelve plans for Silent Valley Dam in Kerala.

Gordon-below-Franklin Dam in Tasmania,which would flood rare temperate rainforests andimportant archaeological sites, is stopped by a nationalcoalition of environmental groups and internationalpublicity.

1985: First international anti-dam protests disrupt anInternational Committee on Large Dams meeting inSwitzerland

World Bank approves $450 million in loans forSardar Sarovar Dam despite the project not havingenvironmental clearance from the Indian government.Conditional clearance is given two years later ; thoseconditions have never been met.1986: To avoid apartheid sanctions, the World Bankarranges offshore financing to launch the LesothoHighlands Water Project, which will bring water toSouth Africa.

US Congress passes an act requiring local cost-sharing and greater economic accountability for allfederal dams, essentially halting all new major dams.1987: Parliamentary decree outlaws dam-building onmost of Sweden’s few remaining undammed rivers.

IRN founded.1988: Coho salmon become extinct on the SnakeRiver in the US.

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A t the end of the 20th century,society came to the belated real-ization that human activitieshave greatly harmed the global

environment. The water world has been par-ticularly hard hit, from the worldwide deteri-oration of freshwater resources, to thedestruction of rivers, wetlands and estuarineecosystems and the loss of the biodiversitythese ecosystems support, to the degradationand impoverishment of millions of river-dependent people. Almost everywhere on theplanet, rivers have been affected by pollution,channelization, destruction of their water-sheds, and, in profound ways, by large dams.

As we begin the 21st century, there isincreasing interest in restoring our damagedrivers. Some governments now accept theneed to clean up pollution or reforest dam-aged watersheds. Numerous water managershave begun to recognize the benefits ofreconnecting rivers to their floodplains.

But in contrast to this flood of activity torestore riverine health, most governmentsand river-planning agencies around theglobe still do not fully acknowlege the cen-tral role of dams in perpetuating and acceler-ating environmental degradation. Such anunderstanding is essential if we are to stoprepeating the mistakes of the past and starthealing the problems of the present.

Living RiversEvery river basin has a unique geologic andclimatologic history that has created its par-ticular landform. This landform, from moun-tains to mudflats, has been created by geo-

morphic processes – the action of flowingwater eroding and depositing sediments. Cer-tain dynamic features of the landscape, suchas alluvial floodplains or meandering riverchannels, can persist over tens of thousandsof years in an evolving equilibrium, respond-ing to periodic floods, tectonic movements,and sea level rise. Thus a watershed is a prod-uct of its own evolution, and contains a sortof virtual DNA which determines the uniquecharacter of the particular river that drains it.

Fish, plants and other species evolve totake advantage of the river’s physicalprocesses and the forms they create. Forexample, fish migrate at certain times of yearwhen flows and water temperature areadvantageous; riparian trees have adapted toseasonal flooding, and estuarine shellfishrely on nutrients released from decayedleaves from floodplain forests. This evolu-tionary history means that the integrity ofthe whole ecosystem is dependent on theintegrity of the physical processes that sus-tain it. This dynamic interaction betweenriver flow, river form, people, plants, fishand wildlife is what is meant by the term“living river” to describe the river ecosystem.

Like any other species, humans haveinteracted with and taken advantage of riverecosystems for tens of thousands of years.The abundance of fish and wildlife and thefertility of floodplain soils enabled river com-munities to prosper even as they transformedthe landscape with fields and villages. Onlyin the industrial age, with the onset of wide-spread pollution and the construction ofmassive river engineering projects, has the

relationship between river ecosystem andhuman settlement become severely out ofbalance. The main reason for this unsustain-able interaction is that now human interven-tion has drastically changed river processes aswell as the landscape. A dam’s impacts onecosystems are massive and continuous, andprevent the river from healing itself.

What Dams DoAll rivers are both a river of water and a riverof sediment. River systems are resilient andpersistent because the erosion and deposi-tion of sands and mud, together withregrowth of riparian vegetation, can quicklyre-create disturbed landscapes – sometimeswithin a few decades. A straightened riverwill always tend to re-create its meander; amined gravel bar rebuilds in the same place.In other words, the “living river” is inherent-ly self-healing, always evolving to re-createits healthy form, provided the movement ofsediment is not impaired. To return a river toa living state requires understanding, main-taining and restoring key physical processesthat sustain the landscape, processes like reg-ular inundation of floodplains, movement ofgravels, or summer flow levels.

In the past 60 years human technologyhas become capable of constructing damslarge enough to eliminate and transform keyphysical processes in the world’s largestrivers. Major dam projects have beenplanned and executed with little under-standing of the consequences of these alter-ations on the health of the river. Using amedical analogy, the initial construction of

Page 6 World Rivers Review February 2000

The Flood Next Time: Restoring Living Rivers by Philip Williams

A coalition of local, national and internationalgroups stops construction of Nam Choan Dam in Thai-land, thus preserving the Thung Yai Wildlife sanctuary.

International dam-fighters conference drawsactivists from 26 countries.The group draws up theSan Francisco Declaration, which sets out guidelinesto be followed in deciding on dam projects.1989: Public pressure forces Hungarian parliamentto abandon Nagymaros Dam and suspend work onGabcikovo Dam.

The growing network of local and nationalgroups opposing dams on the Narmada forms theNarmada Bachao Andolan.1991: Protesters take over Brazilian public poweroffices for nearly a month, demanding solutions toproblems caused by Tucuruí Dam.

Brazil’s National Movement of People Affectedby Dams (MAB) is formed.

For the first time in its history, the World Bankmeets with people who would be affected by one ofits dams, Pak Mun in Thailand.

1992: China approves construction of Three GorgesDam. Official resettlement plans estimate that860,000 will be forcibly resettled; these numbers arelater bumped up to 1.2 and then 1.8 million.1993: World Bank withdraws from the Sardar SarovarProject after its independent review confirms hugeproblems first described by the NBA and other NGOs.

Calling the project “outdated and overlyexpensive,” US Bureau of Reclamation pulls out ofThree Gorges Dam, for which it was contracted tooffer technical support.1994: Daniel Beard, head of US Bureau of Reclama-tion, proclaims: “The dam-building era in the UnitedStates is now over.”

For the first time, the Columbia River is closedto commercial salmon fishing.The 130 dams in theColumbia Basin are considered the biggest factor inthe decline.

US Congress approves a reparations paymentof $54m to Native Americas who lost lands, fisheriesand burial sites to Grand Coulee Dam.

Cree resistance forces suspension of the lasttwo phases of Canada’s James Bay Project.

The planned Serre de la Fare Dam on France’sLoire River is canceled in favor of an alternative floodcontrol strategy proposed by activist group SOS Loire Vivante.

Thai villagers first occupy Pak Mun Dam site,demanding adequate compensation for lost fisheries.

Hundreds of NGOs from 43 countriesendorse the Manibeli Declaration, which calls for amoratorium on World Bank funding of large dams.

Nagara River Estuary Dam is completeddespite prolonged opposition due to its environmen-tal impacts and lack of purpose.The campaign galva-nizes a national anti-dam movement in Japan.1995: World Bank cancels Arun Dam in Nepal, say-ing the project was too risky, would crowd out othersocial investments, and that alternatives existed.Another factor was that NGOs had filed a pre-emp-tive claim against the project with the Bank’s Inspec-tion Panel.

Research shows that rotting vegetation in thereservoir of Brazil’s Balbina Dam releases 26 timesmore greenhouse gases than an equivalent coal-pow-ered plant.

