Damming Plans and the Forseen Displacement of People

James Witlow Delano Photography

 Damming Plans and Opposition

    The project has been under consideration by various leaders in China since the idea of a dam was first proposed in 1919. The Three Gorges Dam is both a marvel of engineering and the greatest challenge its designers and engineers have ever faced. The dam was built with twice the amount of concrete of the Itaipu project in Brazil, which until the construction completion was the largest on the planet. The Three Gorges project has been engineered to store over 5 trillion gallons of water and to withstand an earthquake of 7.0 on the Richter scale (Larson). The reservoir will allow 10,000 ton freighters to enter the nation's interior, which currently limits access to boats under 1,500 tons, boosting the economy. In addition to increasing commercial shipping access to China's interior, the government claimed that the dam will control devastating floods and provide much-needed electrical power to China's growing cities which were all cumulatively attractive reasons to ignore criticism at home and abroad.
    An article by CNN titled, “China's Biggest Construction Project Since the Great Wall Generates Controversy at Home and Abroad” unveils the issues surrounding the construction of this giant. Scrutiny around the globe has been directed towards this large project from its conception.  Even relating it to the great wall has historical stigmas attached with it which are negative.  Although leaders and authorities in the government hoped that this project would solve many problems with one action, it has only made their lives more complicated since its completion in 2009.  CNN author, Bruce Kennedy reports, “Concerns have surfaced about the dam itself. Allegations of corruption among officials involved with the project have raised fears of shoddy construction. The Chinese media recently reported several incidents in which corruption and poor construction have led to disasters at major building projects. Notable among the reports was the collapse of a steel bridge in the city of Chongqing in January 1999 that killed 40 people.” He continued on to report, “Such incidents also have prompted rare open criticism from the Chinese leadership regarding the Three Gorges Dam. In early 1999 Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji inspected the dam site. He warned those involved in the project that ‘the responsibility on your shoulders is heavier than a mountain. Any carelessness or negligence will bring disaster to our future generations and cause irretrievable losses.’”  Activists in China who opposed the construction of the dam for ecological, safety and spiritual reasons were jailed, and their voices quelled by the government. 

The Displacement of People

People are forced to relocate to make way for the dam (PBS).

Chinese authorities hope the dam will take care of several major national problems with a single monumental stroke. The Three Gorges project is seen as an important future source of energy for China's population and hence increasing electrical consumption. It is also expected to tame the Yangze River, notorious for floods which have been recorded for thousands of years and have claimed more than 1 million lives in the past century. However, the reality of this monumental feat of engineering is the social impact it will had on so many lives of chinese citizens who had no voice. 
    Based on a PBS special focusing on the Three Gorges Dam and its impact on the surrounding people and environment there was too much to loose:

• In the past 2,000 years, the Yangtze River has experienced 215 catastrophic floods.
• In 1998 flooding in the area expected to be controlled by the dam resulted in 4,000 dead, 14 million left homeless and $24 billion in economic loss.
• When the dam is completed, 13 cities, 140 towns and over 1,300 villages will be submerged by the Three Gorges Reservoir.
• To make way for the Three Gorges Dam, 1.5 million people will have to abandon their homes. More than 160,000 citizens have already been relocated.
• Upon the dam's completion, 1,300 known archeological sites will be lost forever under water.
• Over 360 million people live within the watershed of the Yangtze River. If the one in one thousand chance of a dam collapse occurred, the millions of people who live downstream would be endangered.

Through analysis of many reports which focus on similar tales of social destruction, the social perspective of the effects of the three gorges dam promoted more question about how something like this could have been allowed. The dam literally "drowned" more than 100 towns and villages when the water began to rise in 2003. Government estimates said that 1.2 million people were be resettled and that new land was being provided for 300,000 farmers (PBS). Some observers say the government may be underestimating by as many as 700,000 the number of people who actually were forced to relocate.  Farmers who lost their cropland were forced to relocate and were not necessarily successful in continuing their traditional lifestyle.  It is these kind of disruptions which are not able to be quantified or measured by the original governmental estimates or reports.  According to reports from the Christian Science Monitor while the dam was under construction, “The weight of the water that has built up behind the dam is causing regular seismic disturbances that have forced the relocation of 50,000 people, according to the official Xinhua News Agency” (Ford). These were not planned disturbances as part of the original estimates, and were likely not included in much of the information on the dam and its social impact.  Globally and historically this is an issue with building projects, and as a global society who chooses to manipulate our surroundings, using the past as foresight may prove to be a proactive decision regarding future choices like these.

James Whitlow Delano Photography, People of the Yangtze Basin dismantling their own homes to make way for the dam's water.

Historical and Spiritual Loss   
The implementation of the Three Gorges Dam, without was devastating as a result of political and social reasons, other unquantifiable aspects of culture were lost forever.  The Three Gorges area contains an extensive amount of historical landmarks and religious places which stood as a testament of Chinese cultural past and heritage.  What was flooded by the river becoming its new basin were archeological sites both discovered and those unobserved, their information an stories of the past obscured by the depth of the river. 
Marta Ponseti and Jordi López-Pujol write in their research paper titled, The Three Gorges Dam Project in China: history and consequences, “Many and different cultures have inhabited the place that will be submerged by the dam filling, such as the Daxi (ca. 5000-3200 B.C.), which was the earliest Neolithic culture in the Three Gorges area, and its successor cultures, the Chujialing (ca. 3200-2300 B.C.) and the Shijiahe (ca. 2300-1800 B.C.). The distinctive Ba culture (ca. 2000-220 B.C.) also grew up in the Three Gorges area.  The Three Gorges Dam project will have a significant negative effect on the cultural heritage of the Yangtze Basin, because it will be virtually impossible to collect and document all the cultural and archaeological sites threatened by the reservoir before its filling. In 2000, it was estimated that the area to be inundated contained at least 1,282 cultural heritage places, but this figure may have significantly increased due the many archaeological campaigns performed in recent years. All the information not collected before the completion of the dam in 2009, will never be recovered.” Rescue activities were attempted, but due to a rather short time frame and a lack of funding, much of the cultural and historical artifacts and monuments were swallowed up. 
    Through understanding one’s heritage and having a connection to the special places of your birthplace humans foster a sense of responsibility and stewardship for the land.  Without this meaningful connection, our relationship with the environment becomes one focused solely on exploitation, ignoring the need to preserve space and species because of the lack of emotional connection to it, making the loss of archeological and spiritual places in the Yangtze River basin more relevant after a second glance.  This negative relation only builds a positive feedback loop, amplifying problems with the general populations relationship to their surroundings.