The Three Gorges Dam Project: an Environmental Success or Failure?

The history of China has, as Jonathan Spence suggests, been dominated by "tale[s] of environmental battles"[1] and the victorious heroes who have overcomes these struggles. The epitome of these heroes is Yu the Great. The founding father of the Xia dynasty, he remains immortalised in Chinese folklore and history as the man who tamed the floods by dredging and channelling the rivers, and by creating levees and dams.

Jade sculpture 'Yu the Great Taming the Waters', 1787. [2]

The Three Gorges Dam carries on this tradition of flood control, but through the use of modern technology and engineering. The Yangtze River throughout history is notorious for its flooding and in 1931 it killed 30,000 people and a further 40,000,000 were left without homes.[3] It flooded its bank again merely four years later in 1935. While not as severe as the previous flood, it still left many homeless and desolated the landscape leaving farmers and agricultural workers without the means to support their families. It was to those that suffered from the effects of the floods that my Great Grandpa provided support as a Methodist minister in the Hupeh (now Hubei) province. Having read his letters, the horrifying extent and severity of the flooding is apparent. In one letter he comments that few of the villagers they ministered to in Chiuhuo did not spend three days and nights on their roofs without food because of the flooding. Severe floods followed in 1949, 1954, 1991, and 1998.

Wuhan Flood Memorial, 1969. [4]

It is the damage of these floods that the Three Gorges Dam, first envisioned by Sun Yat-sen and endorsed by Mao Zedong, seeks to prevent. Not only does the dam offer controlled release of flood waters, but as the world's largest hydroelectric dam it provides 22,500 Mega Watts of power and in 2014 generated 98.8 TWh, a world record. The dam helps ships navigate the Yangtze River after making the Xiling Gorge - the most dangerous of the three - by raising the river level. The dam provides a two-way five stage ship lock and a ship lift.

'The Largest Dam' Documentary [5]

In August I had the opportunity to visit the Three Gorges Dam and experience the lock,* but it left me wondering whether the dam was really as wonderful as we were told it was. The controversy of the project since it was confirmed in 1992 that the Three Gorge Dam Project would go ahead has often overshadowed the aims of the project in the media and in academia. Indeed, Richard Louis Edmonds examination of the proposed dam in his 1992 essay 'The Sanxia (Three Gorges) Project: the environmental argument surrounding China's super dam' concludes that the project is the Chinese governments attempt to redeem the flooding situation with a "single grand project"[6] rather than smaller and more environmentally and socially beneficial solutions.

So what are the environmental arguments for and against the dam?

Pros		Cons
Flood Control	Around every ten years, the Yangtze River floods its banks and causes monumental damage to the surrounding landscape and those that inhabit it. Not only have many lives been lost from flooding itself, but from the effects. For example, the 1991 flood caused disease to rise and many had to be rehoused. Overall, 230 million people were affected in the 1991 floods.[7] The Three Gorges Dam is reported to give the surrounding areas a hundred years of flood protection.	Soil Nutrient Deficiency	Flooding causes nutrients gained from fish, shells, plants, soil, rocks to be passed into the soil, making it rich for agricultural purposes. The dam causes these nutrients to settle in the silt if flooding does not occur, leaving soil lacking and causing agricultural crops to fail. The Three Gorges Dam does have sluice gates to help with the flow of nutrients, but it will still effect the nutrient levels of the soil.
Renewable Energy Source	Having 32 generators, the Three Gorges Dam hydropower station provides up to 22,500 Mega Watts. One of the rotary machines can equal the amount of electricity produced by a small nuclear power plant. As a renewable energy source, hydropower amounted to 18% of China’s total electricity in 2014.[8]	Landslides	Landslides occur when the rising and lowering of water in the reservoir and dam dislodges soil and rock at the bottom of surrounding land and causes it to destabilise.  When the reservoir level has been raised, it has triggered numerous landslides. Lowering the water level again causes cracks in the land.
Prevents Rubbish from Flowing out to Sea	A reported ten million tons of rubbish has been caught by the dam, preventing it from flowing downstream and out to sea, thus stopping further pollution to build up in the sea.[9]	Biodiversity Decline	The changing land and waterscapes caused by the dam will further impact many species of plant, fish, and animal that have already suffered from human activity such as fishing. The Baiji Dolphin, now functionally extinct because of human activity such as fishing and habitat destruction, was found only in the Yangtze River and is an example of the damage human activity can cause to species in the Yangtze.
		Earthquakes	Reservoir-induced seismicity is caused when the constant change of water levels and the increased weight of the water along fault lines causes intensified pressure. The Three Gorges Dam sits upon two faults, the Zigui–Badong and the Jiuwanxi, which has caused hundreds of tremors in the region.
		Water Pollution	The landslides and erosion caused by the dam causes rock and sediment to build up in the river.

While there are major environmental drawbacks, the question is whether the success of the hydropower station and flood control outweighs those drawbacks. The flood basin of the Yangtze contains up to 12% of the world's population[10] and so the Chinese government has to balance out the potential environmental damage of the dam with the lives that could be lost or severely affected in flooding. At the very least, the Three Gorges Dam is a sign that the Chinese government wants to move forward in its search for renewable energy. Indeed, it could be argued that China is pioneering the way with the hydropower station being the world's largest. 

*On my trip to the Three Gorges Dam I travelled with the Victoria Cruises from Chongqing to Yichang on Yangtze River. Our River Guide was Bobo Wu, who taught us about the river, the gorges, and the dam.

[1] Jonathan Spense, 'The Scroll and the Story of the Three Gorges', Art Journal 69 (2010), 80-87, p.80. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25800349.pdf> [accessed 2 January 2017].

[2] Craig Clunas, Art in China. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p.82.

[3] Encyclopaedia Britannica Yangtze River Floods (2011). <https://www.britannica.com/science/Yangtze-River-floods> [accessed 2 January 2017].

[4] Wikipedia Commons, Wuhan Flood Memorial (2016) <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Wuhan-Flood-Memorial-0226.jpg> [accessed 3 January 2017].

[5] Largest Dams, The Largest Dam in the World, online video, Youtube, 31 May 2013. <https://youtu.be/b8cCsUBYSkw> [accessed 21 December 2016].

[6] Richard Louis Edmonds, 'The Sanxia (Three Gorges) Project: The Environmental Argument Surrounding China's Super Dam', Global Ecology and Biogeography Letters, 2 (1992), 105-125, p.123. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2997637.pdf> [accessed 2 January 2017].

[7] Ibid, p.114.

[8] World Resources Institute, China FAQs The Network for Climate and Energy Information, p.1. <http://www.chinafaqs.org/files/chinainfo/ChinaFAQs_Renewable_Energy_Overview_0.pdf> [accessed 3 January 2017].

[9] Brian Handwerk, 'China's Three Gorges Dam, by Numbers', National Geographic News (2006) <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060609-gorges-dam_2.html> [accessed 21 December 2016].

[10] Adrian Evans 'River Yangtze: The Great River', Rivers of the World: a Thames Festival Project (2007). <http://totallythames.org/images/uploads/documents/River%20of%20the%20World%20Info%20Packs/River_Yangtze_China.pdf> [accessed 3 January 2017].

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The first, fourth, and fifth photos taken by Daniel Palmer 2016, previously unpublished.