Time Out For Rivers (continued)

World Rivers Review February 2000 Page 7

the dam is an acute shock to the system, butit is the continued operation of the reservoirthat creates chronic illness in a healthy riverby changing its hydrology and geomorphol-ogy. There are many ways dams affect physi-cal processes essential for sustaining a living-river ecosystem, but in problems of rivermanagement and restoration the followingare the most important pathologies:

“Persistent Bleeding” (Diversions): Theimpacts of reductions in flow are easiest tosee. The greatest impacts occur in the low-flow season of drought years, but in somesemi-arid regions the downstream riverchannel has been almost permanently com-pletely dried up by dams. For many years,restoring more natural flows has been amain focal point of habitat restorationefforts, and more recently this has extendedto efforts to restore freshwater flows to sus-tain major estuaries like California’s SanFrancisco Bay. This has led to the formula-tion of minimum or “in-stream flow require-ments” for fish. Some dam operators now

release a fraction of theirinflow to provide suchflow releases; proponentsof this approach claimthat this action alone willmitigate downstream eco-logical impacts. Theseclaims are at bestunproved. Restoring min-imum flows does nothingto sustain and replenishcritical habitats created

by floods and flow variability. “Irregular heartbeat” (Elimination of the

flood flow pulse). Seasonal and flood flowvariations are the heartbeat of a river ecosys-tem. Typically, large reservoirs store seasonalhigh flows to release them for power genera-tion or irrigation later in the year. This hasthe affect of greatly reducing flow variabilitydownstream by capturing smaller frequentfloods. Larger, infrequent hazardous floodsare much less affected as they tend to fill thereservoir and then spill uncontrolled at theflood peak. These changes in flow variationand flood frequency have major adverseimpacts on key river processes. For example,they typically eliminate regular floodplainecological interactions without eliminatingflood hazards. They eliminate natural period-ic disturbance essential for rejuvenating wet-land habitats. They prevent pulses of fresh-water which sustain estuarine ecologicalprocesses. Finally, they reduce the capabilityof the river to move sediment downstreamand allow choking of the channel with vege-tation. Recently, attempts have been made

to release small flood pulses from some reser-voirs to mitigate these adverse affects. Suchmeasures alone are unlikely to be more thanmarginally useful if they do not also restorethe flow of sediment to the river.

“Thinning of the blood” (Trapping sediment).Large reservoirs can capture almost all of thesediment carried by a river. Until the reservoircompletely silts up, releases downstream are“clear water” flows that erode the bed andbanks of the river channel until the natural sed-iment load has been regained. The impacts onriver system habitats are profound. Loweringthe channel bed isolates the floodplain fromecological interaction with the river channel aseffectively as if it had levees, and channel low-ering lowers the water table, thus drying upfloodplain wetlands and woodlands. Silts andmuds no longer replenish floodplain soils. Thecomplexity of habitats in the river channel issimplified into a single uniform thread. Furtherdownstream, mud no longer replenishes estuar-ies and sands are no longer delivered to beach-es, degrading estuarine and coastal habitats.

Bringing Rivers Back to LifeThe history of dam construction has been ahistory of environmental devastation. How-ever, in the past two decades some attemptshave been made to mitigate adverse impactson fisheries, endangered species and wet-lands; and recently in the US there has beena growing acceptance of the need to re-oper-ate existing large dams for this purpose. Acontinued failing of these attempts is thatthey address symptoms, not causes. In theUS we know that technical fixes like fish

xxxxxx

1996: European environmentalists defeat plans tochannelize and build a series of dams on the Elbe River.

10,000 hectares of riverine forest on theRhine, near the site of the canceled Hainburg Dam inAustria, become a national park.1997: First International Meeting of People Affectedby Dams is held in Curitiba, Brazil.

Slovakian activists defeat a proposed water-supply dam by lobbying for an alternative plan ofsmall-scale water harvesting and conservation.1998: Three dams are removed from France’s LoireRiver to restore fisheries.

World Commission on Dams is launched.Months later, its public meeting planned for India iscanceled after Gujarat-state politicians threaten toarrest commissioners if they visit the Sardar SarovarDam project as planned.

US Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbittstarts his “Sledgehammer tour” to restore aquaticecosystems by removing dams.

Defying government repression, 10,000 peopleaffected by Three Gorges Dam petition the govern-ment to solve resettlement problems.

The world gains 2,100 megawatts of new windpower, an all-time record.Wind power is now theworld’s fastest growing energy source.

29 dams are removed in the US – a record.Totalnumber of US dams removed during the 1990s is 177.

25,000 villagers occupy the Maheshwar Damsite, vowing to halt construction. Police brutally attackprotesters; dozens are hospitalized.

First international “Day of Action Against Damsand for Rivers,Water and Life” results in 50 actions in24 countries.

Formation of Pakistan Network on Rivers,Dams and People.1999: Some of the largest dam-building companiesin the world are brought to court for bribing thehead of Lesotho Highlands Water Project.

Maine’s Kennebec River freed from the con-fines of the 162-year-old Edwards Dam.

China’s Ertan Dam is reported to be runningat half-capacity and losing $2.4m per day because itspower is more expensive than cheaper alternativeswhich sprang up as it was under construction.

Thai villagers again occupy Pak Mun dam site todemand compensation for lost fisheries. Protesters callfor removal of the dam if their demands cannot be met.

A “Rally for the Valley” brings thousands tomarch in opposition to dams in India’s Narmada Valley.

Embera-Katío people of Colombia march700km to Bogotá to protest construction of the UrráDam, which will flood 7,400 hectares.

US Army Corps of Engineers report revealsthat the best way to ensure salmon recovery on theSnake River is to remove four large dams.2000: Protestors take over Maheshwar Dam site inIndia for fourth time. 4,000 arrested.

14 officials on Three Gorges project areaccused in the Chinese press of embezzling $600mfrom the project’s resettlement fund.

In a nonbinding vote, 90% of Japanese voterson Shikoku island reject a large dam, in the first refer-endum ever held on a public works scheme. PrimeMinister says project will likely go ahead anyway.Activists promise to fight.

Rivers for a Thousand Years

continued on page 9

An engineered river reclaims its floodplain.

dictum aptly expresses the issue: “After everyfish is finished, after every forest wiped out,after every stream is dried up, do the menrealize that the money cannot be eaten.”

Equality and justice, too, should be incor-porated as the core values of life and shouldeven be considered in economic frameworks.This requires radical changes in the biasesand technologies of production and con-sumption. These changes must complementthe human side of production and creativity.We will have to evolve a new politics oftechnology. It is naive to believe that tech-nology is value-free and has no politics. Thechallenge is to shift the control, interestsand priorities embedded in technology toreflect the values of human and natural capi-tal, and to better serve the common peopleand their priorities.

We have to abandon the bias for “offi-cial” science and technology and develop-ment based on these. We have to find tech-nologies which deal with contemporaryissues, and abandon archaic technologieslike gigantic, centralized projects whichcause large-scale displacement, degrade nat-ural resources, and further intensify injusticeand inequality. Those in power cannot justdismiss the people by saying there are nobetter alternatives. Alternatives will have tobe found – by all.

Party politics will have to concede spaceto the growing move toward non-party poli-tics, such as the decentralized, direct democ-ratic systems which have been evolvingthrough the people’s movements. There aresigns that a new international political andeconomic order is growing. In the age of theonslaught of globalization, there is a need toreassert the New Internationalism. The peo-ple’s struggles and the explorations for devel-opment alternatives would be its corner-stone. Last year’s widespread demonstrationsagainst the World Trade Organization and itshegemonic and unfair trade system are justone example of the growing new politicsand new ideology. The struggles of the Zap-atistas in Mexico, Narmada in India, theOgoni in Nigeria, and the anti-militarismand anti-nuclear campaigns are all question-ing the status quo, and exploring new formsof politics and development.

