You Hide, O Gift of the Nile
By Garda Ghista
“Big dams are to a nation’s ‘development’ what nuclear bombs are to its military arsenal. They’re both weapons of mass destruction. They’re both weapons governments use to control their own people. Both 20th century emblems that mark a point in time when human intelligence has outstripped its own instinct for survival. They’re both malignant indications of civilization turning upon itself. They represent the severing of the link, not just the link – the understanding – between human beings and the planet they live on. They scramble the intelligence that connects eggs to hens, milk to cows, food to forests, water to rivers, air to life and the earth to human existence.”
Arundhati Roy
Introduction
Dates from the palm trees and fish from the river sustain the people.
Back in the fifth century B.C. Herodotus wrote, “Egypt is the gift of the Nile.” The Nile River is the longest river in the world, meandering down from the Sudan and flowing northward across the entire land of Egypt before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. It moves through ten different countries, including Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Eritrea. In 1990 the total population of the Nile basin was estimated at 245 million, with that number expected to reach 859 million by 2025.[1] Ethiopia contributes 86 percent of the total annual flow of the Nile. The remaining comes from Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, the Congo and Burundi.
Before the construction of the Aswan High Dam in 1972, 50 percent of the Nile waters drained into the Mediterranean. During an average flood, the total amount of nutrient salts discharged was around 5,500 tons of phosphate and 280,000 tons of silicate. The nutritious floodwater was about 15 kilometers wide and extended all along the Egyptian coast. The water provided sustenance to all the varied marine life such as phytoplankton, sardines and other pelagic fishes, as well as contributed substantially to detrital material, the products of organic decay, which is a valuable food source for shrimp.
With a burgeoning population and increasing agriculture and energy needs, construction of the first Aswan Dam began in 1889 and was completed in 1902. Its height was raised twice in later years due to need. When the time came for it to be raised a third time, the decision was taken to instead build a new and larger dam upstream. Thus came the Aswan High Dam. Standing in the
middle of the Egyptian desert, it is one of the largest embankment dams in the world. It is the called Saad el Aali in Arabic. It was built six miles upstream from the original Aswan Dam built by the British. It catches the mighty Nile River in the world’s third largest reservoir named Lake Nasser, after the Egyptian president who spearheaded its construction back in 1965. The cost of building the Aswan High Dam was $1 billion. It has a reservoir capacity of 5.97 trillion cubic feet and is made of local granite rock and clay. The dam was constructed by a team of Soviet engineers for the purpose of flood control, irrigation, and as a source of hydroelectric power.[2] Prior to the construction of the Aswan High Dam, the Nile River used to annually overflow its banks, depositing four million tons of nutritious silt-sediment in the Nile Basin river valley. That silt was welcomed every year by the simple farmers who knew that the precious sediment left by the floods would bring them thriving agricultural crops and sustenance. Today the Aswan High Dam captures this floodwater during the rainy season and releases the water during times of drought. It generates huge amounts of electricity – more than 10 billion kilowatt-hours annually. It has changed the face of Egypt. However, we need to also examine the humanistic implications of the Aswan High Dam.
The Aswan Dam was built entirely of local material – 28.6 million cubic yards of rock, 20 million cubic yards of sand, 4 million cubic yards of clay and 55 million cubic yards of other material. The dam rises 1,542 feet from the river bottom to a 131-foot crest which is 11,810 feet long. The dam holds back 1.99 trillion cubic yards of water, which creates the Lake Nasser reservoir. The reservoir is six miles wide and 310 miles song and covers an area of 1,860 square miles. It has the largest cut-off in alluvial grouting soils and the deepest cut-off of any existing dam, equal to 836 feet deep. It seals an area of 600,000 square feet. The dam was designed and built by the USSR’s Zuk Hydroproject Institute. President Gamel Abdel Nasser wanted to elevate Egypt’s status to that of a world power by constructing the Aswan Dam. In many ways he succeeded in his mission, as the dam stopped flooding, mitigated drought conditions, and provided electrical power generation. The accompanying problems remain, however, of silt-free water reducing the marine life downstream, and reduction of total water flow downstream causing salt water to back up into the delta and work its way into the soils upstream.
