Download or read book Dams and Development written by Sanjeev Khagram and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Big dams built for irrigation, power, water supply, and other purposes were among the most potent symbols of economic development for much of the twentieth century. Of late they have become a lightning rod for challenges to this vision of development as something planned by elites with scant regard for environmental and social consequences—especially for the populations that are displaced as their homelands are flooded. In this book, Sanjeev Khagram traces changes in our ideas of what constitutes appropriate development through the shifting transnational dynamics of big dam construction. Khagram tells the story of a growing, but contentious, world society that features novel and increasingly efficacious norms of appropriate behavior in such areas as human rights and environmental protection. The transnational coalitions and networks led by nongovernmental groups that espouse such norms may seem weak in comparison with states, corporations, and such international agencies as the World Bank. Yet they became progressively more effective at altering the policies and practices of these historically more powerful actors and organizations from the 1970s on. Khagram develops these claims in a detailed ethnographic account of the transnational struggles around the Narmada River Valley Dam Projects in central India, a huge complex of thirty large and more than three thousand small dams. He offers further substantiation through a comparative historical analysis of the political economy of big dam projects in India, Brazil, South Africa, and China as well as by examining the changing behavior of international agencies and global companies. The author concludes with a discussion of the World Commission on Dams, an innovative attempt in the late 1990s to generate new norms among conflicting stakeholders.
Download or read book Dams and Development written by World Commission on Dams and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-13 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the year 2000, the world had built more than 45,000 large dams to irrigate crops, generate power, control floods in wet times and store water in dry times. Yet, in the last century, large dams also disrupted the ecology of half the world's rivers, displaced tens of millions of people from their homes and left nations burdened with debt. Their impacts have inevitably generated growing controversy and conflicts. Resolving their role in meeting water and energy needs is vital for the future and illustrates the complex development challenges that face our societies. The Report of the World Commission on Dams: - is the product of an unprecedented global public policy effort to bring governments, the private sector and civil society together in one process - provides the first comprehensive global and independent review of the performance and impacts of dams - presents a new framework for water and energy resources development - develops an agenda of seven strategic priorities with corresponding criteria and guidelines for future decision-making. Challenging our assumptions, the Commission sets before us the hard, rigorous and clear-eyed evidence of exactly why nations decide to build dams and how dams can affect human, plant and animal life, for better or for worse. Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making is vital reading on the future of dams as well as the changing development context where new voices, choices and options leave little room for a business-as-usual scenario.
Download or read book Dams and Development written by World Commission on Dams and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-13 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the year 2000, the world had built more than 45,000 large dams to irrigate crops, generate power, control floods in wet times and store water in dry times. Yet, in the last century, large dams also disrupted the ecology of half the world's rivers, displaced tens of millions of people from their homes and left nations burdened with debt. Their impacts have inevitably generated growing controversy and conflicts. Resolving their role in meeting water and energy needs is vital for the future and illustrates the complex development challenges that face our societies. The Report of the World Commission on Dams: - is the product of an unprecedented global public policy effort to bring governments, the private sector and civil society together in one process - provides the first comprehensive global and independent review of the performance and impacts of dams - presents a new framework for water and energy resources development - develops an agenda of seven strategic priorities with corresponding criteria and guidelines for future decision-making. Challenging our assumptions, the Commission sets before us the hard, rigorous and clear-eyed evidence of exactly why nations decide to build dams and how dams can affect human, plant and animal life, for better or for worse. Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making is vital reading on the future of dams as well as the changing development context where new voices, choices and options leave little room for a business-as-usual scenario.
Download or read book Dams and Development in China written by Bryan Tilt and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-02 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China is home to half of the world's large dams and adds dozens more each year. The benefits are considerable: dams deliver hydropower, provide reliable irrigation water, protect people and farmland against flooding, and produce hydroelectricity in a nation with a seeimingly insatiable appetite for energy. As hydropower responds to a larger share of energy demand, dams may also help to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, welcome news in a country where air and water pollution have become dire and greenhouse gas emissions are the highest in the world. Yet the advantages of dams come at a high cost for river ecosystems and for the social and economic well-being of local people, who face displacement and farmland loss. This book examines the array of water-management decisions faced by Chinese leaders and their consequences for local communities. Focusing on the southwestern province of Yunnan—a major hub for hydropower development in China—which encompasses one of the world's most biodiverse temperate ecosystems and one of China's most ethnically and culturally rich regions, Bryan Tilt takes the reader from the halls of decision-making power in Beijing to Yunnan's rural villages. In the process, he examines the contrasting values of government agencies, hydropower corporations, NGOs, and local communities and explores how these values are linked to longstanding cultural norms about what is right, proper, and just. He also considers the various strategies these groups use to influence water-resource policy, including advocacy, petitioning, and public protest. Drawing on a decade of research, he offers his insights on whether the world's most populous nation will adopt greater transparency, increased scientific collaboration, and broader public participation as it continues to grow economically.