The new millennium will definitelyreassert democracy in a way that more close-ly ties it with development. When the adiva-sis and peasants can freely question the“experts” and bureaucrats about their

schemes, that is democratic development. Itmust be based on the liberation for thesmallest and lowest, not the liberalizationfor the moneyed few.

This is not just utopian dreams – you canhear the rumblings all over India, and inmany places around the world. All the peo-ple’s movements during this century havebeen preparing the ground for this newunderstanding. These smolderings cannot besuppressed

Medha Patkar is one of the founders of theNarmada Bachao Andolan, and a winner of theGoldman environmental prize.

Free-flowing Visions by Juliette Majot & Phil Williams

The first century of the new millenni-um will be a century of rivers restored,of fisheries reborn, of the link between

people and their rivers reforged. In the next100 years, our hope is that humankind willrestore rivers to life by explicitly refusing toperpetuate the human greed, ethnic andracial hatred, and political expediency thathave led to the current state of crisis for theworld’s rivers. We will recognize the intrinsicvalue of the earth’s natural systems, and ourreliance on their integrity. We will under-stand that bringing our rivers back to healthis not just a matter of the science of ecology,but, more profoundly, of how society as awhole interacts with rivers.

Since the beginning of the industrialage, rivers have been increasingly treated asutilitarian resources to be exploited forprofit: their flow mined for water andpower, their channels straightened for ship-ping, their floodplains expropriated fordevelopment. In the past century, morepeople have become disconnected fromtheir rivers, and have lost the understand-ing that rivers have value as living systemsthat nourish the land and as sacred placesthat nourish the soul. These precepts havebeen kept alive by river communitiesaround the globe, where the intimate rela-tionship between river and life is evidentand the sound caretaking of the watershedis essential. These communities have beenthe linchpin of a highly active and effectivesocial movement that for nearly twodecades has fought to protect rivers fromlarge dams. For the next millennium, wewill continue our efforts to ensure thatmore and more people regain this essential

knowledge about the value of rivers, andabout their relationship to and role withintheir own river system.

Our vision for the new millennium alsoincludes repairing the damage that is alreadydone. We will work to support the villagersin river communities where restoration andreparation must be made for past damages.The scale of this effort is huge, and willrequire a wide and deep international move-ment to press for the required social change.

The best reparation of all, of course, isgiving people back their river valleys.Hence, over the next 100 years we willremove or decommission thousands ofdams that currently choke most of theworld’s rivers. Again, this will require thegrowth and strengthening of an interna-tional movement. Major steps must betaken to successfully restore our rivers andwatersheds. There must be an honest andrigorous accounting by governments, thedam industry and funders of the cata-strophic decline in river ecosystems overthe last century, and a clear recognition ofthe role of big dams in this decline. Equallyimportant, there must also be an explicitunderstanding that our legacy of dams wasbased on an outdated development ideolo-gy that discounted or ignored ecologicalimpacts, and their consequent societal andeconomic impacts.

In the next 100 years, we will no longerbe trapped into more extensive and expen-sive attempts to mitigate the negativeimpacts of obsolete and poorly planneddams. Instead, we will find a way to retrofitthis obsolete water management infrastruc-ture to reflect modern societal goals, includ-ing protection of the rights of river-depen-dent people and river ecosystems.

Rivers mirror the ironies and struggles ofthe human condition and in this reflectionserve as great unifiers of the human spirit.The health of a river and its watershed indi-cates the social health of the communitieswithin the watershed. The care needed tosustain these rivers and watersheds recog-nizes no geographic, cultural, or politicalboundaries, but instead demands that theseboundaries be crossed and divisions putaside. In the next century, we envision areturn to health of both our rivers and thecommunities that depend upon them – thatis to say, all of our communities.

Juliette Majot is the executive director of IRN,and Phil Williams is IRN’s president.

Page 8 World Rivers Review February 2000

A River Map for the Newcontinued from page 1

World Rivers Review February 2000 Page 9

A New Water World by Sandra Postel

The world’s use and management ofwater is likely to change more during thenext 50 years than it has in the last

1,000 years. For most of human history, ourchallenge has been how to access and controlever greater quantities of water in order tomeet rising human demands. During the latterdecades of the 20th century, we began to seemore clearly the limitations and the costs –social, economic, and ecological – of thisapproach. Although there are still powerfulinterests trying to perpetuate the old supply-side approaches, there is wider recognition thatstriving to continuously expand the supply ofa finite resource is ultimately a losing proposi-tion – one that leads to diminishing returnsand, in some cases, negative net benefits.

Fortunately, opportunity is knockingloudly on another door. The new and excit-ing frontier in water management is increas-ing water productivity – getting more benefitor service out of each gallon of water weremove from Nature. Rather than asking howwe can tap more of Nature’s supply forhuman uses, we ask how we can providemore nutrition, jobs and material items withthe water supplies we already control. Myanalyses suggest that we will need to doublewater productivity over the next 30 years ifwe are to successfully meet the needs of eightbillion people while at the same time protectthe health of the aquatic environment.

This path, if we follow it, will create a verydifferent water world. It will be a world inwhich highly efficient drip irrigation accountsfor closer to 15 percent of global irrigatedarea, rather than today’s one percent. Farmerswill use information technologies to knowprecisely how much water to apply to theircrops and when to apply it. Industries willhave nearly complete internal water recy-cling, cutting pollution and water use dramat-

ically. Homes and communities will replacethirsty green lawns with native landscaping,conserving water and enhancing biologicaldiversity. And many individuals will chooseto eat less meat, recognizing they can reducethe water-intensity of their diets and improvetheir health at the same time.

This path, as I envision it, will be guidedby a water ethic – one that says enoughwater should be provided for all livingthings before some get more than enough.Society will ensure that all people haveaccess to a minimum amount of safe drink-ing water, something more than one billionpeople lack today. We will see the creation ofenvironmental water reserves – allocating tonatural systems the quantity, quality and

timing of flows that they need to remainhealthy. Engineers and ecologists will worktogether to devise ways for getting multiplebenefits out of the same volume of water. Ina nutshell, we will be more efficient, moreequitable, and more creative in how wemanage the water we take from Nature sothat more water can be left alone to do thevaluable work of Nature.

Sandra Postel is director of the Global WaterPolicy Project in Massachusetts, which focuseson international water issues. She is a senior fel-low with Worldwatch Institute, and author ofPillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation MiracleLast? (1999) and Last Oasis (1997).

A Child’s Dreams by Quinn J.Whitaker (age 11)

In the new millennium I think thatsomeone will, or should, make moreriver preserves. There are lots of places

that preserve animals and land, shouldn’tthere be lots of ways to preserve rivers? Theycould be places where people could comeand see the rivers unchanged.

I also think that environmental educa-tion projects like River of Words will beused in classrooms all over the world forevery age group, and that every teacherwill have the curriculum and use it toteach the children to respect and care fortheir rivers and wildlife. They will helpchildren to unlearn what they might haveheard their parents or others saying aboutit being OK to change rivers or about thebenefits of big dams.

