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.
We wish to give special thanks to Patricia Adams for her rigorous editorial assistance, and her unflagging enthusiasm for the book. Special thanks also to Lawrence Solomon, for his patience and guidance throughout preparation of the book, for his expert help with writing and editing, and for his humour when driving a point home.
(March 19, 2009) A year after phillipine President Marcos and his first lady were forced from office, the U.S.
(March 19, 2009) Few know with confidence how the universe came into being but if God had said `let there be light’ while in Colombia, He would not have had enough money left for the rest of creation. Because the truth is that in a country where there are projects which have cost a lot, few have cost as much as the expansion of the electric sector during the last ten years.
(March 18, 2009) Most taxpayers in the rich industrialized countries believe, as the Pearson Commission inquiry into foreign aid believed, that "it is only right for those who have to share with those who have not." Much of the Western World’s sharing, though, has been in the form of loans, not gifts. The Third World has borrowed about one-third of the $400 billion in foreign aid that it has received from the rich countries’ national aid agencies.
(March 18, 2009) ONE YEAR BEFORE MEXICO touched off the Third World’s debt crisis by suspending payments to foreign creditors, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher rose proudly to announce in the House of Commons that her government had just committed millions to the Mexican government to build the $2 billion Sicartsa steel plant:
(March 18, 2009) The Environment Strikes Back: The Economy
The Tragedies of the Commons
(March 18, 2009) Friends and colleagues have been exceptionally generous in helping me finish this book. Margaret Barber deserves special thanks for her painstaking research, and for her good cheer throughout. I am also especially grateful to Susan Fitzmaurice for her artistic judgement and for her commitment to the complicated task of producing this book. Both made an otherwise stressful job a joy.
(March 18, 2009) We’ve all heard of the Third World’s debt crisis, of hopelessly poor nations unable to pay their debts, and of the human suffering and environmental consequences of their desperate predicament. Amid emotional calls from some to forgive the debt outright come the sober solutions from bankers and bureaucrats, with their seemingly unending stream of Brady and Baker Plans, and bewildering variants of them.
(March 10, 2009) China—and not Pakistan—is a bigger threat to India simply because it does not have enough water.
(March 9, 2009) The water level at the Three Gorges Dam has been lowered by about nine meters this year as the hydroelectric project is discharging more water to ensure navigation and water use for cities downstream.
(March 7, 2009) China should keep potential polluters away from the industry-heavy Yangtze river, the country’s longest, by raising threshold and readjusting industrial layout, a political advisor said in Beijing today.
(March 6, 2009) According to reports from the South China Morning Post, the Chinese government official in charge of the Three Gorges Dam has dismissed the theory linking the Zipingpu dam reservoir with the M7.9 earthquake that killed an estimated 88,000 people last May and left millions more homeless; referring to published geological analyses as “personal opinions at most.”
(March 2, 2009) Rumours have begun to circulate that Li Peng, the now 80 year-old former Premier of China who was the major driving force behind the Three Gorges project, may be seriously ill. An NGO worker in China recently told John Bishop of the China Economic Review that if the ex-leader, seen by many as the ‘Father’ of Three Gorges, were to die that critics would be able to “more openly express negative views about the project.”
Patricia Adams
Dai Qing
Fan Xiao
Lawrence Solomon
Mu Lan
Probe International
Lisa Peryman
Probe Media
Other News Sources
Probe International 