There are potentially four types of dams that can be built on a river. Arch dams are appropriate for narrow, rocky locations. Their shape is curved, and that curve holds back the water in the reservoir. An example of arch dam is the El Atazar Dam in Spain. These dams require the least amount of material for construction. The second type of dam is the buttress dam, which may be flat or curved in shape. The uniqueness of this dam is that a series of supports or buttresses brace the dam on the downstream side. Generally, buttress dams are made of reinforced concrete, such as the Bartlett Dam in Arizona. The third type of dam is the gravity dam. Gravity dams are massive in size and resist the thrust of water entirely by their weight. They are expensive to build because they require such large amounts of concrete in their construction. Still, they are preferred due to their very weight and solidity as compared to the arch and buttress dams. An example of the gravity dam is the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington, USA. Another example of gravity dam is the original Aswan (Low) Dam, constructed on the Nile River in 1889 by the British, to allow for irrigation of cash crops to be shipped back to England. The fourth type of dam construction is the embankment dam. Embankment dams are the most commonly built dams in the US. Like gravity dams, they rely on their heavy weight to stop the force of the water. However, in addition to their weight, they are reinforced with a dense, waterproof core that prevents water from seeping through the structure. Tailings dams – large structures that hold back mining waste – are a type of embankment dam.[3] Regardless of the type of dam constructed, all dams need maintenance, particularly as they age. Invariably seepage starts. Spillways can clog up and the concrete can form cracks. Dams need continual attention and repair.
Aswan High Dam in the process of construction
The Aswan High Dam is an engineering marvel. It is a granite rock and earthfill dam acting as a ridge across the river. The High Dam is located six miles upstream of the old Aswan Dam and 400 miles south of Cairo.[4] The location was selected after extensive studies and investigations by geologists.[5] It was selected because both banks rise steeply from the riverbed and there is a very deep wide valley upstream which provides the excellent storage capacity of the present Lake Nasser reservoir.
Thirty thousand Egyptians worked day and night to build the Aswan High Dam. The dam is five kilometers long at its crest and one kilometer thick at its base, and rises 107 meters above sea level. Its irrigation and hydroelectric capabilities support the country’s entire energy needs. It is a huge rockfill dam built entirely from local materials. The lake is 500 miles long and at the time of construction was the world’s largest artificial lake.
The Aswan High Dam and the Reservoir Beyond
Still, while reaping great financial and economic benefits for the country, the environmental and social impacts must also be examined. Very ancient monuments dating back thousands of years (1270 B.C.) were submerged by the reservoir waters. UNESCO provided $40 million in funds to move the monuments to a higher site. The original island which housed these monuments is now under Lake Nasser.
Egypt is predominantly a desert country, with the exclusion of the Nile Valley. Over 90% of the land is formed by a convergence of deserts – the Libyan Desert to the west, the Sahara and Nubian Deserts to the south, and the Arabian Desert to the east. Oases lie scattered here and there, but it is primarily the land along the Suez Canal which is cultivated for agriculture.
The desert sands of Egypt
The Nile begins in the Sudan and flows through Egypt for 960 miles before finally emptying itself into the Mediterranean Sea. It is the longest river in the world, and it is everything to the Egyptian people. It is their life, their food, their existence. During the annual monsoon rains the river’s volume is multiplied up to sixteen times.
History
For more than 25,000 years the Nile River has provided life to its riparian lands – Egypt, the Sudan, Ethiopia and still more countries. It has brought fresh water to all within its reach and delivered rich silt that allowed farmers to grow their crops successfully. Its two main tributaries - The White Nile which has its source in Lake Victoria in Burundi, and the Blue Nile starting in the Ethiopian highlands, have caused conflicts through history between Egypt, Ethiopia and the Sudan. The two tributaries converge in Khartoum, where they form the Nile River. The Nile River is 4,160 miles long in total. In 1958 Egypt began to build the High Aswan Dam. In the process 100,000 Sudanese - the beautiful gentle people of Nubia - were displaced. The Sudanese were angry until Egypt placated them with promises of more water. Ethiopia, also involved geographically, was not even consulted, and retaliated by declaring that it will use the Nile waters in whatever way it wanted. When the dam was complete in 1970, Egypt and Sudan began to build the Jonglei Canal, but the work was disrupted by the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army who came and angrily drove out the construction crew.[6] In 1959 Egypt and the Sudan signed a bilateral agreement called “Full Utilization of the Nile Waters,” which divided the entire flow of the Nile waters between the two countries – completely ignoring other riparian countries. This agreement caused endless political fights due to its built-in injustice. In the 1960s Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia organized the building of 29 irrigation and hydroelectric dams on the Blue Nile. However, Egypt blocked approval of his loan from the African Development Bank and hence the projects did not materialize. That too, Egypt would have lost just 8.5 percent of water to Ethiopia. Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar says that the human beings have a natural mutual attraction to one another. But when selfishness increases, attraction decreases. We see in these political wars nothing but petty human selfishness blocking the fair and equitable distribution of the world’s fresh water to all the people of the land!