And then maybe kids could go into thewild and visit their rivers and come up withtheir own ideas of what it means for a riverto run free and how people could generatepower some other way than by harmingrivers. If they had this knowledge, theycould teach the older generation about riversand how to care for them. ■

MillenniumRivers for a Thousand Years

Quinn Whitaker was so inspired by a lectureby author Arundhati Roy about large dams inIndia that she changed her Halloween cos-tume to “make a statement,” becoming anAngel of Resistance in a “Free the Narmada”t-shirt and telling people she met about theproblems with large dams in India.

hatcheries are not working very well, andwe also see attempts to restore landscapeswithout restoring physical processes. Exam-ples are attempts to restore floodplainforests that are no longer inundated byfloods, or efforts to create artificial fish-spawning channels without necessary scour-

ing flows, which clean out spawning gravelof sediment.

It has taken us a long time to recognizethat the essential processes which need to berestored are those that sustain the life of theriver; the vigor of its flow, its flood-flowpulse, and its lifeblood, sediment. These arethe processes most affected by large dams.

Our conceptual model of a living riverleads us to a meaningful approach to restora-tion. We can progressively remove or limithuman interventions such as dams so thatthe river can restore itself. Practically, thismeans re-establishing the seasonal andannual variation in flow, in particular the

Living Rivers continued from page 7

continued on page 15

Page 10 World Rivers Review February 2000

L ike a great river on the land,American water policy is continu-ally moving and changing course,meandering in one direction and

then another, eroding one bank while build-ing from the other, always seeking newchannels of expression. Occasionally, howev-er, rivers overflow their banks and abandonold channels to cut a new course, a processknown to hydrologists as avulsion.

Our national water resource policy is nowundergoing an avulsive change, breakingfrom the past and heading into new chan-nels. Traditional national water policy wascharacterized by large water diversion proj-ects, typically with a massive dam as thecenterpiece. Hoover Dam, a shining whitecolossus wedged deep in Black Canyon onthe Colorado River, is the prototype. Com-pleted in 1935, it was both an architecturalwonder and an engineering triumph: itwatered and electrified the river basin, creat-ed tens of thousands of construction jobs,and helped pull America out of the GreatDepression. Its success continues to inspireriver development and dam building acrossthe country and around the world.

Back when Hoover Dam was built, noone paid much attention to the enormousecological costs of these monstrous develop-ment projects. When Hoover’s gates closed,the vast delta wetlands at the mouth of theColorado River in Mexico were transformedinto barren salt flats. A series of large damson the Columbia River created a string ofslack-water pools, destroying thousands ofmiles of spawning habitat, blocking fish pas-sage and sending salmon stocks crashingtoward extinction. On other rivers, hugewedges of sediment piled up behind dams,making them obsolete almost as soon asthey were completed.

We are finding new and better ways tomeet water needs without destroying fishruns, flooding prime agricultural lands, dis-placing local communities and drying upand polluting downstream wetlands. Ournew water policy takes account of these eco-logical costs and seeks to wean policymakers

from an addiction to dam building. Itrejects traditional “supply side” water poli-tics that lead government to keep buildingever more costly and ecologically destruc-tive projects.

The new water policy of this administra-tion focuses on the demand side of thewater equation. It emphasizes marketincentives and full-cost pricing for moreefficient allocation of existing supplies.Over the past decade, the Interior Depart-ment has promoted three distinctiveapproaches to managing existing suppliesmore efficiently. I think of them as threenew “water holes” to be tapped.

The First Hole: ConservationThe first of these new water holes is plain oldconservation and water-use efficiency. Thebasic problem is that in many parts of thiscountry, we still treat water as a free com-modity, equivalent to the air we breathe, tobe available on demand without limit. Andin the process, we waste prodigious quanti-ties of water in our daily lives, especially ingardens and landscaping. Parts of Las Vegaslook more like a Brazilian rainforest than adesert city. Much of my hometown ofPhoenix has ornamental lakes and pondsthat resemble Minnesota more than theSonoran desert. In Phoenix, fully 40 percentof the limited water supply is used for water-ing lawns and other outdoor landscaping.

Pricing policies are demonstrably effectivein cutting this excess consumption. In Tuc-son, also located in the Arizona desert, percapita water consumption has been cut 30%by implementation of tiered water rateswhich penalize heavy water consumption. Inresponse, homeowners have turned to natur-al desert landscaping. In Los Angeles, theMetropolitan Water District has achieved theremarkable feat of keeping its overall wateruse level, even as the population it serveshas grown by 32 percent in the past 25years. Pricing policies are at the core of this,but incentives and regulations for use ofwater-efficient toilets, shower heads andother appliances have also played a role.

In the American West, irrigated agricul-ture uses more than 80 percent of the devel-oped water supply. That means, for example,that in California just a five percent reduc-tion in irrigation water use would provideenough water to supply ten million newurban residents. And there is no lack of tech-nology to achieve the modest savings neces-sary to free up this water for urban growth.

Down at the southern end of California’sSan Joaquin Valley, a visitor can see miles ofalmond orchards blossoming in the springsun against a backdrop of high desert moun-tains. There is no water visible to sustainthese verdant landscapes, but look closelyand you will see miles of black plastic tub-ing, about the diameter of a garden hose,strung along the rows of trees. This is dripirrigation, whose tubes not only cut wateruse by 80 percent, they are also an efficientway to deliver precise amounts of nutrientsdissolved into the water supply.

The second new water hole consists ofthe use of “water markets” to allocate exist-ing water supplies by market transactionsbetween water users. Water markets encour-age the owners of water rights to sell toother users willing to pay a high enoughprice to make it an advantageous transactionfor both parties.

The effect of marketing is to move watersupplies from lower value to higher valuecrops and to move some water from agricul-ture to urban uses. Water markets have beenslow to develop. The ironic reason is that inAmerica, the mecca of free markets, water istraditionally a government monopoly, unre-sponsive to efficient allocation. Traditionally,the bureaucratic response to water shortagesis to create more subsidies to build still moredams to perpetuate the system.

The Interior Department encourages andfacilitates water markets and transfers when-ever possible. Recently, the city of San Diego,located in a rapidly growing region of south-ern California, began to look for new watersupplies. Rather than planning yet anotherriver diversion, it looked to the nearby Impe-rial Valley, a huge inland valley irrigatedwith two million acre feet of water from thenearby Colorado River. After protractednegotiations with the farmers and irrigationdistricts mediated by the Interior Depart-ment, San Diego has struck a deal to pur-chase up to 200,000 acre feet of water forfuture urban growth. Most of this Imperial

A New Course for Water Policyby Bruce Babbitt

continued opposite

US Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt gave the dam-decommissioning movement a boost with his 1998 “sledgehammertour” to remove a handful of harmful dams around the US. In thisexclusive to WRR, he talks about US water policy for the future.

World Rivers Review February 2000 Page 11

Valley water will come from conservationand irrigation efficiency improvements,financed from a portion of the sale proceeds.

But the west can have long droughts;doesn’t this mean that we must have hugeamounts of storage? That takes us to the thirdundeveloped water hole: groundwater storage.

In the not-too-distant past, the responseto all water supply problems was to build big,river-killing dams. Never mind that surfacestorage is not very efficient – Hoover Dam’sreservoir loses a million acre feet per year toevaporation, as does Glen Canyon’s reservoir.This is more than ten percent of the averageflow of the Colorado River, enough to supplya city the size of Los Angeles.

Although some water storage is necessaryin most regions, a better alternative to dams isto store water beneath the ground by recharg-ing depleted groundwater basins. When rivershave surplus flood flows, the water can bedrawn off and stored without the destructiveconsequences of building dams.

