Patricia Adams is an economist and the Executive Director of Probe International, an independent think-tank and watchdog over the environmental consequences of Canadian government and corporate activities around the world. Her books include In the Name of Progress: The Underside of Foreign Aid, (Doubleday 1985), and Odious Debts: Loose Lending, Corruption and the Third World”s Environmental Legacy (Earthscan 1991), which exposes the jeopardy of years of loose lending for both the Third World’s environment and their economies, and proposes a legal remedy to place responsibility for the Third World’s debt crisis on the parties involved, instead of on First and Third World taxpayers. Pat also edited the English language translation of Yangtze! Yangtze!, the extraordinary critique by Chinese experts of the Three Gorges dam that inspired the democracy movement when it was first published in 1989, led to the postponement of the dam, and was subsequently banned by Chinese authorities. Her books have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Bahasa Indonesia.
(June 22, 2010) In his interview with chinadialogue’s editor, Isabel Hilton (In defence of dams, May 27), engineer and water-resource expert Graeme Kelleher says critics of China’s Three Gorges dam should accept the “facts” that the dam protects the environment by reducing coal burning and “saves thousands of Chinese people from being drowned in the floods of the Yangtze River every year.”
(April 27, 2010) Replacing foreign aid with tax revenues will promote a democratic society where political and economic leaders can be held accountable by their citizens. Not only should there be no taxation without representation, there will be no representation without taxation.
(December 23, 2009) Today, China tried that country’s most prominent dissident, Liu Xiaobo. Tomorrow, Christmas Eve, it will sentence him. He is expected to get 15 years for “inciting subversion of state power” for co-authoring “Charter 08” — a petition signed by some 10,000 fellow citizens calling for democratic reforms and the rule of law.
(November 6, 2009) A recent article by scientists in the U.S. provides further evidence that the Zipingpu dam’s reservoir may have triggered the devastating May 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China. The Wenchuan earthquake killed nearly 90,000 people and unleashed a chorus of speculation that the Zipingpu reservoir may have contributed to the severity of the earthquake, or helped to trigger it.
(July 14, 2009) China has undertaken the greatest project since the erection of the Great Wall and the Grand Canal — the Three Gorges Dam project. The Three Gorges Dam will be the largest hydropower station and dam in the world, with a 1.2 mile stretch of concrete and a 370 mile-long reservoir and 525 feet deep.
(June 2, 2009) Two well-meaning members of the Western establishment, whose advice over the decades has, as much as anyone’s, brought the Third World to its knees, both believe the Third World needs more of their advice. Though at last night’s Munk Debate, prominent African author and economist Dambisa Moyo passionately disagreed.
URGENT ACTION: Proposed Patagonia dams Created 11/19/2008 – 13:47 Probe International Friday, November 21, 2008 Canada’s national pension plan (CPP) is a co-owner ofChile’s electricity transmission company, Transelec, and may soon […]
(March 19, 2004) Dai Qing, eminent Beijing-based journalist and veteran campaigner against the Three Gorges dam, discusses the suppression of opposition to the project in a recent talk at the University of Toronto in Canada.
Technological advances in world’s energy markets have turned mega-power projects like the Three Gorges into modern-day dinosaurs. Energy analysts believe that China would provide a generating capacity two to six times of that of Yangtze dam by cancelling the project, reforming the energy section, and allowing investments instead in cleaner energy alternatives.
(June 5, 2008) U.S. engineer Dr. Philip Williams has added his voice to concerns expressed by a Chinese expert that the Zipingpu reservoir, now cracked and damaged as a result of China’s devastating May 12 earthquake, could actually have induced the earthquake.
(December 28, 2007) Martin Weiss, an analyst with the Congressional Research Service, the public policy research arm of the U.S. Congress, has published an updated paper about the treatment of Iraq’s debts by creditor nations following the fall of Saddam Hussein.
(November 20, 2007) This provocative paper is sure to raise the ire of a civil society that wants Third World debts canceled because of their illegitimacy. But it won’t make the lenders who want "no fault" debt forgiveness (courtesy of Northern taxpayers) happy either. Instead, authors Ben-Shahar and Gulati push the legal envelope of "how to" resolve the Third World debt quagmire and in doing so, empower odious debt advocates with more legal fight than ever before.
(December 12, 2006) A move last month by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) to write off US$2.1-billion in debt owed to it by five Latin American countries helps the Bank bail itself out and bury its mistakes under a cloak of magnanimity, says odious debts expert, Patricia Adams.
(June 20, 2006) I suspect the vast majority of ECA loans, credits, and guarantees to the Third World – which have doubled and now account for 34% of all Third World official debts – could be deemed "odious."
(February 24, 2006) Anti-bribery watchdog Probe International calls OECD guidelines "paper tiger" anyway.
Patricia Adams
Brady Yauch
Dai Qing
Fan Xiao
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Mu Lan
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