1998 United Nations Year of the Oceans

Sustainable Oceans and Coastal Zones
Program in Global Sustainability
University of California Irvine 92697-7070

Course Readings & Video

Video to be Shown Weds., March 11, 1998

Costa-Pierce at al. 1995. Farming the Waters: Java's Blue Revolution. Video, 28 min. The World Bank, Washington, DC.

Environmental Impacts Assessment Links
Glen Canyon Institute: To Drain Lake Powell
Index of Watershed Indicators
International Rivers Network
IRN's RiverLink

    Due to increased demands for reliable supplies of electric power, irrigation, and drinking water, the number of new hydropower reservoirs is increasing dramatically, especially in Asia. According to the last report of the International Commission on Large Dams, the total number of dams on Earth grew from about 5,000 in 1950 to more than 40,000 in 1986, with China the home to about 50% of these (McCully, 1996).

    Dams continue to be one of the only means to increase humanity’s access to more of the Earth’s runoff for new cities and expansion of irrigated agriculture, but they are increasingly expensive socially, environmentally, and economically (Postel et al., 1996). For example, in arid, rapidly urbanizing southern California, USA, the new Eastside Reservoir will flood just 1,800 ha but will cost some $2 billion. In addition, there is a trend towards construction of larger dams having greater combined costs. Construction of dams with elevations greater than 100 m rose by 27% between 1991 and 1993. More than half of these dams were in China, India, and Turkey. Large hydropower reservoirs have caused massive social disruption, increased incidences of water-borne diseases, erosion, and other social and environmental degradation.

    There is a need to develop new, more sustainable environmental planning and policy approaches that integrate social and ecological concerns in hydropower projects worldwide. These social ecological approaches would formulate and carry out long term rehabilitation efforts with rural societies to restore damaged aquatic environments from hydropower projects. New approaches are especially needed in densely populated areas of Asia where the pace of dam construction is accelerating.

    It has been estimated that annual inland fish production in Asia is 5.5 million tons, comprising 57% of the world’s inland fish production. However, fish yields from Asian reservoirs comprises just 0.5 million tons of this 5.5 million tons. DeSilva (1988) estimated fish production from Asian reservoirs at only 20 kg/ha/year, with a wide variability in production that was not always related to the size of the reservoir. Costa-Pierce and Soemarwoto (1987) calculated an average percentage increase in reservoir area in 15 Asian nations from 1987 to 2000 would be 511%, ranging from 50% (Singapore) to 9,900% (Laos). By 2000 it is predicted that the collective water surface in reservoirs (20.3 million ha) will exceed the surface area of Asia’s natural waters (18.5 million ha). Clearly, if the huge expanse of underutilized water areas locked behind Asia’s dams could be utilized for increased fish production, thousands of tons of new aquatic protein could enter Asian markets. Production of new aquatic protein is especially urgent in Asia, a region where fish is the most important source of animal protein. In addition, there is a need to create thousands of new rural jobs due to population growth is evident and to find innovative ways to stem the rapid rural to urban migration. It is argued that expansion of aquatic food production in Asian reservoirs could assist in mitigating Asia's growing food and population crises.

    The planned development, enhancement, and management of capture ("fishing") and culture fisheries ("aquaculture") enterprises in new reservoirs as alternative livelihoods for the people displaced by dam construction has received little or no attention. The policies for the technical, social, environmental and economic incorporation of fisheries onto the planning for dams or project site works have not been done. Fisheries has not been incorporated into the social and environmental compensation packages of hydropower dam projects. Hydropower projects are usually controlled by dam engineers and government officials more concerned with moving people away from the new water bodies, rather than promoting new forms of intimate contact with them (such as the Indonesian transmigration projects; Fearnside, 1997). An alternative view is to develop policies and planning structures to resettle the displaced people locally and encourage development and evolution of new, community based, social-cultural interactions with the new aquatic ecosystems in order to rehabilitate the damaged social and environmental situations. The evolution of sustainable, ecological aquaculture holds this kind of rehabilitation potential.

    Most of the world’s current population growth is occurring in nations where there is little potential for increasing the area of arable land under cultivation. States Engleman (1995), "The food that will be required to feed a world population of 8 billion or more in the next century will have to come almost entirely from today’s farmland." The rapid rate of urbanization in most Asian nations is causing severe population pressure on existing rural and peri-urban agricultural ecosystems. Java is one of the world's most densely populated areas of the world, and the island is losing agricultural lands to urbanization at an alarming rate. Between 1983 and 1992, new housing starts in just three cities in West Java (Bekasi, Bogor, Tangerang) ate up 61,000 ha of croplands (Firman and Dharmapatni, 1994). The USDA estimated that urban expansion claimed 20,000 ha on Java in 1994 alone (Thompson 1995). Rapid urbanization has increased the need to preserve and intensify agricultural production on the remaining agricultural areas, and to find innovative ways to conduct intensification sustainably, without further environmental and social damage.

