by Vijay Paranjpye, Ph.D.
The feasibility study of the Three Gorges Project was conducted by the CIPM Yangtze Joint Venture (CYJV) with the principal objective of providing impartial technical input to the Government of China in its decision-making process, and to provide the basis for securing funding from international financing institutions. In the study summary, CYJV states its objective as:
The Yangtze is not only a river of water, it is also a river of sediment. The flow of the Yangtze carries with it the fifth-largest sediment discharge of any river in the world, equivalent to about 4 percent of all river-borne sediment discharged to all the oceans of the world.
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.
by Vaclav Smil, Ph.D.
by Philip B. Williams, Ph.D., P.E.
Background
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.
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
by Alan Penn, M.Sc.
Background on Methyl Mercury Contamination
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.
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.
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.
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.
by Gráinne Ryder
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.
by Dai Qing
Patricia Adams
Dai Qing
Fan Xiao
Lawrence Solomon
Mu Lan
Probe International
Lisa Peryman
Probe Media
Other News Sources
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