One of the largest of these projects, theKern County water bank in California, storesand retrieves more than a million acre feet ofwater per year. This water bank contains amosaic of shallow ponds and dikes on thedesert floor where water is infiltrated into theunderground aquifers. When I visited thearea, the small lakes were alive with water-fowl, shorebirds and marsh hawks cruisingabove the water – an artificial wildlife refuge

and proof that with imagination we can meetour water requirements in a less destructive,environmentally friendly manner.

Even more recently the Department hasissued regulations which will permit LasVegas, Nevada, to store high flows on theColorado River in a groundwater bank locat-ed across the river in Arizona, with Arizonaproviding credits to Nevada for direct use ofArizona’s Colorado River water in times oflow flow. It’s a complicated arrangement,necessitated by the absence of major aquifersin southern Nevada and complex provisionsin the interstate compact governing alloca-tion of the waters of the Colorado. But thearrangement demonstrates, in all its com-plexity, the broad range of alternatives topouring more concrete and disfiguring morerivers with dams.

Restoration & RestitutionIt is not sufficient, however, just to opposenew and destructive dams and river diver-sion schemes. We must act to modify thesad legacy of rivers without water, ruineddelta wetlands, and declining fisheries. Wemust bring a measure of restitution to thehuman victims of dam building such as theNez Perce, the Yakama and other NativeAmericans whose traditional cultures andlivelihood, organized around harvests of theColumbia River’s great chinook salmonruns, have been devastated by river develop-

ment projects. Our task for the coming century will be to remove dams and torestore rivers and wetlands that have beendestroyed in the age of dam building, dredg-ing and diversion.

In some cases the best prescription forriver restoration is simply to tear down thedam that is causing the problem. LastDecember I took a sledgehammer to theQuaker Neck Dam on the Neuse River inNorth Carolina. As dams go, the QuakerNeck isn’t much; it’s only six feet high andit doesn’t generate much power. But to theAmerican shad trying to spawn upstream,that six feet might as well be six hundred,blocking off 900 miles of upstream spawn-ing waters. Now biologists and engineershave figured out an alternative water diver-sion method and the dam has come down.And, just a year later, the shad are spawn-ing 70 miles upstream all the way to thecity of Raleigh.

Onward to the Kennebec River in Mainewhere I joined Governor King and local offi-cials in Augusta to commence removal ofEdwards Dam. Standing on the river bank,we could see the dam upriver, a stone andtimber structure built back in 1837 at thestart of the Industrial Revolution. On thebank above the dam, we could see the brickskeleton of the long abandoned textile mill.In the river below the striped bass wereswimming hopelessly in circles searching fora way through the dam. An osprey circledoverhead then plunged into the waters toscoop up a stranded fish.

The textile mills were eventually aban-doned, but the Edwards Dam refused to die.It was converted to produce electricity thatpowered the first electric lights in Augusta.But by 1997 the dam was producing less thanhalf of one percent of the power used by thecity. Residents began asking the inevitablequestion: Is that trickle of electric powerworth the destruction of the legendary runsof Atlantic salmon, stripers and six otherspecies of migratory fish? And now, after 157years, Edwards Dam is coming down.

Each stop on these dam-busting toursstirs enormous local, regional and nationalattention. And I always wonder, what is itabout the sound of a sledgehammer on con-crete that evokes such a reaction? We rou-tinely demolish buildings that have servedtheir purpose. Why not dams? Why not con-tinue the search for new ways to live in har-mony with creation? ■

Bruce Babbitt on a dam-busting tour.

Phot

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Volko

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Rivers for a Thousand Years

Page 12 World Rivers Review February 2000

But the Gujarat government remainedcommitted to completing Sardar Sarovar andscraped together the money to continueconstruction. Large-scale submergence beganduring the 1993 monsoon. Police arrestedthose in the lowest houses and draggedthem to higher ground. Similar scenes wererepeated in 1994 and 1995.

Construction on the dam was finally halt-ed in early 1995 after the NBA filed a casewith the Indian Supreme Court. But in 1999the Gujarat government persuaded the courtto allow the dam to be raised by severalmeters. This small addition caused a majorincrease in the area flooded. Villagers andactivists once more took up the pledge toface the rising waters. The reservoir rose intohouses three times in 1999. At press time,construction is suspended once again and theNBA is preparing for another Supreme Courthearing and its long-awaited final judgment.

During the 1990s the NBA also helpedorganize villagers affected by other dams inthe Narmada Valley. In January, the Mahesh-war dam site was taken over by local vil-lagers for the eighth time in three years.

Author Arundhati Roy says the NBA’sstruggle “has come to represent far morethan the fight for one river. It has begun toraise doubts about an entire political system.What is at issue now is the very nature ofour democracy. Who owns this land? Whoowns its rivers? Its forests? Its fish?”

Today, Indian anti-dam activists areincreasingly focusing attention on ways to provide irrigation and drinking waterwhich do not rely on large dams. Dozens ofingenious ways to capture water withoutriver-killing reservoirs in the 1997 bookDying Wisdom: Rise, Fall and Potential ofIndia’s Traditional Water-Harvesting Schemes.NGOs around the country are working withcommunities to reinvigorate water harvest-ing systems.

Researchers have also debunked the pow-erful myth that large dams are essential toIndia’s food self-sufficiency. HimanshuThakker of the Centre for Water Policy hasshown that despite billions of dollars ininvestments, only 13 percent at most ofIndia’s food production is due to irrigationfrom large dams. A team of energy expertshave shown that improving India’s energyefficiency could fulfill all the country’spower demand for the next decade withoutthe need for new supply.

Brazil:Acting Locally and GloballyEffective opposition to dams in Brazil firstarose after the national utility Eletrosulrevealed plans in 1977 to build 22 dams inthe Uruguay River basin. Over the next few

years, priests, union organizers, land reformactivists and small farmers started to mobi-lize resistance to the first dams slated forconstruction, Itá and Machadinho. In 1981,the Regional Commission of People Affectedby Dams (CRAB) was formed.

Through the political acumen of its lead-ership and by forging alliances with othersocial movements, CRAB forced Eletrosul tothe negotiating table. The group’s demandswere backed by non-violent direct action:company representatives were thrown offprivate land, survey stakes torn up, construc-tion sites blocked, and offices occupied.

By 1987, CRAB had forced Eletrosul tomake significant resettlement concessions.CRAB’s resistance helped cause long delaysin the construction of Itá and forced Eletro-sul to redesign Machadinho with a smallerreservoir and less displacement.

In 1991, regional groups of dam-affectedpeople from around Brazil formed the Nation-al Movement of People Affected by Dams(MAB). MAB’s stated goals were to ensure jus-tice for affected people and to secure “pro-found changes in current energy and irriga-tion policies.” Today MAB is demanding thatno licenses be given for new dams until repa-rations are provided for those yet to be com-pensated for damages caused by existingdams. MAB is also lobbying the governmentto set up a national commission on dams toreview the country’s dam-building record.

Realizing the need to organize on theinternational level to counter the influenceof international funders and builders ofdams in Brazil, MAB organized the FirstInternational Meeting of Dam Affected Peo-ple, held in Curitiba, Brazil, in 1997. Peoplefrom 20 countries attended. MAB also playeda leading role in pushing for the establish-ment of the World Commission on Dams.