    Densely-populated Java and southern China have been two ancient centers of farmer innovations having numerous sustainable examples of productive, ecologically-sophisticated backyard and small farm ecosystems that merge agriculture and aquaculture in unique ways (Ruddle and Zhong, 1988; Koesoemadinata and Costa-Pierce, 1992; Dela Cruz et al., 1992). However, due to urbanization and associated population pressures, the era of consistent increases in the numbers of these sophisticated traditional aquaculture agroecosystems in Asia may be coming to a close, principally due to their land-intensive nature and their proximity to the main areas of urban sprawl. In the peri-urban fringes of many large Asian megacities (Jakarta, Bangkok, Manila, etc.) there is an alarming loss of these traditional agroecosystems and the indigenous knowledge systems that have developed over hundreds of years to manage them.

    In contrast, there are vast areas of new inland waters "locked up" in hydropower and irrigation reservoirs in the region. The surface waters of these hydropower reservoirs are almost completely vacant of any significant productive enterprise, other than being used for water storage, and subsistence level fishing that provides little other than part-time incomes (Munro et al., 1990). Nearly all Asian reservoirs outside of China and Thailand have little or no water-based aquaculture systems such as fish cages, and have underdeveloped capture fisheries management programs (De Silva, 1988; 1992; Costa-Pierce, 1997). Development of aquaculture in and around Asia’s hydropower and irrigation reservoirs to enhance fish production, and as a management tool to enhance capture fisheries, may be one means to provide thousands of new jobs in rural areas. Fisheries development may also be the only means left for creating new sources of freshwater aquatic protein for many densely populated Asian nations (De Silva, 1988; Costa-Pierce, 1997). Indeed, hydopower and irrigation reservoirs may be Asia’s final "aquatic frontier".

    Organizations representing people affected by dams and dam opponents are marking today's launch of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) by stepping up their demand for aid agencies and governments to declare a moratorium on the building of large dams. Dam critics believe that the establishment of the Commission vindicates their claims that large dams have had massively negative social, environmental and economic impacts.

    After months of intensive negotiations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have agreed to stay involved with the WCD
after the dam industry and World Bank conceded their demand to include a representative from a dam-affected people's
organization on the panel of commissioners. Ms. Medha Patkar, the leading activist from India's Save the Narmada Movement
(NBA), will join the commission which includes representatives from governments, the private sector, NGOs, indigenous
peoples and academia.

    The twelve commissioners include a chair, South African water minister Professor Kader Asmal, and a vice-chair, Indian High Commissioner to South Africa, Shri Lakshmi Jain. After the establishment of the WCD secretariat, the Commission will be independent from its sponsoring bodies the World Bank and IUCN-The World Conservation Union. "Although we still have reservations over the composition of the commission, we believe that the WCD can create an international forum for the voices of dam-affected people and dam critics which dam funders and builders will find difficult to ignore," says Patrick McCully of International Rivers Network. "It is now logical that there should be a moratorium on large dam building while the commission completes its reviews and its recommendations are implemented."

    The initiative to set up a dam review commission began at an international conference of dam-affected people held in Curitiba, Brazil in March 1997. The "Declaration of Curitiba" calls for an end to large dam-building until a number of conditions are met including the establishment of an "international independent commission . . . to conduct a comprehensive review" of large dams and the implementation of its policy conclusions.

    The Declaration of Curitiba also calls for environmental restoration and for reparations, including the provision of adequate
land, housing and infrastructure, to be negotiated with the millions of people whose livelihoods have suffered because of dams.
The Mandate of the WCD states that the commission will assess "the need for restoration and reparation".

    "No more big dams should be built until just reparations have been provided to all those who have been affected by dams and until ruined environments have been restored," says Mr. Sadi Baron, Executive Coordinator of Brazil's Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB).

    "In Brazil, the government should use the launch of the WCD as an opportunity to halt the privatization of electric utilities.
Privatization threatens to undo many years of progress in forcing the state-owned utilities to respect the rights of affected
people. The government should also call a halt to its plans for new dams in Amazonia," says Baron.

    Mr. Peter Bosshard of Swiss NGO, Berne Declaration says, "There is a pressing need for an independent assessment of dam performance as called for in the mandate of the WCD. It is also very important that the mandate calls for an assessment of alternatives to large dams and for the WCD to work through a transparent and participative process."

    NGO concerns on the composition of the WCD include the underrepresentation of technical experience on ecological issues
and alternatives to large dams, the exclusion of critics of large dams with an engineering background, and the lack of any Latin American who is trusted by NGOs and affected people's groups in the region.

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