Environment and Development -- Fifth Class: Dams, People and the Environment

This week in my Environment and Development (ERST-IDST-POST-SAFS 3602H) course, we considered dams.  The use of dams to move and manipulate water is an iconic topic in environment and development studies, and something I've been looking at for at least twenty years.  So there's lots to discuss.  Author Arundhati Roy once said that "Dams are the story of modern India"; the same could be said of dams in many countries around the world -- including Canada.

In this class I provided an overview of the environmental dimensions of dams: their consequences for river and watershed ecosystems, and for the life they contain.  Then I discussed the social and economic consequences of dams, emphasizing how these are closely associated with environmental changes.

And then we examined dams in India.  Since Independence, about 20 million Indians have been displaced by dams and associated works, because Indian national and state governments have defined dams as central to their purposes.  Nearly without exception, these millions of citizens have experienced a dramatic decline in well-being after being displaced -- not surprising, considering how relocation disrupts not only economic activities, but the family and social ties that keep communities together.

My focus was on the Narmada River project, including the Sardar Sarovar Dam, inaugurated on September 17 2017 after more than three decades of construction and controversy.  As part of this, we watched an excerpt from the remarkable video, "The Drowned" (now available on YouTube).

And finally (actually next week, since this is a longer lecture), I will discuss the political dimensions of dams: the ideological roles they have played in asserting national ideologies of progress and self-determination, in the United States, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, and elsewhere -- and not least in several Canadian provinces.

Dams provide rich material for considering the relations between environment and development, between ecological and social change, between ideologies and technologies -- this class, of course, is only a ripple in the reservoir of thought about their meaning and consequences.