The consequence of failure at the Three Gorges Dam would rank as history’s worst man-made disaster. More than 75 million people live downstream on an intensively cultivated floodplain that provides much of China’s food.
Chapter 9 – Missing Energy Perspectives
by Vaclav Smil, Ph.D.
Chapter 8 – Flood Control Analysis
by Philip B. Williams, Ph.D., P.E.
Background
Chapter 7 – Unresolved Issues: Perspectives from China
by Shiu-hung Luk, Ph.D., and Joseph Whitney, Ph.D.
The Chinese feasibility study for the Three Gorges Project, which was conducted under the aegis of the State Planning Commission,* remains a secret government document. From 1987 to 1989, while official studies were under way, numerous research papers1 on the feasibility of the Three Gorges Project were circulated and published in Chinese journals.
Chapter 6 – Downstream Environmental Impacts
by Joseph S. Larson, Ph.D.
The impacts which may occur downstream do not affect the overall environmental feasibility and may indeed enhance the environment.1
Chapter 5 – Potential Methyl Mercury Contamination in the Three Gorges Reservoir
by Alan Penn, M.Sc.
Background on Methyl Mercury Contamination
Chapter 4 – Three Gorges Reservoir: Environmental Impacts
by David L. Wegner, M.Sc.
Background
A reservoir is an impounded body of water created when a river or stream is dammed and water is allowed to store. This impoundment of water has an immediate impact on the physical and biological systems within the reservoir which needs to be understood before the full range of environmental impacts can be properly evaluated.
Chapter 3 – Resettlement Plans for China’s Three Gorges Dam
by Philip M. Fearnside, Ph.D.
The Three Gorges Project would produce the world’s largest dam-displaced population (500,000 – 1,200,000 people), even at the lowest reservoir operating level nominally under consideration. Other Chinese dams have forced major resettlements – for example, the Danjiangkou Dam on the Han River (380,000), and the Sanmenxia Dam on the Yellow River (320,000).1 Outside China, the governments of Egypt and Sudan displaced 100,000 people to make way for the Aswan High Dam.
Chapter 2 – What Dam Builders Don’t Want You to Know: A Summary
Nine experts were invited by Probe International to review the Canadian dam builders’ Three Gorges Water Control Project Feasibility Study. In this chapter, the editors summarize their key findings. The nine chapters to follow provide our experts’ detailed analysis.
Chapter 1 – Damming the Three Gorges: 1920 – 1993
On April 3, 1992, China’s National People’s Congress, China’s parliament, erupted in a display of opposition unprecedented for this normally rubber-stamp body. The outburst was the latest in the decades-long dispute over the Three Gorges Dam on China’s Yangtze River.
Introduction
by Gráinne Ryder
Editors Note 2nd Edition
This book is an updated and expanded edition of Damming The Three Gorges: What Dam Builders Don’t Want You To Know, a critique of a Canadian government-World Bank feasibility study of China’s Three Gorges Dam. Originally published in September 1990, this book exposed the flawed analyses and compromised calculations evident in the official justification of a large dam project. Since the first edition was published, others have discovered the same defects in other justifications of other large dam projects.
Foreword 2nd Edition
by Dai Qing
Foreword 1st Edition
by Niu Kangsheng
About the contributors
About the Editors
Gráinne Ryder worked as an engineer in Thailand on village water supply projects for three years before joining Probe International in 1987 as a water resources researcher. She headed an international effort to stop the Three Gorges Project until 1990 when she returned to Thailand to coordinate a campaign against a series of dams on the Mekong River.
Patricia Adams
Dai Qing
Fan Xiao
Lawrence Solomon
Mu Lan
Probe International
Lisa Peryman
Probe Media
Other News Sources
Probe International 