Megafolly?

One fifth of the world's population has 84% of its income. Canadians are members of the privileged 20%; in fact, we're near the top of the wealthiest few. If you weren't in the exclusive club of the rich wouldn't you want to be? So, would everyone else. The problem all the poorer nations must solve is just how do you get to be prosperous like Canada? Some see the solution in megaprojects. The idea is that through vast construction programs an economy can be modernized.

Over the years, building huge dams has been a favourite megaproject. The dam brings irrigation that will turn marginal land into fertile soil. It holds the promise of cheap energy with which to drive industry. The construction provides jobs and the transfer of sophisticated technology from the developed world.

India is an example. Since it became independent in 1947, India has built 1,500 large dams. As a result, the country of 850 million people can now feed itself. On the other hand, the country can also show a rash of deforestation and soil erosion, a growing foreign debt, and a history of moving huge numbers of the rural poor into urban slums. Large dams have created such a heavy social cost that they are now public enemy number one to India's environmentalists.

The poorer nations are encouraged to get into megaprojects by the richer ones, because of the profits that can be made. Helping a developing country build a dam, or highway, or airport, will boost the bottom line of any civil engineering business. The pickings have been slim in the dam-building business of late, but this may be about to change.

The Three Gorges Dam in China will be the biggest project of its kind in history. About halfway along its 6,300-km course the Yangtze River hurtles through a series of sheer chasms. It's in these canyons that China has begun building the world's biggest hydroelectric dam. Everything about Three Gorges is massive. It will consume enough material to build 44 Great Pyramids. The dam itself will rise 180 metres and turn the Three Gorges into a deep reservoir. The water will flood 11,300 hectares of farmland. Twenty towns will disappear forcing the relocation of 1.4 million people. It will generate 18,000 megawatts of power -- that's 50% more than the world's largest existing hydroelectric dam, Itaipu in Paraguay.

No one knows how much it will cost; estimates range anywhere from $17 billion to $70 billion. More importantly, no one knows exactly what effect it will have on the environment of the Yangtze River. To environmentalists, Three Gorges has become a symbol of all that's wrong with human attempts to tame Nature. The critics are all outside China; those inside the country have been silenced by the government. It's said the dam will devastate wildlife. Another concern is that by slowing the flow of the notoriously muddy Yangtze River, silt will be deposited in the reservoir. This could cause massive flooding problems upstream.

Downstream there could be bigger problems. Farming on the lower Yangtze floodplain is by traditional methods; it depends on seasonal changes in the river level to provide natural irrigation and wetland grazing. With the Three Gorges dam in place, the natural flood pattern will change dramatically.

Philip Williams is an engineering consultant in the United States. He echoes the fears of many when he says that the

Three Gorges Dam is "a gigantic experiment in river management."

The Three Gorges project is bucking an international trend. Huge dams have fallen out of favour. Here, in Canada, the vast James Bay development was halted in 1994. Australian scientists are pushing to drain the giant reservoir created when Lake Pedder in Tasmania was turned into a hydro-dam. Controversy surrounding the Sardar Sarovar Dam on India's Narmada River caused the World Bank to pull out of the project (over the last 50 years, the World Bank has lent $60 billion for dam building worldwide). Britain's Overseas Development Administration no longer funds dams because of their hidden environmental and social costs and because they provide poor value for money.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITY:

Your name is Jean Chretien and you are leading a team of Canadian business people on a mission to China. You've been told about the environmental concerns over the Three Gorges Dam. You also know that economic growth in China is leading to the building of huge new coal-burning generating stations. Pollution form these power plants will add massive quantities of greenhouse gases. Do you promote Canadian participation in the Three Gorges Dam, or take some other approach? Discuss.