The Nile River as it takes birth in the Sudan and flows through Egypt to the Mediterranean.
Benefits
The benefits of large dams can be substantial. Many dams generate electricity by storing water and then releasing it through turbines that spin to generate electricity. Construction of a dam creates a large reservoir of water behind the dam that is higher in elevation than the water below the dam. The water from the reservoir rushes through a large pipe called the penstock and then meets the blades of the turbine, spinning the turbine which in turn is connected by a shaft to an electromagnet within a generator. This spinning electro-magnet inside a coil of wire is what generates the electricity.[7] These hydroelectric dams provide vast amounts of cheap electricity to millions of homes and help to run our economies. Some countries get all their energy needs via hydroelectric power.[8] The largest dam in existence today is on the Parana River on the Paraguay-Brazil border. However, this will soon be outmatched by the Three Gorges Dam presently under construction on the Yangzte River in China.
Another benefit of hydroelectric power is reduced emissions. Hydroelectric power provides electricity but without producing carbon dioxide and other emissions that harm our atmosphere, as happens when coal and fossil fuels are used. Hydropower reduces air pollution and consequently also health and environmental hazards.
The water stored by dams can be used for irrigating crops during the dry seasons and on arid lands. For example, most agriculture in the Colorado River Basin could not continue without the water generated by irrigation water released by the large reservoirs sitting at the top of the dams. Hydroelectric dams also provide drinking water. The water stored in reservoirs is generally clean, hygienic and drinkable, assuming the neighbouring watershed lands have not been polluted.
Perhaps the most significant benefit of large dams is flood control. For example, the building of the Aswan Dam has implemented the control of floodwaters, which used to devastate the regions on both sides of the Nile. This control of flooding has saved countless lives over the years in different parts of the world.
Today goods can be shipped by water across deep pools which have replaced rocky river beds. Finally, the huge reservoirs sitting at the top of the large dams provide big scope for recreation, including sailing, water sports, fishing and houseboating. Due to the earlier geography, these sports were hitherto not available.
Some of the electric power generators of the Aswan Dam
The Aswan High Dam is 3,600 meters in length, 980 meters wide at the base, 40 meters wide at the crest, and 11 meters tall. It contains 43 million cubic meters of material. At maximum, 11,000 cubic meters of water can pass through the dam every second. In addition there are emergency spillways for another 5000 cubic meters per second. The reservoir, Lake Nasser, is 480 kilometer long and 16 kilometer wide at the widest point and has a surface area of 6,000 square kilometers. It holds 150 to 165 cubic kilometers of water. The construction of Lake Nasser flooded most of lower Nubia, displacing 100,000 people.[9] The dam holds twelve generators, each rated at 175 megawatts. These turbines generate over 10 billion kilowatts of electricity every year. When the dam reached peak energy output it produced about half of Egypt’s entire electricity and for the first time small villages in Egypt were connected to electricity. The power station has an annual output of 2.1 gigawatts. The Aswan Dam is built from granite rock which comes from the quarries near Aswan. The electricity is taken from the dam by cables and is used in factories and homes all over Egypt. People use the electricity for cooking, lighting, watching television and many other activities. Water from the reservoir is pumped into people’s homes all over Egypt, and used for washing, drinking, cooking and in washing machines.
Large boats carrying both cargo and people are now able to travel down the Nile River. Due to its now consistent depth, the river has become more navigable, which means easier for the boats to ply. The Aswan Dam keeps the river level the same throughout the year.
Cruise Ship Moving Up and Down the Nile River
If the river level becomes low, gates in the dam are opened and water is allowed to flow through into the river. If the water level is high, gates are closed and water is retained in the reservoir, which allows the river level to return to its normal level.