Thailand: Standing Up to DamsThe Japanese-financed feasibility study forthe Nam Choan Dam on the Khwae Riverwas completed in 1982. The World Bank andJapanese government pledged funds to buildwhat would be the country’s highest dam.The Thai electric utility, EGAT, insisted thatalthough the reservoir would cut throughthe Thung Yai Wildlife Sanctuary, only asmall part of the sanctuary would be flood-ed. It also claimed the area would soon bedestroyed by illegal farming and logging.

The dam was opposed by a network ofenvironmentalists, academics, students andothers, which countered that the wildlifesanctuary was the core of the largest con-tiguous expanse of natural forest remainingin Southeast Asia. The reservoir would blockmigration routes for large mammals, and

flood hugely diverse riverine forest. Criticsaccused EGAT of deliberately exaggeratinglocal rainfall and thus power production. Forthe same investment, opponents argued, anequivalent amount of energy could be gener-ated by upgrading existing power plants. Theoutcry over the project forced the govern-ment to suspend Nam Choan.

When the project came back to life someyears later, a broad base of citizens and agrowing number of politicians joined theranks of the opposition. Numerous protestswere held. The anti-dam groups worked notjust on the local and national levels, but alsobuilt up strong links with the internationalenvironmental movement. In 1988, the proj-ect was finally shelved. Soon after, thewildlife sanctuary was granted World Her-itage Site status.

The lessons learned and alliances forgedin the Nam Choan campaign propelled Thaienvironmentalists to other successes, mostnotably a 1989 nationwide ban on logging.Student groups and NGOs helped local peo-ple force the cancellation or postponementof three large dams in the three years afterthe Nam Choan decision.

Pak Mun Dam, which provoked the mostbitter struggle since Nam Choan, did getbuilt. But the affected people’s years-longfight for adequate compensation, and theresulting negative publicity for EGAT, helpedbring an end to the utility’s dam-buildingdays. In 1995, the Prime Minister’s Officedeclared that “for the sake of environmentalprotection, [Thailand would] no longer builddams for power production.” Today, peopleaffected by Pak Mun are still fighting forreparations.

US: Dam DecommissioningWhen Dan Beard, former head of the USBureau of Reclamation, stated in 1994, “Thedam building era in the United States is nowover,” he set off a uniquely top-down move-

Anti-Dam continued from page 5

continued opposite

“It is both necessary and possibleto bring an end to the era of

destructive dams. It is also bothnecessary and possible to

implement alternative ways ofproviding energy and managing our

freshwaters which are equitable,sustainable and effective.”

Dam-affected signatories of theCuritiba Declaration (1997)

World Rivers Review February 2000 Page 13

ment against dams in the US. This sea-change took an even more tangible turn in1998 when Bruce Babbitt, head of the USDepartment of the Interior, embarked on anationwide “sledgehammer tour” to removesmall, aging dams that had particularly nega-tive impacts on fisheries. The tour highlight-ed a growing nationwide movement todecommission dams in the second-most-dammed country in the world (after China).

Nearly 500 dams were removed in the USin the 20th century, from small to large.Although that leaves more than 75,000 damsstill clogging the nation’s rivers, the pace ofdecommissioning has stepped up in recentyears and more groups have gotten involved.The US has active campaigns to decommis-sion more than 100 dams. Nearly all of theseefforts are characterized by unique partner-ships that bring together river-protectiongroups, fisheries experts, local politicians,citizens, and scientists from agencies such asUS Fish and Wildlife and US Army Corps ofEngineers. In some places, government agen-cies have been key players in getting damsremoved or re-operated. In Pennsylvania, forexample, 35 dams have been removed since1990, and as many slated for removal withintwo years – an effort largely spearheaded bythe Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commis-sion. Some partnerships have even includeddam owners who have discovered that it canbe more economical to decommission damsthan to re-operate or repair them to meetsafety or environmental standards.

In Wisconsin, advocacy groups, scientistsand agencies such as the Department of Nat-ural Resources have come together to maxi-mize restoration opportunities in a statewith some 3,600 dams wreaking environ-mental havoc. One such effort is the damremoval campaign “20 by 2000,” launchedby the River Alliance of Wisconsin. TheAlliance offered technical expertise to com-munities that wanted to remove dams. Bythe end of 2000, at least 20 dams in six com-munities will have been removed or slatedfor removal through this campaign. TheAlliance is now working on a Citizen’s Guideto Small Dam Removal.

Friends of the Earth launched one of thefirst major decommissioning efforts in theworld in Washington state during the mid-1980s. After an eight-year campaign by con-servationists, fishermen, and Native Ameri-cans, Congress agreed in 1992 to allow twolarge dams on the Elwha River to beremoved. The Congressional agreement issubject to the appropriation of funds, whichhas been blocked by a Washington senator.An agreement to take at least one of thedams out is currently moving forward.

The Colombia/Snake River basin is anoth-er hotbed of dam-decommissioning activity,with some of the most politicized decommis-sioning battles in the country. These effortshave drawn large national environmentalgroups, such as American Rivers and Friendsof the Earth, as well as smaller groups such asIdaho Rivers United. Tribal peoples are alsoweighing in on some of these efforts, as theirfisheries, often protected by treaty rights,have been destroyed by years of damming.

The idea to restore fisheries on the SnakeRiver (a tributary of the Columbia) throughdecommissioning first came from an unlike-ly source – the US Army Corps of Engineers,which has had a long history of trying to“tame” rivers with dams and levees. Sincethe agency revealed in a ground-breakingreport that the Snake’s fisheries could best berestored through decommissioning somedams, environmental groups have worked tomake the river’s restoration a reality. A coali-tion called the Columbia and Snake RiverCampaign is seeking the partial removal offour dams on the lower Snake and the per-manent lowering of the reservoir behind a

dam on the Columbia to restore endangeredfish species. The coalition has financed tech-nical studies, including a report whichreveals that decommissioning these damswould save the public US$87 million a year,by ending failed efforts to restore salmonand subsidies for river transportation.

Some of the most exciting decommission-ing efforts in the US involve taking on thedams that submerged Hetch Hetchy Valleyin Yosemite National Park, and Glen CanyonDam on the Colorado River. Today there arecampaigns to restore the rivers below each ofthese dams, probably by allowing water toflow through an altered dam wall. The SierraClub spearheads the Hetch Hetchy cam-paign, and hopes to build political will torestore this “other Yosemite Valley.” TheGlen Canyon effort includes the research-oriented Glen Canyon Institute, and thenew Glen Canyon Action Network(www.drainit.org), recently launched byIRN’s former director, Owen Lammers.GCAN’s goal is to drain the reservoir andrestore the beautiful desert canyons to theirpre-dam state.

The US is not alone in its efforts to takedown bad dams. The European Rivers Net-work in France has successfully pushed forthe removal on dams on the Loire. Thai-land’s Pak Mun resettlers are demanding thatthe dam be removed if project officials can-not restore their livelihoods. In Japan,groups that fought a dam on the NagaraRiver have begun a campaign to decommis-sion the Nagara Estuary Dam. And theextensive people’s movement in Latin Amer-ica is considering dam decommissioning fora number of projects. If the anti-dam move-ment’s successes in the past are any indica-tion, the 21st century could be an era of seri-ous dam removal. ■

“Men may dam it and say thatthey have made a lake, but it will

still be a river. It will keep itsnature and bide its time, like a

caged animal alert for the slightestopening. In time, it will have itsway; the dam, like the ancient

cliffs, will be carried awaypiecemeal in the currents.”

Wendell Berry

Phot

o:Ro

bert

o Ep

ple

A dam on the Loire in France was removed by force in 1998.

