DAMNED DAMAGES TO BUILDING DAMS

“The Dams Sector encompasses dam projects, power plants, navigation locks, levees, and other industrial waste compounds, dikes, hurricane barriers, and other similar water retention and water control facilities throughout the Nation. Dams Sector assets provide water supply, power generation, navigable waterways, flood and storm surge protection, recreation, environmental stability, and many other critical economic, environmental, and social benefits. The risk profile facing the Dams Sector arises from multiple sources: naturally occurring risks (such as those associated with floods and earthquakes), structural deficiencies, accidents, equipment malfunctions, aging infrastructure, and deliberate aggressor actions (such as those associated with terrorism). In addition, several overarching issues, such as cybersecurity or international border security, constitute potential sources of risk that are contextual in nature, but not necessarily sector-specific. These risk sources could potentially lead to a temporary disruption of critical functions or severe damage to-even structural failure-dams levees, and other types of sector assets.” www.cowarm.org

The idea behind ‘development’ was to ‘catch up’ with the industrialized world. The idea soon spawned an industry. However, the number of poor people of whom development was the answer, has exploded globally. Additionally, there are “terrorist” attacks. The risk profile the dams sector is as follows:

DAMNED DAMAGES TO BUILDING DAMS

“The Dams Sector encompasses dam projects, power plants, navigation locks, levees, mines industrial waste compounds, dikes, hurricane barriers, and other similar water retention and water control facilities throughout the Nation. Dams Sector assets provide water supply, power generation, navigable waterways, flood and storm surge protection, recreation, environmental stability, and many other critical economic, environmental, and social benefits. The risk profile facing the Dams Sector arises from multiple sources: naturally occurring risks (such as those associated with floods and earthquakes), structural deficiencies, accidents, equipment malfunctions, aging infrastructure, and deliberate aggressor actions (such as those associated with terrorism). In addition, several overarching issues, such as cybersecurity or international border security, constitute potential sources of risk that are contextual in nature, but not necessarily sector-specific. These risk sources could potentially lead to a temporary disruption of critical functions or severe damage to-even structural failure-dams levees, and other types of sector assets.” /news/Worldwide%20Attacks%20against%20Dams%20-%202012.pdf

Naturally occurring earthquakes
Structural deficiencies
Aging infrastructures
Deliberate aggressor attacks
International order security
Deliberate attacks on dams
http://www.cowarn.org/uploads

The ‘Tehri’ Dam in Northern India

In the Himalayan foothills, I saw for myself that people did not participate in anything: No democratic consultation. No paying heed to the people displaced and a dismal neglect of environmental issues. Activists have rallied against the dam building in the Northern India. I asked the leader of one group, Mr Bahuguna, why this irked him so much. He replied (raising an eye brow,) that his homemade hut was submerged in water in 2000 by dam water. Protests from the poor people against Tehri dam, resulted in the chant; “We don’t want the dam. The dam is the mountain’s destruction.”

Mr Bahuguna and others protested using various methods including intermittent fasted for up to 74 days. Despite a decade or so of fighting the Supreme Court, for over a decade, work resumed at the Tehri dam in 2001. Eventually, the dam reservoir was built in 2004.

The construction of these dams omit take place without the voices of the poor; the corruption; official secrecy; and most shockingly dirty cheap labor: consisting of women and children. Not to say all ‘development’ is bad. E.g. railroads built in India by the British. But the majority of are bad or very bad.

THINGS ABOUT SHOULD KNOW, ABOUT DAMS

About 50,000 dams with a height of 15 meters or more and millions of smaller dams have been built on the world’s rivers. Dams Are Changing the Face of the Earth: Dams trap 40 cubic kilometers of sediments every year, and starve deltas of the silt that protects them against the intruding sea. Dams Provide Important Services: Dams generate about 16% and irrigate food crops for 12 -15% if the worlds population.

Dams Kill Fish: Dams block the migration of fish, deplete rivers of oxygen, and interfere with the biological triggers that guide fish. They also reduce the ability of rivers to clean themselves. Dams Are Changing the Climate: Dams are not climate-neutral. Particularly in the tropics, organic matter rotting in their reservoirs emits methane, an aggressive greenhouse gas. The floods and droughts caused by climate change in turn make dams less safe and less economic. Dams Displace People: Dams have displaced about 80 million people. Displacement robs people who are already poor and marginalized of their resources, skills, and different categories of cultural identity and its’rites and rituals, to impoverish them further. The benefits of dams often bypass the people who sacrifice their livelihoods for them.

Dams Can Put Human Rights at Risk: In India as well as country in places such as Ethiopia, Guatemala, Sudan and other countries, dam builders have often responded to opposition with serious human rights violations. Dams Are Very Expensive: Such massive overruns make them uneconomic. Earthquakes are only one of the concerns in the mountainous region with unstable terrain. Experts say that exacerbated by deforestation, mining and a binge of dam building. Dams Don’t Last Forever: The failure of China’s Banqiao Dam killed about 171,000 killed in 1975.

Better Solutions Are Usually Available: Alternatives fare even better when social and environmental impacts are devastating.

Countries implemented more protectionist measures. In 2015, Obama added 539 trade restrictions

Advantages of International Trade

In theory, exports create jobs and boost economic growth. Imports allow foreign competition to reduce prices for consumers. It also gives a wider variety of goods and services.