Costs
Strictly from a physical, geological standpoint, there is substantial damage resulting from the building of large dams. For example, silting affects the productivity of dams – regardless of whether the dams are built for power generation or for irrigation. As fast-flowing rivers are exchanged for slow-flowing reservoirs, sediment falls through the water column and becomes trapped behind the dams. This nutritious sediment is thus prevented from nourishing the floodplains downstream, and the estuaries become clogged with silt. As the dams silt up, they lose their storage capacity and hence their ability to generate electricity or to provide water for irrigation. In some cases it has happened that the entire reservoir becomes filled with silt and the investment in the dam is lost.[10]
Dams move water from one community to another, and from one ecosystem to another ecosystem. Dam builders pay no attention to local ecology or to indigenous populations. It pays attention to profits for a few wealthy businessmen. While tanks and local irrigations systems divert river water to some extent, they never cause waterlogging because the water diverted from the river is eventually carried back through drainage channels. In contrast, large dams lead to immediate waterlogging.[11] Large dams also result in diverting rivers from their natural drainage and modifying the distribution patterns of water in a basin. Invariably these shifts in water allocation result in political conflict between people who had the water in its natural form and the capitalists/businessmen who want the water to move in a new way, for their profit.
The Nile River Flowing Through Egypt
Brennan and Withgott mention additional costs of large dams. The reservoirs of dams flood riparian lands, which are among the most productive habitats for biodiversity.[12] As a consequence, hundreds or thousands of species are displaced or obliterated. Dams also change the nature of rivers downstream beyond the dam, causing them to become placid and tranquil. As a result, the fish that were adapted to fast-moving waters are no longer able to survive. Shallow waters down a ways from the dam will warm, but periodically those waters are flushed with cold water from the reservoir, which also stresses or outright kills both cold-water and warm-water species.[13]
Another damage of dams is the decline of fisheries. Fish such as salmon and shad, that migreate up the rivers to spawn, encounter the dams as a barrier to their onward journey. In some cases “fish ladders” have been built to allow the fish to pass the larger dams and continue their journey. However, evidence suggests that most fish do not make it. No fish can pass the largest dams. As a result, today we are seeing the near extinction of salmon on the western coast of the United States.
One of the most serious damages of large dam building is the resulting displacement of large numbers of human populations. The land that is flooded by reservoirs generally includes fertile farmland where indigenous people have often lived for centuries, at peace with nature and the land. The dams submerge these ancient, tranquil settlements, destroying traditions and entire civilizations. Globally between 40-80 million people have been displaced by the construction of large dams in the past 50 years.
The final danger of large dams is that they may break due to an unforeseen natural calamity such as earthquake. While these events are rare, the possibility remains, where with small dams, if a natural calamity does arise, the damage will be far less severe. Another reason for dams to break is if they are built out of material that is not strong enough to hold the water, or they are built on rock that is not strong enough to support the dam. An example given by Wicander and Monroe is the collapse of the Johnstown Dam in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1889, which killed more than 2,000 people.[14] The dam was built at the junction of two rivers, which was already an area very susceptible to flooding. But the worst mistake was that the dam had been built on foundation rock that was incapable of supporting such a large structure. Dams made of concrete as well as earth-fill dams made of huge piles of gravel, sand and clay, have occasionally failed. However, the dams most prone to collapse are those made of mine tailings – the refuse rock from mining that is considered too poor for further processing. Dams of this material have little strength to fight against any kind of unusual stress. This particular dam was privately owned and was consequently not maintained. This is the real hazard of private individual ownership of dams.
The Three Gorges Dam in China is expected to be completed in 2009. The reservoir when filled will be as long as Lake Superior and will hold over 38 million liters of water. It will generate vast amounts of hydroelectric power, which will allow replacement of dozens of large coal or nuclear plants in China. It will also provide flood control. Construction costs will be $2.5 billion. However, aside from this dollar cost, the reservoir will flood 22 cities and the homes of 1.13 million people. It will hence involve the largest resettlement project in China’s history.[15] The reservoir will also submerge archaeological sites more than 10,000 years old as well as productive farmlands and wildlife habitat. In addition, as with other large dams, the reservoir will slow the flow of the river so that the precious silt will begin to fill the reservoir as soon as its construction is completed.
In the case of the Aswan High Dam, nearly all negative impacts have come to pass, even since the onset of construction, with up to 100,000 Sudanese permanently displaced by the reservoir. The rich silt that used to fertilize the dry desert lands adjacent to the Nile during annual floods is now sitting at the bottom of Lake Nasser. Consequently thousands of farmers have been compelled to use artificial fertilizers and pesticides, which is having further devastating effects on the once pristine floodplain. The once rich soil laden annually with the Nile’s great gift – the silt – has now become substandard and in many areas is rated as poor quality land. About 95 percent of Egypt’s people live within 12 miles of the Nile River, with many working as farmers. All are be affected by the changes wrought by the Aswan High Dam.