Page 14 World Rivers Review February 2000

Asia

T ens of thousands of people havealready been relocated in ShanState, Burma, to make way for aproposed dam on the Salween

River. The 3,300 MW Ta Sang Dam wouldexport power to Thailand and supply powerto Burma. While currently only at the designstage, the Burmese military dictatorship,which calls itself the State Peace and Devel-opment Council (SPDC), is using the projectas an excuse to relocate ethnic minorityShan people living along the Salween River.

The Salween River, known as the NuJiang in China, rushes in a cold, wild torrentfrom its source on the Tibetan Plateauthrough China’s Yunnan Province and thenthrough Burma to the Indian Ocean. It hasbeen little studied, but it is known that theSalween basin still harbors some of South-east Asia’s remaining intact forests, whichsupport rare animals and medicinal plants. Apiece of the Salween forms part of the borderbetween Burma and Thailand.

In the early 1990s, preliminary studieswere done for several Salween dams but theplans never attracted funders. The WorldBank and International Monetary Fund donot lend to Burma’s military regime, and theAsian Development Bank did not followthrough on its initial enthusiasm for pro-posed Burmese dam projects. However,recent moves by the Japanese government toreestablish ties with the SPDC has led tofears that the Japanese government mayfinance the Ta Sang and other proposeddams along the Salween.

In July 1997, the Thai government agreedto buy up to 1,500 MW of power fromBurma by 2010. Two months later, GMSPower – a subsidiary of Thailand’s MDXgroup of companies – signed a contract withthe military government’s Myanmar Eco-nomic Corporation to conduct a feasibilitystudy on Ta Sang. GMS Power is involved indam projects in Laos, Cambodia and China.GMS contracted Lahmeyer International, aGerman consulting firm, to conduct aprefeasibility study, and the Electric PowerDevelopment Corporation of Japan to over-see the feasibility study (completed in March1999). The final stage of the study, scheduledto begin in December 1999, has beendescribed by a GMS spokesperson as the“definite plan,” presumably the detailedengineering design.

The GMS and EPDC surveyors and seis-mic technicians began their field visits in

November 1998, accompanied by heavilyarmed Burmese army guards. The area iscontested by Shan rebels, who have beenfighting the Burmese military for autonomyfor decades. Burma’s regime has counteredsuch insurgency with ruthless campaignsagainst the civilian population of the region.According to the Shan Human Rights Foun-dation, hundreds of villages in Shan Statehave been destroyed and at least 300,000inhabitants relocated to fenced camps andnew villages near army bases, where they areforced into labor on the regime’s infrastruc-ture projects.

Leaders of Shan rebels active in the TaSang area gave permission for the GMS-EPDC team to conduct its study there. How-ever, the Shan rebels have reserved judgmentas to whether or not to allow actual damconstruction without a fight. Seng Suk, aShan rebel leader, commented in Januaryabout GMS/EPDC, “They are looking to carryout this project without taking into consid-eration the huge human cost.”

No Environmental Protections The Ta Sang Dam will be 188 meters highand would create a reservoir 230 km long,storing approximately one-third of the Sal-ween’s average annual flow. The projectwould do considerable harm to the peopleand environment of the Salween basin, espe-cially in Burma. Burma is essentially withoutenvironmental regulation, which has left itutterly vulnerable to the predations of theforeign logging, mining and petroleum com-panies invited in by the ruling junta. Noenvironmental impact assessments havebeen done for the dams already built orplanned in Burma.

According to Salween Watch, a coalitionof organizations opposing the project,“Indigenous fish populations and land-based wildlife would be radically affectedor annihilated. Riversides would be com-pletely changed all the way down to thedelta, with riverbank erosion and possibledisappearance of islands in the delta. Somewell-water supplies would likely be affectedby saltwater intrusion. Deprived of river-borne silt, farming in the highly produc-tive floodplains would come to relyincreasingly on scarce and expensive chemical inputs.”

In addition to Ta Sang, preliminary stud-ies have been completed for five hydropowerdams on the Salween. In February 1999, the

Thai government approved US$4.6 millionfor a feasibility study of diverting water fromthe Salween basin into the Chao PhrayaRiver basin in Thailand, to alleviate Thaiwater shortages.

These plans have met strong resistancefrom Thai and Burmese villagers and NGOs,who estimate that more than 10 millionpeople would be affected by dams on theSalween. In September 1999, over 35 Thaiand Burmese organizations signed an openletter warning that any damming of the Sal-ween “would drown villages, disrupt agricul-ture and fisheries above and below the dam… [and] be a grave hazard in an area thatfrequently experiences earthquakes.” The let-ter called for a process of consultation that“fully recognizes and respects the human,civil and political rights of all the affectedpeoples, ensuring their informed participa-tion and fully compensating them for anylosses incurred.”

Many Thai activists see a parallel betweenthe Salween dams and the Yadana gaspipeline that was built in recent years acrossBurma by multinational companies Totaland Unocal, to fuel electrical power for Thai-land. The pipeline route was deforested, vil-lages in the vicinity were relocated, andinsurgent groups were crushed to secure thearea for construction. Today, Thailand hasmore energy than it can use, and thepipeline is barely functioning.

Burma’s pipeline tragedy shows thatimmense damage can be done by a projectbefore it is “on-line.” Indeed, harm canoccur before the project has even officiallycommenced, as the Burmese regime movesits battalions in to thoroughly secure aregion for the grand schemes of moneyedinterests. The indigenous people of Burmaare not consulted about these projects, andin fact their very existence is viewed by theregime and its investors as an impediment.Burma’s military acts accordingly, to removethe people and use them as beasts of bur-den. As Salween Watch puts it, “Making ahuge dam in the land of the Shan people isan act of neo-colonial occupation, if not anact of war.” ■

The author is director of Project Maje, an envi-ronmental and human rights information projecton Burma, and author of Burmese LookingGlass (Atlantic Monthly Press). For furtherinformation contact Salween Watch:Salween_Watch@hotmail.com.

Thousands Relocated for Proposed Burma Damby Edith T. Mirante

World Rivers Review February 2000 Page 15

smaller floods that do most of the work inscouring and depositing sediments; inundat-ing and replenishing floodplain woodlandsand farmland, and re-watering aquifers andwetlands. It also means reestablishing a wayfor the river sediments to move downstream.

An Obsolete LegacyAn equally important question of the 21stcentury is, How do we retrofit obsolete watermanagement infrastructure to reflect modernsocietal goals? These goals now include pro-tecting the rights and values of river depen-dent people, protecting the river ecosystem,and ensuring economic accountability forriver management decisions. In order toanswer this question we need to change ourview of the dam as an everlasting concretestructure, to the dam as a continued humandecision to perpetuate a certain type of inter-vention on a healthy living river.

One way to begin to restore rivers to lifewould be to conduct a periodic audit of exist-ing dams, to reevaluate the rationale for theircontinued operation. This audit would besimilar to a relicensing process used on pri-vate dams in the US. It would include anenvironmental and social assessment of pro-

jected future operations and determinewhether the dam will meet contemporarysocietal goals. From such an audit, decisionscan be made to continue a dam in operation,modify its operation or decommission it.

This process would lay the groundworkfor a new direction in river management.Instead of being trapped into more and moreextensive and expensive attempts to mitigatethe ever-expanding negative impacts of obso-lete poorly planned dams, we would have thefreedom and opportunity to realize thecumulative social and ecological benefits ofrestoring and managing our river valleys.