Download or read book Contested Knowledges written by Esha Shah and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2019-05-20 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water acquisition, storage, allocation and distribution are intensely contested in our society, whether, for instance, such issues pertain to a conflict between upstream and downstream farmers located on a small stream or to a large dam located on the border of two nations. Water conflicts are mostly studied as disputes around access to water resources or the formulation of water laws and governance rules. However, explicitly or not, water conflicts nearly always also involve disputes among different philosophical views. The contributions to this edited volume have looked at the politics of contested knowledge as manifested in the conceptualisation, design, development, implementation and governance of large dams and mega-hydraulic infrastructure projects in various parts of the world. The special issue has explored the following core questions: Which philosophies and claims on mega-hydraulic projects are encountered, and how are they shaped, validated, negotiated and contested in concrete contexts? Whose knowledge counts and whose knowledge is downplayed in water development conflict situations, and how have different epistemic communities and cultural-political identities shaped practices of design, planning and construction of dams and mega-hydraulic projects? The contributions have also scrutinised how these epistemic communities interactively shape norms, rules, beliefs and values about water problems and solutions, including notions of justice, citizenship and progress that are subsequently to become embedded in material artefacts.
Download or read book Rivers Dams and Development written by Prabha Shastri Ranade and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dams have emerged as one of the most important tools for the management of rivers. More than 45,000 large dams around the world have played an important role in helping communities and economies harness water resources for food production, energy generati
Download or read book Dams and Development in India written by Arun Kumar Nayak and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses dams and the dynamics of development. Dams as a project of development were pioneered by the US in the 1930s, and the success of Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) model was replicated all over the world soon after the end of the Second World War. Almost all the rivers of developing countries were engineered and various dams and Multipurpose River Valley Development (MPRVD) plans were implemented on almost all the big rivers of the world, including India. However, many of these projects have failed to fulfill their intended objectives. Thus, this raises the question of the rationality of TVA and its execution in other parts of the world. Viewing these facts, this book argues that the MPRVD scheme was inextricably linked to the political economy of decolonization and nationalism rather than development. The integrated river basin management in India was largely promoted by many scientists, engineers, and statesmen, inspired by the United States. The book vividly describes the account of MPRVD on river Mahanadi (Hirakud Dam). Empirical scrutiny has shown that none of the objectives of the dam were fulfiled, even after fifty years of its completion. [Subject: Development Studies, Water Management]
Download or read book Large Dams written by Thayer Scudder and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-09-27 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book highlights the first comparative long-term analysis of the negative impacts of large dams on riverine communities and on free-flowing rivers in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Following the Foreword by Professor Asit K. Biswas, the first section covers the 1956–1973 period, when the author believed that large dams provided an exceptional opportunity for integrated river basin development. In turn, the second section (1976–1997) reflects the author’s increasing concerns about the magnitude of the socio-economic and environmental costs of large dams, while the third (1998–2018) discusses why large dams are in fact not cost-effective in the long term.
Download or read book The Future of Large Dams written by Thayer Ted Scudder and published by Earthscan. This book was released on 2012 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Viewed by some as symbols of progress and by others as inherently flawed, large dams remain one of the most contentious development issues on Earth. Building on the work of the now defunct World Commission on Dams, Thayer Scudder wades into the debate with unprecedented authority.Employing the Commission's Seven Strategic priorities, Scudder charts the 'middle way' forward by examining the impacts of large dams on ecosystems, societies and political economies. He also analyses the structure of the decision-making process for water resource development and tackles the highly contentious issue of dam-induced resettlement, illuminated by a statistical analysis of 50 cases.