The flood plain of the Nile
Other current environmental issues related to the Aswan High Dam are agricultural land being lost to urbanization and windblown sands; increasing soil salination below the Dam, desertification, oil pollution threatening the coral reefs, beaches and marine habitats; and increasing water pollution from the use of artificial, imported pesticides. The Mediterranean, without the rich nutrients coming from the Nile waters, has become a poverty-stricken, nutrient-depleted water basin since the construction of the Aswan Dam. For thousands of years the snow waters have come down and poured themselves into the Nile, carrying with them the dead and decaying plants, small pebbles and silt. This muddy water is the silt. This silt was the most precious gift of the Nile, as during the annual floods it got deposited all over the land, creating rich soil leading to bountiful crops for the people. Where is this silt today? It is trapped in the man-made reservoir called Lake Nasser.
With the building of the Aswan High Dam, much of Lower Nubia became submerged under the reservoir. Ancient monuments and archaeological sites were buried forever despite various rescue operations. Only 20 monuments from the Egyptian part of Nubia and four from the Sudan were rescued, dismantled and re-erected on higher ground near Lake Nasser.
Still another side effect of the Aswan High Dam is an increase of the parasitic disease schistosomiasis (bilharzias), associated with the stagnant water of the fields and due to the thick plant life that has grown up in Lake Nasser, which hosts the snails that carry the disease. Infection with schistosomiasis occurs when the skin comes in contact with contaminated fresh water in which certain types of snails that carry schistosomes are living. Schistosoma parasites can penetrate the skin of persons who are wading, swimming, bathing or washing in the contaminated water, such as in Lake Nasser. Within a few weeks, worms grow inside the blood vessels of the body and produce eggs. Symptoms are rash, fever, chills, cough, muscle aches, and later possible seizures, paralysis or spinal cord inflammation. If repeatedly infected the parasite can damage the liver, intestines, lungs and bladder.
The silt that is accumulating unutilized in Lake Nasser, trapped by the dam, will eventually – in a few hundred years – render Lake Nasser useless for water storage. Because of no silt, there is now too much erosion of farmland downstream from the dam. The Nile Delta, once rich in nutrients from the silt of the Nile, has lost much of its fertility. The red-brick construction industry which used delta mud has also been affected by the poor quality of the mud in recent years.[16] There is substantial erosion of coastlines all along the eastern Mediterranean due to lack of sand once brought down by the Nile. The use of artificial fertilizers has caused chemical pollution of the water, whereas the traditional silt had only good impact on the environment. Certain areas of farmland have incurred waterlogging. In addition, due the lower levels of delta water, salt water is coming into the land more and is destroying the rice crops along the delta. The eastern basin of the Mediterranean, now far less fertile than before the dam, has impacted the fisheries because the marine ecosystem had always depended upon the rich flow of phosphate and silicates from the Nile waters. The Nile Delta is becoming smaller each year because it no longer receives sediment and pebbles from the river. The pebbles and sediment are stuck behind the dam. Hence much wildlife is losing its home because the delta is shrinking in size.
The political ramifications of the Aswan High Dam are also serious. More than 95 percent of Egypt’s population lives along the Nile River. If anything happened to the dam, if it were destroyed, the resulting flood would completely destroy Egypt. It effectively means that any country can blackmail Egypt by threatening to blow up the Aswan Dam if it does not do that country’s bidding!
Who Owns the Water!
Famed ecologist and founder of the PROUT economic model, Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, has said clearly that economy needs to be decentralized. It follows that water must be under local community control. For centuries this was the case. Community-based water systems can still be found today in parts of the Andes, Mexico, Africa and Asia. A satellite view of the Krishna basin in India reveals one of the most sophisticated waterworks in the world – a complex network of numerous tanks used to harness surface and rain water to irrigate hundreds of acres of land while simultaneously recharging the groundwater level. It was a decentralized water system run by local communities and based on local needs for drinking and agriculture.
