Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Mines, big dams and development
Economic development and economic security frequently seem to conflict with the
needs of environmental conservation and protection. Although the struggles in Amazon
are well documented, such struggles with and conflicts between policy goals are
apparent in many other places, too. In 2009, Greenland gained self-government from
Denmark and, as global warming has proceeded, many areas of Greenland previously
inaccessible to economic development have offered themselves as open for business.
In 2013, the Greenland Government awarded a thirty-year licence to London Mining
to build, in association with its Chinese partners, an open-cast mine which could
produce up to 15 million tonnes of high quality iron-ore concentrate per annum.
The same year also saw the Greenland Government ending a twenty-five year ban
on digging for radioactive materials such as uranium, as well as other rare earth
metals, which is expected to attract investors from Australia and China. Such policy
actions are designed to promote Greenland's economic independence, but en-
vironmentalists fear that such development will be at the expense of Greenland's
environment. Similarly, in southern Africa the NGO Survival International is
campaigning with the Kalahari bushmen to protect their ancestral lands located in
the Central Kalahari Game Reserve from an economic development which would
seriously compromise the limited rights they still retain. The Botswana Government
has given permission for the British company Gem Diamonds to exploit the $3.3
billion diamond deposit it bought from De Beers in 2007. Economic development is
again the dominant policy priority.
In other parts of the world big dams have long been associated with economic
development, environmental destruction and political protest (McCully, 1996). The
O'Shaughnessy Dam, completed in 1923 in the north-western part of the Yosemite
National Park, led to the flooding of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, a place of sublime
natural beauty and an area inhabited by indigenous peoples for 6,000 years. The
newly formed Sierra Club of America and one of the pioneers of the environment
and wilderness movement had earlier protested vigorously to stop it, but in 1934
started delivering water to the San Francisco Bay Area over 160 miles away. The
Hoover Dam, equally controversial but situated in the Black Canyon of the Colorado
River straddling the states of Arizona and Nevada, was constructed between 1931
and 1936. At the time it was the biggest concrete structure ever built, producing
hydroelectric power and providing water for the irrigation of farmland and for the
city of Las Vegas. In the twentieth century big dams became synonymous with
development, severe environmental impact and biodiversity loss, displacement of
human populations from established settlements, vast expense and often exceedingly
long periods of disruptive development. Big dams have been central to development
policy and practice in India, China and Brazil. For Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first
prime minister after independence, dams were 'the temples of modern India', neces-
sities and icons of modernization and development. Between 1947 and 1982 dams
accounted for 15 per cent of planned state expenditure. Between 1947 and 1992,
an estimated 20 million people were displaced by dams and reservoirs (McNeill,
2000). They have also attracted a great deal of criticism and for many have been
at best unwise and at worst disastrous all round. The World Bank often linked
development aid to the construction of huge dams, but even the Bank in the 1990s,
following a range of negative assessments regarding their efficacy, particularly in
