MONSTER DAM, MONSTER PROBLEMS

The Three Gorges Dam is the world’s ultimate pharaonic mega project. The project sets records
for the number of people displaced; at least 1.3 million, number of cities and towns flooded;
13 cities, 140 towns, 1,350 villages, and length of reservoir; more than 630 km (363 miles).

The situation is especially bad for displaced farmers: many of them have received just a
fraction of the compensation they were promised. Project opponents have been intimidated,
beaten up and imprisoned for demanding fair compensation. Massive landslides triggered by
the rising reservoir have killed hundreds and forced the evacuation of 70,000 people.

Scientists predict that by trapping nutrients in river sediments, the dam could reduce annual
fish catches in the East China Sea by 100 million tonnes. The submergence of hundreds of
factories, mines and waste dumps, and the presence of massive industrial and population
centres upstream, are turning the reservoir into a toxic soup of sewage.

In late 2007, the Chinese government admitted for the first time that the dam could cause
an environmental “catastrophe.” Yet, the Government continues to repress any criticisms
and demand of compensation for the affected population.

Text: Patrick McKully
Photograpy: Pierre Montavon and Steven Benson

SAVE THE NARMADA

The Narmada River, one of the most important rivers in India, is being seriously harmed
by the construction of dozens of dams. The most notorious of these dam projects, Sardar
Sarovar, is flooding tens of thousands of hectares of fertile land and forests and evicting
more than 200,000 people. Once deprived of their rights and traditional livelihoods, the
displaced are condemned to hunger, poverty, and debt and forced to move to resettlement
camps without decent drinking water, adequate farmland, or forests for collecting timber,
firewood and wild vegetables and medicines.

The farmers facing evictions and many outside supporters have led an epic struggle against
these dams under the banner of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA – Save the Narmada
Movement). The NBA has inspired many others worldwide who are fighting against dams and
other megaprojects that uproot communities and destroy the environment in the name of an
outdated, authoritarian concept of progress.

Sadly, many communities have lost the struggle to stay on their lands and are now fighting
against the callousness, incompetence and corruption of authorities who continue to deny
them adequate compensation, rehabilitation, dignity and justice.

Texts: Patrick McKully and Marisancho Menjón
Photography: Karin Robinson

NO MONEY, NO POWER

British colonial authorities evicted more than 57,000 Gwembe Tonga people in the 1950s to make way for
the Kariba Reservoir, one of the world’s largest. Eight villagers were shot and at least 32 wounded by
police during the poorly conceived and trauma-ridden effort to clear the Tonga from their lands.

Half a century after the dam was built, the Tonga remain mired in extreme poverty. Today, their remote
resettlement sites are marred by low and erratic rainfall, poor soils and tsetse fly infestations. Tonga
organizations are now pushing the Zimbabwean and Zambian governments and the World Bank to provide
reparations for decades of suffering.

The Kariba Dam, largely funded by the World Bank, was built mainly to provide electricity to copper mines
in present-day Zambia, and the growing industrial belt around the Zimbabwean capital, Harare. By contrast
the Gwembe Tonga, whose ancestors have been living along the Zambezi for at least several thousand years,
receive neither electricity from the dam’s huge hydropower plants nor water from the massive reservoir.

Text: Patrick McKully
Photography: Karin Retief

FAREWELL TO PARADISE

The hydroelectric dam Yacyretá, on the Paraná River, with its 5 km wall and 65 km of dikes, has meant
the flooding of 500 square kilometers and the forced displacement of more than 40,000 people. The vast
majority of these people are from the mythical Guaraní indigenous race, who as a result of this project
is today in the process of disintegration. The cost of the project escalated and multiplied by five and
6,000 million dollars were embezzled.

Affected people today denounce, both the miserable living conditions they are forced to endure, and the
violent aggressions they suffer at the hands of the paramilitary groups who forcibly evict them by burning
down their houses. They are fighting against the enlargement of the dam, which would mean the flooding of
a further 1,000 square km with 200,000 ha of crops, the displacement of 80,000 more people and the destruction
of the supposedly protected Iberá wetlands, internationally recognized for their ecological importance.

DESARRAIGO. Pawel Wiechetek

Texts: Marisancho Menjón and Pawel Wiechetek
Fotografía: Argeo Ameztoy, Mónica Giménez, Samuel Cossar-Gilbert and Juan Roa

In January 2010, the Mexican press reported that, due to financial problems, the La Parota Dam project
promoted by the Federal Commission of Electricity (CFE) was being cancelled. The CFE came to the area
seven years ago to work on the Papagayo River without the community’s permission. The project affected
five municipalities on the Guerrero coast. It destroyed 17,300 hectares of jungle, displaced 25,000
peasants in 39 communities, and seriously and indirectly affected another 75,000 downstream.

“There have been many sleepless nights of sit-ins, 11 of us went to jail and four were murdered… And all
to defend our land.” Besides building a dedicated local resistance, which today consists of 40 communities,
the La Parota movement has learned to combine judicial and political strategies, as well as to cultivate
national and international solidarity.

Today, the Council of Communal Lands and Communities Opposed to La Parota Dam (CECOP) states, “It is a
victory, not only for our fight but also for all the organizations that stood by us and our movement. But
we dare not let down our guard. Our struggle will continue until we hold in our hands the presidential
letter saying that La Parota has been cancelled permanently.”

Text: Rodolfo Galindo Chavez
Photography: Roberto Bear Guerra, Maribel Roldón, Karina Tejada and Gonzalo Perez/Frontera Images

In light of the region’s worst drought in 100 years and the resulting severe water restrictions,
the Traveston Dam was proposed in 2006 to transfer water to Brisbane, the state capital and
Australia’s fastest growing region. Critics of the proposal suspected political expediency, given
that an election was due in the midst of a major water crisis. However, the problem was not a lack
of dams but a lack of water (the regions five large reservoirs were at worryingly low levels). The
design of the dam, which makes no sense in scientific or economic terms, does not take into account
future climate change that would decrease its capacity even further.

The project would inundate 7,000 hectares of fertile farmland and small towns. It would drown all
trace of pre-European indigenous occupation. There is strong local opposition to the proposal: more
than 20,000 residents have formally protested to halt the dam on a variety of grounds, including the
displacement of local communities and environmental impacts. The dam would destroy the remaining
habitat for the Australian lungfish, Mary River cod and the Mary River turtle, all threatened with
extinction and protected by law.

Text: Peter Meredith
Photography: Aaron Burton