However, in the rest of the world community control ground to a halt, starting with the American west where the state collaborated with private businessmen to acquire water rights.[17] And thus began the colonization of rivers through dams and water wars! The easiest way for capitalists to get control of water was through dams. As Vandana Shiva writes, “For European colonizers who came to America, river colonization was a cultural obsession and an imperial imperative.”[18] In third World countries capitalists got control of water also through dams with money from the World Bank. Irrigation scientist John Widsoe declared:
“The destiny of man is to posses the whole earth, and the destiny of earth is to be subject to man. There can be no full conquest of the earth, and no real satisfaction to humanity, if large portions of the earth remain beyond his highest control. Only as all parts of the earth are developed according to the existing knowledge, and brought under human control, can man be said to possess the earth. The United States … might accommodate its present population within its humid region, but would not then be the great nation that it now is.”[19]
The Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in California was built during the Great Depression and completed in 1935. It is 726 feet high and used 66 million tons of concrete, while the reservoir, Lake Mead, can hold the river’s entire flow for two years. Six companies – Henry Kaiser, Bechtel, Morrison-Knudson, Utah Construction, MacDonald Kahn, J.F. Shea and Pacific Bridge – together financed and organized construction of the dam, with the US Army Corps of Engineers doing the actual construction. All this happened while excluding the voices of local governments and communities, excluding the voices of the Native American Indians who had lived in the Colorado River basin for centuries. As a result of the Hoover Dam, California consumes more water than anywhere else in the world.
After that there was no turning back. The same companies began constructing dams all over the world as the era of large dam construction took off. During the Green Revolution, dams were forced upon Third World countries as a condition for accepting loans. As a example, in 1965 the US government refused to supply wheat to drought-ridden India unless the Indian government agreed to introduce irrigation-intensive agriculture through large dams.[20] What was the legacy of large dams in the Third World? The legacy was centralized water control, violence, hunger and thirst. This scenario continues today, with control and ownership of vast water bodies by private corporations. According to Shiva, sophisticated water irrigation systems existed in India centuries before the construction of large dams was thrust upon the Indian people by American capitalists.
In hindsight, Indian Prime Minister Nehru said that by supporting large dam construction he had made a mistake, and had been the victim of “gigantism.” In 1978 Irrigation Minister K.L. Rao observed the inherent injustice of large dams – that the people who bear the greatest cost of their construction receive no benefits in return – sometimes not even water for themselves, though they may live on the hills adjacent to those dams! Again in 1986 Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi reported that while money has been poured into large dam projects, the people have “got nothing back, no irrigation, no water, no increase in production, no help in their daily life.”[21] In the past three decades 1,554 large dams were constructed in India with the government spending $1.5 billion. Yet the agricultural output remained at 1.27 tons per hectare with substantial crop loss due to low water supply, heavy siltation leading to reduced storage capacity, and waterlogging, all of which has cost $89 million in rectification measures. Due to the damming of the Ganges and Narmada rivers, inestimable damage has been wrought to the people, whose entire life-support systems have been disrupted. Shiva writes: “The people of Narmada Valley are not merely resisting displacement due to the Sardar Sarovar and Narmada Sagar Dams; they are waging war against the destruction of entire civilizations.” Many prominent activists are waging a war against the construction of the Narmada Dam project, which is to be the world’s largest water project. The Narmada project consists of 30 large, 135 medium and 3,000 smaller dams on the Narmada River and its tributaries. The project will displace more than one million people and submerge 350,000 hectares of forests along with drowning 200,000 hectares of cultivable agricultural land.[22] The protestors have gone way beyond merely questioning the ethics of such vast human displacement. They are questioning the validity or the logic of large dam construction itself! Today the common people, the little people of the world, are fighting not just against their displacement. They are fighting for the survival of their land, their forests and their rivers. Vandana Shiva was herself involved in assessing the impact of World Bank-financed dams on several Indian rivers. “In each case,” she writes, “the ecological and social costs far surpassed the benefits. Typically, the benefits were grossly exaggerated in order to accommodate the World Bank’s logic of returns on investment…. The hidden cost of building large dams in India… is that each water development project leaves behind evictees whose lives are violently overturned.” As a great tribal leader fighting large dam construction near his home said:
“Our links with our ancestors are the basis of our society and of the reproduction of our society. Our children grow up placing around the stones which mark the burial sites of our ancestors… Without relating to our ancestors, our lives lose all meaning. They talk of compensation. How can they compensate us for the loss of the very meaning of our lives if they bury these burial stones under the dam? They talk of rehabilitation. Can they ever rehabilitate the sacred sites they have violated?”[23]
While in India large dams have displaced up to 38 million people adjacent to those dams, in China ten million people have already been displaced by the Three Gorges Dam in the Yangtze River Valley alone. Worldwide between 40 to 80 million people have been displaced by large dam projects. Is it just? Is it necessary? Globally more than two trillion dollars has been spent on more than 45,000 large dams, with the peak building period between 1970 and 1975. The top five dam-building countries have 80 percent of all large dams and China accounts for 50 percent with their 22,000 dams. At present India is experiencing the fast growth of large dam construction, hence the largest battles against these projects today are taking place in India. While in some instances the people’s dissent was heeded and the projects stopped, in more recent times dissidence has been met with fierce state repression in countries such as Nigeria and Guatemala where up to 400 women and children were murdered by the state to make way for the Chixoy Dam. Even in India protestors today face wounding and death from police guns paid for by the same corporations who will not be stopped in their pursuit of profit.
