Probe International

by Gráinne Ryder

Just weeks before the massacre at Tiananmen Square, China’s growing environmental movement had scored a momentous victory by successfully opposing the government’s plans to build the massive Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. Vice Premier Yao Yilin had announced that the highly contentious project would be postponed for at least five years, saying that: “people do not need to spend too much energy debating this issue for the time being.”1 The unprecedented public repudiation of the proposed Three Gorges Dam was short-lived, however. It ended at Tiananmen Square, when the critics of the Three Gorges Dam were jailed and silenced along with other members of the pro-democracy movement.

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.

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.