Download or read book Dams and Development written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book New Developments in Dam Engineering written by Martin Wieland and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 1248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The development of water resources is a key element in the socio-economic development of many regions in the world. Water availability and rainfall are unequally distributed both in space and time, so dams play a vital role, there being few viable alternatives for storing water. Dams hold a prime place in satisfying the ever-increasing demand for power, irrigation and drinking water, for protection of man, property and environment from catastrophic floods, and for regulating the flow of rivers. Dams have contributed to the development of civilization for over 2,000 years. Worldwide there are some 45,000 large dams listed by ICOLD, which have a height over 15 meters. Today, in western countries, where most of the water resources have been developed, the safety of the existing dams and measures for extending their economical life are of prime concern. In developing countries the focus is on the construction of new dams. The proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Dam Engineering includes contributions from 18 countries, and provides an overview of the state-of-the-art in hydropower development, new type dams, new materials and new technologies, dam and environment. Traditional areas, such as concrete dams and embankment dams, methods of analysis and design of dams, dam foundation, seismic analysis, design and safety, stability of dam and slope, dam safety monitoring and instrumentation, dam maintenance, and rehabilitation and heightening are also considered. The book is of special interest to scientists, researchers, engineers, and students working in dam engineering, dam design, hydropower development, environmental engineering, and structural hydraulics.
Download or read book Report to the Congress on the Unified Development of the Tennessee River System written by Tennessee Valley Authority and published by . This book was released on 1936 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Silenced Rivers written by Patrick McCully and published by Zed Books. This book was released on 2001-10-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Entirely updated in the light of the recent World Commission on Dams Report, and responding to it, this new edition of Patrick McCully's now classic study shows why large dams have become such a controversial technology in both industrialized and developing countries. The book explains the history and politics of dam building worldwide and shows why large dams have become so controversial. It details the ecological and human impacts of large dams, and shows how the 'national interest' argument is used to legitimize uneconomic and unjust projects which benefit elites while impoverishing tens of millions, describes the technical, safety and economic problems of dam technology, the structure of the international dam-building industry, and the role played by international banks and aid agencies. It tells the story of the rapid growth of the international anti-dam movement, and recounts some of the most important anti-dam campaigns around the world. McCully shows how the dam lobby and governments have reacted to criticism by cosmetic 'greening' of the dam-building process, and through state repression outlines the alternatives to dams, and argues that their replacement by less destructive alternatives requires the opening up of the industry's practices to public scrutiny.
Download or read book Changing a River written by Tara Galuska and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Riverine Ecosystem Management written by Stefan Schmutz and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book surveys the frontier of scientific river research and provides examples to guide management towards a sustainable future of riverine ecosystems. Principal structures and functions of the biogeosphere of rivers are explained; key threats are identified, and effective solutions for restoration and mitigation are provided. Rivers are among the most threatened ecosystems of the world. They increasingly suffer from pollution, water abstraction, river channelisation and damming. Fundamental knowledge of ecosystem structure and function is necessary to understand how human acitivities interfere with natural processes and which interventions are feasible to rectify this. Modern water legislation strives for sustainable water resource management and protection of important habitats and species. However, decision makers would benefit from more profound understanding of ecosystem degradation processes and of innovative methodologies and tools for efficient mitigation and restoration. The book provides best-practice examples of sustainable river management from on-site studies, European-wide analyses and case studies from other parts of the world. This book will be of interest to researchers in the field of aquatic ecology, river system functioning, conservation and restoration, to postgraduate students, to institutions involved in water management, and to water related industries.
Download or read book Dams and Development written by United Nations Environment Programme. Division of Environmental Policy Implementation. Dams and Development Project and published by UNEP/Earthprint. This book was released on 2007 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a compilation of relevant practices of dealing with environmental and social issues during the planning, design and management of dams. The Compendium covers 9 topics selected by the multistakeholder Dams and Development Forum. It discusses the state of the art regarding dealing with the topics around the world. It shows how they are captured by regulatory frameworks and provides a number of examples illustrating how they have been implemented on the ground.--Publisher's description.
Download or read book Silenced Rivers written by Patrick McCully and published by Zed Books. This book was released on 2001-10 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Entirely updated in the light of the recent World Commission on Dams Report, and responding to it, this new edition of Patrick McCully's now classic study shows why large dams have become such a controversial technology in both industrialized and developing countries. The book explains the history and politics of dam building worldwide and shows why large dams have become so controversial. It details the ecological and human impacts of large dams, and shows how the 'national interest' argument is used to legitimize uneconomic and unjust projects which benefit elites while impoverishing tens of millions, describes the technical, safety and economic problems of dam technology, the structure of the international dam-building industry, and the role played by international banks and aid agencies. It tells the story of the rapid growth of the international anti-dam movement, and recounts some of the most important anti-dam campaigns around the world. McCully shows how the dam lobby and governments have reacted to criticism by cosmetic 'greening' of the dam-building process, and through state repression outlines the alternatives to dams, and argues that their replacement by less destructive alternatives requires the opening up of the industry's practices to public scrutiny.