Other countries are also embroiled in political battles with the source being the desire to control the water. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which have sustained agriculture in Turkey, Syria and Iraq for thousands of years, have also led to repeated clashes between these countries. Both these rivers originate in Eastern Anatolia, Turkey. The Ataturk Dam was completed in 1990 and transfers water via a 26-kilometer tunnel to the Harran Plain in southern Turkey. Now Turkey will proceed to build 22 more dams on the Euphrates for irrigating 1.7 million hectares of land. When this occurs, Iraq will lose up to 90% of its allotment of water from the Euphrates River. Iraq will not tolerate this. Dams mean power. Those who control the water also have the political power. Another example of weapons of mass destruction is the 560-kilometer long artificial Saddam River that cuts through both the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and has ended up converting nearly 60 percent of former marshland into dryland, thereby threatening the existence of the marsh Arabs who lived by the rivers for more than 5,000 years. Today, the marsh Arabs have declared a ‘hydro-jihad’ on Iraq for destroying their means of livelihood, their very existence. The Jordan River is also embroiled in Middle Eastern politics, as its water is absolutely required by Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the West Bank. While Israel presently makes arrangements to receive Iraqi oil via new pipelines through Syria, yet the availability of fresh water and the ability to control it is no less important for Israel. If Israel does not get the water it needs, Israel has said openly that it will go to war. The 1967 war which led to Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights was more than anything else a war to control the fresh water resources in that region. Today Israel consumes more than 80 percent of the West Bank’s fresh water, while the Palestinians use less than 20 percent.
Despite massive resistance by the people to large dam construction, the World Bank continues its relentless path towards complete privatization of water, removing government control of water and handing control to the wealthy private corporations. This transfer of control is invariably tied to loans governments take from the World Bank. Hence the World Bank, while ostensibly claiming to serve the poor and fight poverty, in reality serve the richest men of the world! The World Bank needs to be disbanded and rendered impotent by the common people of the world! And for the harm it has caused by its policies, for the genocides it has caused from large dam construction, its Board members should be tried in the International Criminal Court and sentenced accordingly!
Moving Onward
As more and more scientists and politicians realize that the costs (both actual and spillover costs) substantially outweigh the benefits of large dams, in recent years more and more dams are being dismantled. In doing so, the rivers are once again allowed to flow freely and it is hoped that the riparian ecosystems will once again gradually begin to thrive along with the fisheries that formerly inhabited the fast-flowing streams. Increasingly, private dam owners and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in America have agreed to remove about 500 dams across the United States. Many of those had aged and were in need of costly repairs or were no longer economically viable. While in Third World countries such as India and China large dams are still being constructed in spite of hefty opposition, western countries, due to a greater awareness of the dams’ environmental impact, are moving away from further dam construction and going in the opposite direction of dam removal. Some dams have been taken down only to allow once again the healthy and natural migration of fish up the river.
Why are dams owned by private individuals? To guarantee economic stability in a particular region, it would be far better or even essential for the collective body of that area to own all dams as a cooperative business venture, which would allow for every citizen to be involved, take interest, reap the benefits of the dam, and work hard to avoid any damage to human populations or riparian ecosystems. So long as dams are owned by a single individual, invariably the collective welfare of the people near the dam will be neglected. The Johnstown Dam collapse in Pennsylvania is a damning indictment of the custom of allowing private ownership of dams. Rather the financial profits of that individual will be the sole determining factor of what happens with the dam. We need to move away from private ownership of dams and begin to demand collective ownership by the people, because the people will together weigh the costs and the benefits and decide on strategies for dam construction, maintenance or removal. Let the local people decide whether the environmental benefits of removing a dam outweigh the economic benefits of retaining the dam.