For those dams we decide to continueoperating, we have to place their rivers on per-manent life support. This means developingnew reservoir operations and river manage-ment regimes that mimic natural hydrologicprocesses. We have a pretty good idea of whatthey are. To achieve them may require makingsignificant changes in flood-control operationand even retrofitting dam structures with newspillways, but these changes could significant-ly improve flood protection while restoringriver corridor and wetland ecosystems. Newreservoir-operating criteria will require fairevaluation of the tradeoffs between irrigation

deliveries and ecosystem restoration. To dothis requires first establishing a transparentand rigorous accounting system for how wemanage our water resources.

But even this does not treat the “wholebody” of the river. Once we free ourselvesfrom the legacy of engineering decisionsmade 60 years ago, we have the opportunityto realize the cumulative societal, economicand ecologic benefits of large-scale restora-tion. For example, we know that restoringlowland river floodplains will not onlyreduce flood damages, but help rechargegroundwater, preserve greenbelts, and pro-vide recreational benefits.

It is possible to envisage a future whererivers and water resources are managed inharmony to sustain a viable ecosystem and amodern economy. To get there, we have tofirst break free from the legacy of greed andbad planning that imposed big dams on ourrivers. We need to articulate a clear, compre-hensive and scientifically defensible visionfor river management. And we need to begintaking bad dams down. ■

The author is president of International RiversNetwork and a consulting hydrologist.

Living Rivers continued from page 9

H ail and hard rain fell overBogotá, Colombia on January 3,flooding the gardens at the Min-istry of the Environment where

167 Embera-Katío people had been campingout for almost three weeks. The protest vigilis part of the people’s effort to push the gov-ernment to negotiate with them over theimpacts of the US$780 million Urrá Dam.

Men, women, children, elders and medi-cine men marched 700 km from the UpperSinú River to Bogotá, to protest the floodingof their lands and to focus attention on theirstruggle to protect their rights to livelihood.The protestors were soon joined by membersof the fishing communities living down-stream from the dam site, also demandingmitigation measures for the dam’s impacts.

In December, a few weeks after the vigilbegan, the government conceded one of theEmbera-Katío’s demands, agreeing to keepthe reservoir level below where it wouldflood people off their land. Since then, offi-cials have been reluctant to meet with theprotestors, reportedly fearing being forcedinto other concessions which could influencehow future development schemes play out.

Back in their traditional lands, anothergroup of over 100 Embera-Katío launched anindefinite occupation of their territory whichwill be flooded. 46 traditional homes wererapidly built in this area and people beganpreparing the field for cultivation. They vowto drown if their demands are not met.

The project would flood 470 hectares ofthe Embera-Katío territory. Urrá S.A., theowner of the dam, suspended negotiationswith the Embera-Katío in September. Never-theless, the government granted the environ-mental license and in November the compa-ny began filling the reservoir. These actionsviolated the Constitutional Court’s ruling ofsuspension of the project until an adequatemitigation and compensation plan was agreedupon between the Embera-Katío and Urrá.

Although legally Indian lands are com-munally owned property, the companynegotiated a compensation and resettlementpackage with individuals from the EsmeraldaReserve, which has caused division amongthe people. The protestors are pushing tohalt such individual negotiations.

Construction of the Urrá Dam has causedserious impacts throughout the Sinú River

basin. The dam has impacted fish popula-tions, flooded fields and disrupted naviga-tion. Communities downstream from thedam have reported that the Lorica wetlandsare drying out, harming fish breedinggrounds and habitat for other animals.

The Urrá Dam was built with financingfrom the Nordic Investment Bank, the Cana-dian Export Development Corporation,Nordbanken and the Colombian govern-ment. Urrá S.A. contracted Swedish companySkanska to build the dam.

The Embera-Katio’s efforts to negotiatewith Urrá and the government have not justmet with official indifference, but also withparamilitary violence. Since August 1998,four Embera-Katio leaders have been killed.

“We are not going to leave our land,because the government has not come to anagreement with us. Urrá officials do not havethe authority to use our lands or flood them.Our bones are buried there,” said theEmbera-Katio in a written statement. ■

For more information: In Spanish,www.gratisweb.com/embera_katio/index.htm; In English: www.irn.org

Indigenous People March to Bogotá to Protest Urra Dam Impactsby Monti Aguirre

1847 Berkeley WayBerkeley,CA 94703,U.S.A.

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Call to ActionNon-Profit Org.US POSTAGE

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Join the International Day of Action Against Dams by Susanne Wong

IN THIS ISSUE

International Rivers Networkkhdl

China:New web site sendsa message to investors inThree Gorges Dam.Page 2

Africa:A report fromNGO-sponsored hearings fordam-affected people in CapeTown.Page 3

Burma:A dam on the Salween River is a humanrights disaster.Page 14

Colombia:Indigenous peo-ple’s long march for justiceon Urra Dam.Page 15

What will the next millenni-um bring for the world’srivers? Page 1

Looking forward to bettertimes for rivers.Page 2

A brief history of the anti-dam movement.Page 4

A plan to make rivers liveagain.Page 6

Water policy can be madesustainable,according to U.S.Interior Secretary BruceBabbitt.Page 10

O ver the past year, the anti-dammovement has gained hugemomentum – from nonviolentmass resistance in Asia, to unprece-

dented networking in Latin America andAfrica, to dam removals in Europe and NorthAmerica. Let’s keep this momentum growing:plan an event on March 14 as part of the thirdannual International Day of Action AgainstDams and for Rivers, Water & Life.

Actions on this day show the world astrong, diverse worldwide movement dedicat-ed to the health of rivers and the people thatdepend on them. The Day of Action alsohelps publicize the need for more equitableand sustainable ways to manage our rivers.

As the movement grows, so does thenumber of groups fighting for reparations.Reparations are measures taken to compen-sate people for damages caused by existingdams. Worldwide, people are demandingthat financial institutions and dam buildersnot be let off the hook once a project iscompleted. Let’s work together to send insti-tutions and dam builders our message.

Another exciting trend is the growingmovement to decommission dams. In the US

and France, governments and dam-buildingagencies have acknowledged that the era ofbig dam-building is over, and are starting totear dams down. Dams do not last forever.It’s time to create a new vision for managingour rivers for the next millennium.

It is also time to push policy makers toimplement more sustatainable solutions formeeting water, flood management and energyneeds. Day of Action events are a good way tospread the word about demand-managementstrategies for water and energy, and truerenewables such as solar and wind energy.

Here are just a few examples of actionsorganized in the past around these themes:

Reparations• In Brazil, people affected by Serra daMesa dam in Goiás state held a meeting todemand proper compensation and resettle-ment. Another Brazilian action involved tak-ing over the utility company’s headquartersto demand better compensation on the Ita-parica project.• People affected by India’s Koyna Dam –built nearly 40 years ago – organized a

protest to demand just rehabilitation and nofurther displacement.

Decommissioning• The “Let’s Help the River Volga” Coordi-nation Center in Russia started negotiationswith the Committee for Water Resourcesregarding joint actions to demolish smalldams in Nizhni Novgorod Province.

Alternatives• Representatives from 300 ecology groupsin Spain met to decide on collective cam-paigns and strategies regarding the country’swater policies and management. • Slovakian activists demonstrated againstflood control dams for which a better alter-native would be to reforest heavily clearcutwatersheds.

Reparations, decommissioning and alter-natives are just some of the many issuesaround which to organize your event. Pleasejoin us on March 14. ■

For more information, contact Susanne Wong:swong@irn.org, or visit the IRN web site:www.irn.org/dayofaction

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Rivers for a Thousand Years