China

2.3 Environment: How is the Three Gorges Dam Interfering the Environment? While “eliminating floods and meeting important economic and psycho political needs…Man’s creation of dams and large artifice; reservoirs constitutes an ecosystem modification on a grand scale” (Scudder, 1973, p.46). Over the years, researchers from environmental science, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and economics have done much

2.2 The Controversy of Large Dam Building The enormous investments and widespread impacts of large dams have seen conflicts flare up over the sitting and impacts of large dams – both those in place and those on the drawing board, making large dams one of the most hotly contested issues in sustainable development today (WCD

2.1 Introduction In the previous chapter, I endeavored to provide a detailed account of the magnitude and statistical aspects associated with the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. The last of the 26 hydro-elective generations have been installed only a few years ago and were made ready for commercial operation in 2009. Although the construction

1.4 Reasons for a Dam at the Three Gorges 1.4.1 Flood Control and Drought Relief Flood control in the Yangtze River (primarily in the middle and lower reaches) was the primary and most determinant reason advanced by the Chinese authorities as a rationale to push forward with the Three Gorges Dam construction (Huang, 2004). Huang

1.3 The Significance of Large Scale Dam Building The World Scenario of Dam Building Water-retaining structures, mostly in the form of dams, are indispensable in the development of hydropower to serve the purposes of domestic, agricultural and industrial consumption. As long as 3,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent (WCD, 2000), people started dam construction

1.2 Layout and Scale of Three Gorges Project The Three Gorges Dam is a conventional concrete gravity dam that comprises three sections: one retaining dam, the intake dam, and the non-overflow dam (CTGPC, 2002). It is 181 meters high and 2309 meters long (ibid). Normal pool level is 175 meters, with the crest elevation at

1.1 Background of the Three Gorges Project     The Yangtze River, or the Changjiang (Long River, as the Chinese call it) is the longest river in China and the third longest in the world, with a mainstream length of more than 6300 kilometers, next only to the Amazon and the Nile, and the third largest in