The Nile irrigates this lush cropland
In 1997 the United Nations organized the Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Water Courses so as to create guidelines for sharing of international river waters. The two principles constituted were the rule of equitable and reasonable use and the no-harm rule. Equitable use refers to water sharing on an equitable basis among multiple users. The no-harm rule refers to not causing harm to co-riparian states.[24] Despite these UN guidelines, the Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia have continued to fight as they each interpret the 1959 Nile agreement to their individual advantage. More recently, in 1999 at the meeting of the Council of Ministers of Water Affairs of the Nile Basin in Tanzania, members launched the Nile Basin Initiative, in which the ten Nile basin states endorsed a Nile River Basin Strategic Action Program with the goal of achieving “sustainable socioeconomic development through the equitable utilization of water resources … [recognizing] the rights of each riparian state to use the resources of the Nile within its boundaries for development.”[25] It is a hopeful sign that the involved riparian countries are reaching new levels of coordinated cooperation in the sharing of the waters of the Nile, so that it can perhaps once again become the Gift to the Earth’s inhabitants.
Human civilization moves along river valleys. Like rivers, human civilization begins in the hill stage, moves to the plain stage, and from there comes to the delta stage, where it reaches maturity. Why do civilizations move along river valleys? Human beings, nay all life, need water. For thousands of years, until they learned to dig wells, human beings were compelled to live along the rivers, springs, fountains and waterfalls. The animals did the same. Civilizations – the relation between man and man and man and woman, their individual and collective responsibilities – how to move singularly and collectively – all this is civilization.[26] Civilizations vary and branch civilizations emerge at different points along the movement of the river, thereby blending with other river civilizations. As a river moves and merges with other rivers, so also a civilization rises and moves, changes and merges with nearby civilizations. But the basis of all civilizations is the river.
The human beings, the animals and plants cannot survive without water. The great geologist Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar said, we must collect the rainwater. The great rivers of the world are polluted. Due to toxic wastes from pesticides and artificial fertilizers in use since the building of the Aswan Dam, the waters of the Nile have also become polluted. Shrii Sarkar says, we must construct ponds, canals, lakes and small dams immediately – to catch the rainwater, to irrigate our crops, to use for drinking. While the generators brought electricity to Egyptian villages, but the environment of the Nile River valley has been greatly damaged by construction of the Aswan Dam. It brought soil erosion, nutrient depletion, polluted reservoir, and barren riparian lands. To maintain the earth’s very existence, it is a fundamental requirement for human beings to maintain its ecological equipoise. Hence we need to be careful in how we manage the earth’s resources. Large dams and large reservoirs are to be avoided. Their construction cost is phenomenal and the environmental toll is too great. Small lakes and dams can be built. Large reservoirs rely on lift and shift irrigation to supply water to a canal system. However, in this system, the water pressure falls because when the water travels along the canals, there can be obstruction by hilly terrain.[27] It is far wiser, and more financially prudent to build small-scale dams. The cost is minimal and the return will be multifold. In a small-scale canal system, water will be carried just a short distance, irrigating the nearby fields.
What is this gift of the Nile? It is the bountiful waters she brings, yes. But more than that it is the simple silt – black sediments and pebbles and decaying plants, along with phosphate and silicate minerals, which form its geological and biological wealth - this is the gift of the Nile! These simple geological materials cause the Nile to overflow in abundance and usher new life to the plants and human beings. Today these gifts lie hidden in the reservoir, unavailable to human life. It is time for the scientists, the environmentalists to study the great Nile River and find out how to bring these treasures, these jewels out of hiding and offer them once again to the people along its banks. Today, she hides her gifts, but tomorrow we will collectively find a way for the river to once again offer her simple treasures to the civilizations along her shores!
Hail to thee, O Nile! Who manifests thyself over this land,
and come to give life to Egypt!
Mysterious is thy issuing forth from the darkness.
Watering the orchards, to cause all the cattle to live,
You give the earth to drink, inexhaustible one!
Lord of the fish, during the inundation,
You create the grain, you bring forth the barley,
Assuring perpetuity to all life.
If you cease your toil and your work,
Then all that exists is in anguish.
If the gods suffer in heaven, then the faces of men waste away.
Then He torments the flocks of Egypt,
And great and small are in agony.
But all is changed for mankind when He comes.
He stanches the water from the eyes,
and watches over the increase of His good things.
Where misery existed, joy now manifests itself.
You are the august ornament of the earth,
Lifting up the heart of women in labor,
And loving the multitude of the flocks.
O inundation of the Nile, offerings are made unto you,
Men are immolated to you, great festivals are instituted for you.
Come and prosper! O Nile, come and prosper!
O you who make men to live through his flocks
And his flocks through his orchards!
Come and prosper, come, O Nile, come and prosper![28]