Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
THE CHINESE DAM INDUSTRY GOES GLOBAL
A corollary to the story of global conservation organizations' engagement in China is the
rise of Chinese institutions that possess the will and the capacity to undertake dam-building
initiatives around the world. Chinese involvement has been facilitated by some dramatic
changes over the past several decades in the global institutional framework for hydropower
development. For most of the latter half of the twentieth century, the World Bank held an
undisputed position as the largest funder and promoter of dam projects around the globe.
But the bank came under intense scrutiny for its failure to anticipate and mitigate some of
the worst social and environmental impacts of its projects—a common critique of many in-
ternational financial institutions. As a result, by the 1990s the World Bank had mostly got-
ten out of the dam-building business, and global financing for dams from all sources was in
precipitous decline (Richter et al. 2010). Public opposition to dams reached its zenith with
the Manibeli Declaration, signed in 1994 by more than 2,000 NGO representatives from
dozens of countries, which called for a moratorium on World Bank lending to support large
dams and for reparations to people affected by its projects over the years.
The first casualty of the Manibeli Declaration to attract widespread media attention was
the Arun III Dam Project in Nepal, from which the World Bank withdrew in 1995 under
intense pressure from international organizations that highlighted the dam's environmental
project, including International Rivers, Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth. Their ma-
jor concerns included projected cost overruns, questionable long-term financial feasibility,
and, most significantly, adverse impacts on the ecology and culture of the Arun basin. The
World Bank's pivot away from dam development left many experts wondering how finan-
cing would proceed and whether the bank's withdrawal would be the beginning of the end
for dam construction as a global development strategy. As Patrick McCully, president of
International Rivers and an outspoken opponent of dams, noted around that time,
Money is needed, lots of money, and the industry is currently having major trouble getting its hands on it. The
World Bank, long the single biggest funder of the international dam industry, is retreating from its critics and has
cut the number of dams it is funding to well under half of its peak level. Funding from other multilateral devel-
opment banks and national development agencies is also declining.… Faced with a funding crisis, the industry is
desperately looking for justifications for public subsidies. The great hope for the industry is that global warming
will come to the rescue—that hydropower will be recognized as a “climate-friendly” technology and receive car-
bon credits as part of the international emissions trading mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol.
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(2001:xvii)
Enter the Chinese dam-building industry. Over the past two decades, Chinese govern-
ment agencies, state-owned enterprises, and corporations, taking advantage of this finan-