Disadvantages of International Trade

The only way to boost exports is to make trade easier overall. Governments do this by reducing tariffs and other blocks to imports. That reduces jobs in domestic industries, that can’t compete on a global scale. It also leads to job outsourcing, such as relocation to call centers to India. Doing ‘nada’ for the rural communities living in India, and sites deemed suitable for dams to be built, globally, including the USA of U.S. International Trade: In 2018, President Trump wants to impose protectionist measures such as imposing 25% on steel imports as well a 10% tariffs on aluminum imports. The stock market fell, as analysts’ worried Trump’s actions might start a trade war.

The Terms Used To Describe Developing Countries

All the words to dignify the terms: developed/developing, non-industrializing, rich/poor are value laden.

Even ‘North’ and ‘South’ are really just terms for pejorative developing and undeveloped. Furthermore, during the fifties and sixties, a number of mechanisms came out to play. The UN sought out a new vision. This resulted in a broader preview of: the assault on hunger, illiteracy, disease, etc. As the new wealth came along, becoming “modern” and “educated.” Which is to say, they fitted into a ‘successful’ mimicking their ex-colonies as post-colonial constructs and reality. Compulsory displacement that occurs for development reasons, embody a perverse and intrinsic logical. In the context of development, raises the major issues of social justice and economic equity. What have the U.S.A. Trade Agreements done to the population of poor farmers? What benefits accrue to the consumers? What about the natives/or poor communities?

Structural deficiencies
Aging infrastructures
Deliberate aggressor attacks
International order security
Deliberate attacks on dams

http://www.cowarn.org/uploads/news/Worldwide%20Attacks%20against%20Dams%20-%202012.pdf

The ‘Tehri’ Dam in Northern India

In the Himalayan foothills, I saw for myself that people did not participate in anything: No democratic consultation. No paying heed to the people displaced. A dismal neglect of environmental issues. Activists have rallied against the dam building in the Northern India. I asked the leader of one group, Mr Bahuguna, why this irked him so much. He replied (raising an eye brow,) that his homemade hut was submerged in water in 2000 by dam water. Protests from the poor people against Tehri dam, resulted in the chant; “We don’t want the dam. The dam is the mountain’s destruction.”

Mr Bahuguna and other protesters using various methods including intermittent fasted for up to 74 days. Despite a decade or so of fighting the Supreme Court, for over a decade, work resumed at the Tehri dam in 2001. Eventually, the dam reservoir was built in 2004.

The construction of these dams not only omit the voices of the poor. Furthermore, the corruption; official secrecy; and most shockingly dirty cheap labor: consisting of women and children. Not to say all ‘development’ is bad. E.g. railroads built in India by the British. But the majority of are bad or very bad.

THINGS ABOUT SHOULD KNOW ABOUT DAMS

Dams Kill Fish: Dams block the migration of fish, deplete rivers of oxygen, and interfere with the biological triggers that guide fish. They also reduce the ability of rivers to clean themselves. Dams Are Changing the Climate: Dams are not climate-neutral. Particularly in the tropics, organic matter rotting in their reservoirs emits methane, an aggressive greenhouse gas. The floods and droughts caused by climate change in turn make dams less safe and less economic. Dams Displace People: Dams have displaced about 80 million people. Displacement robs people who are already poor and marginalized of their resources, skills, and different categories of cultural identity and it’s rites and rituals, to impoverish them further. The benefits of dams often bypass the people who sacrifice their livelihoods and even their lives, for them.

Dams Can Put Human Rights at Risk: In India as well as country in places such as Ethiopia, Guatemala, Sudan and other countries, dam builders have often responded to opposition with serious human rights violations. Dams Are Very Expensive: Such massive overruns make them uneconomic. Earthquakes are only one of the concerns in the mountainous region with unstable terrain. Experts say that exacerbated by deforestation, mining and a binge of dam building. The failure of China’s Banqiao Dam killed about 171,000 killed in 1975.

Better Solutions Are Usually Available: Alternatives fare even better when social and environmental impacts are devastating.

Countries implemented more protectionist measures. In 2015, Obama added 539 trade restrictions.

In theory, exports create jobs and boost economic growth. In practice, imports allow foreign competition to reduce prices for consumers. It also gives a wider variety of goods and services.

U.S. International Trade: In 2018, President Trump wants to impose protectionist measures such as imposing 25% on steel imports as well a 10% tariffs on aluminum imports. The stock market fell, as analysts’ worried Trump’s actions might start a trade war.

The Terms Used To Describe Developing Countries

All the words to dignify the terms: developed/developing, non-industrializing, rich/poor are value laden.

Even ‘North’ and ‘South’ are really just terms for pejorative developing and undeveloped. Furthermore, during the fifties and sixties, a number of mechanisms came out to play.

The UN sought out a new vision. This resulted in a broader preview of: the assault on hunger, illiteracy, disease, etc. As the new wealth came along, becoming “modern” and “educated.” Which is to say, they fitted into a ‘successful’ mode of mimicking their ex-colonies, as post-colonial constructs and reality. Compulsory displacement that occurs for development reasons, embody a perverse and intrinsic logical. In the context of development, raises the major issues of social justice and economic equity.

So, what have the Trade Agreements done to the population of poor farmers? What benefits accrue to the consumers? What about the natives/or poor communities?