Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
trade-offs between simplicity, which makes the tool more accessible to users, and sophist-
ication, which increases its scientific value.
Dr. Zhen, a representative of an international environmental NGO with offices in Yun-
nan, echoed this sentiment, advocating for more weight on biophysical indicators such as
“biodiversity,” not only because this indicator related most to his field of expertise, but
also because, in his view, the impacts of a dam on habitat diversity in riparian environ-
ments may prove to be irreversible. Supporting a precautionary approach, he reflected on
the uniqueness and fragility of Yunnan's various ecosystems: “We know that Yunnan is
such a small area, but the biodiversity is quite rich. It has as much biodiversity as the entire
United States, so we have to pay attention to this unique system. In such a small area, once
[biodiversity] is destroyed, you lose millions of years of evolution that you can never get
back.… Because the biodiversity is so high in a place like Yunnan, it should be rated much
higher because if it's destroyed, we'll never even know what was lost.”
On the socioeconomic side of the model, IDAM researchers struggled to address the fact
that the distribution of a given dam's impacts may be highly uneven and may affect some
parties, in particular those with less political power, more than others. One representative
from an environmental NGO summed up the challenge by stating, “We're talking about
impacts, but it's important to know who bears the impacts.” Similarly, a scientist from an
academic institution suggested, “We've got to consider the benefit-sharing arrangement,
the distribution of benefits [from dams]. This includes doing a stakeholder analysis. Who
losesandwhowinswhenitcomestopropertyrights,indigenousknowledge,andsoforth?”
Mitigation of the most serious social and ecological effects is a paramount concern for
policy makers, one with both scientific and legal dimensions. Adequate mitigation may be
possible in certain circumstances but impossible or highly infeasible in others. Mr. Chen,
the hydropower company official at the Kunming workshop, suggested, “We've got to con-
sider how able we are to mitigate [
jianqing
] certain effects of dams, such as ecological
impacts. Also, who has the responsibility to mitigate?” This is a particularly difficult chal-
lenge in China because institutional accountability varies depending on the size and pur-
pose of a given hydropower project. For example, large dams may arguably have a greater
impact on local ecosystems, but national laws require at least a nominal EIA of large-scale
projects. Meanwhile, as I have noted, dozens of small “diversion hydropower” projects ex-
ist on tributaries of the Lancang and the Nu; because of their small scale, many such pro-
jects undergo scrutiny only by county-level officials. Under such limited oversight, mit-
that the responsibilities for designing, constructing, operating, and regulating hydroelec-
tric dams may fall to literally dozens of agencies and companies, designating respons-
ible parties and holding them accountable for the mitigation of negative impacts become
acutely important.
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