DamNation
Most of us probably never realize in the comfort of our beds and flipping the pages of the last bestseller how much the intricate web of every day life, filled with minute to minute scientific and technological advancements, is entwined into the symbiosis between society, technology and individuality. Sometimes we take for granted even the simplest things in our lives, like electricity and fresh water. They have become such ordinary utilities to have that considering them as luxuries would seem absurd, as almost everything in the world of the 21st century is based on it and has made us restless for thirst of more power, particularly hydropower. Professor Kader Asmal, the chair of the World Commission on Dams (WCD), has worded our desperation eloquently,
In his book, "Deep Water," Jacques Leslie tries his best to be unbiased by showing his willingness to not underestimate the importance of dams in our lives and their contributive significance to the development of human civilization. Leslie depicts three distinctive cultures with similar socioeconomic struggles and consequences to show the entanglement of the national and social contexts around the dams. To fairly explicate the battles between the World Bank, governments and the people of particular country he has chosen an Indian environmental activist, an American anthropologist, and an Australian water resources manager to each share their reservations and convictions (Leslie 9). And there is no doubt that the managing of water resources is a highly sensitive and multifaceted subject. Just consider the predicament that by the year 2025 thirty-three percent of the internationally shared river basins will be under high or very high water stress; what that means is the tension over scarce water resources will become even more competitive between the nations and therefore exert even more pressure on their social structures (Alcamo 4). To show himself as a proponent of dams, he briefly even tries to attribute the victory in World War II to the dams (Leslie 3), but then very quickly he tumbles off that superficial ‘status quo’ ladder and turns from the mastering of technology to be mastered by technology. I would agree that it would be difficult to imagine our days without toasters, televisions, air-conditions, coffee machines, stoves, refrigerators or clean water running out of the faucets, but would one contribute the whole human history with its inventions and consequences to just dam technology would be questionable. One would also yearn to counter- argue the significance of hydropower by saying that there are many other ways you could acquire electricity; but then again, as we know, not every country has the knowledge base for creating nuclear power plants or simply lack resources for scientific research in the alternative areas, like geothermal, wind, solar and biomass energy.
"Deep Water" leads the reader to a deeper understanding of the complexity of anthropology by untangling the feasibility of globalization and the micro-level sustainability. From the sacrifices of the tribes around the Narmada River to the disintegration of Tonga culture and to the disarray of the Australian aboriginals Leslie forms and reforms every valid opinion to an ‘anti-dam’ declaration. Unfortunately, when the disputes rise over the detrimental factors of the infrastructure projects we rarely sacrifice the development projects over natural or cultural assets. In the beginning, the professor Thayer Schudder, the world resettlement expert, is hopelessly trying to find that one ‘good’ dam which would reinstate his belief into viability of hydropower. Leslie follows Shudder’s every attempt to increase his influence on contractors and governments in restoring the resettled tribes from the African dam projects to at least their previous living standards (Leslie 129). Essentially, one would think that if government makes a petition on its citizens’ property it would compensate them accordingly or you would expect to find vigorous research to justify such acquisitions. However, according to Leslie’s accounts, often, opposite is true as the hierarchy in the society and in its organizations poses multidimensional challenges. Although, Shudder was well respected in his field for assessing the dams’ effects on the indigenous people he frequently struggled in persuading the dam and government authorities to conduct adequate enough research-assessments (Leslie 158). Like the science of environmental flow assessment that Shudder strongly supported, but it was often disregarded as a valuable tool for understanding the socioeconomic impact of the dams to the downstream inhabitants (Leslie 159). By using the ideas of the flow assessment, Leslie and Shudder try to analyze the dams and practicality of technology through the society’s failure in resettling the indigenous people and the detrimental impacts caused by altered river flows. The negative tone of the information alone could be the reason why the authorities are reluctant to accept this kind of reasoning and probably the reason why governments avoid these assessments. While, for example, Sri Lankan professor Malik Ranasinghe uses a bit more positive approach of the economic feasibility analysis. In his argument about infrastructure projects he determines whether the project can be expected to create more net benefits to the economy than any other mutually exclusive alternative, including the option of not doing it (Ranasinghe 1). Instead of pointing out every damaging fact about the dams, he tries to measure the economic value of the environment through its amenity, bequest, aesthetic, altruistic and other values (Ramasinghe 8). Leslie himself has also used positive technique while writing about the magnificent Okavango Delta (Leslie 166). His page after page extremely detailed descriptions of its biological diversity would make anybody scream for ‘damnation’ to infrastructure projects or in this case would actually change an exploitive multinational corporation to a saintly research initiator; as we can follow De Beers from the Orapa diamond mines, threatened by the slogan “Diamonds are for death” (Leslie 169) to its astounding enlightenment as one of the major donors of the Okavango Research Center (Leslie 178). By the end of Leslie’s African defense you would certainly find yourself empathetic toward thousands of villagers who struggle to survive their “rehabilitation,” but also puzzled over Leslie’s pessimism about the resettlement failures of the tribes since proving the repetitive nature of the disastrous socioeconomic effects seemed to be the main purpose of his narratives? While you are drawn to Shudder’s stubborn faith to technology and his new found enthusiasm over The World Bank’s newest project, Nam Theun 2 dam, in Laos and its possibility to grow from the hypothetical to realizable light in the darkness of failures (Leslie 217), all you get from Leslie is the voice of dissatisfaction from the countless tribal meetings, as he admits, “I finally grew tired of it, and asked the Voice leaders what they wanted from the government and the Bank” (Leslie 214).
Leslie’s strongest argument against dams comes from India and the Narmada Valley projects. It would be difficult to find a better example of controversy between technology and society. In India Medha Patkar has desperately tried to prove how detrimental the ubiquity of modern technology can be and how pursuing of globalization is not in any way in the best interest of indigenous people whose resettlements often strip their human dignity. The common argument is that most of them never see the benefits of the dams and instead of promises for variety compensations end up as forgotten people in extremely worse conditions than they were originally. She values absence of materialism (Leslie 89) and seems to detest everything that is connected with dams, and even after Leslie’s comprehensive description of her every action, belief and argument you would still feel strongly ambiguous over her objectives - if she is against the advanced technologies all together as such, or just hydropower. The perception you get from Leslie’s interpretation over every account of Medha is that she would detest any kind of contemporary technology despite the benefits it could bring to millions. Her Andolan’s Gandhian/Chomskian/feminist/Mother Theresan worldview that denounces everything from the dams to globalization (Leslie 20) reflects in many ways the consequentialist moral theorists who never believe into the goodness of mankind unless their actions result ‘good’. She would probably never accept Kant’s position on priority of the good intentions, because she would not be able to see anything good in anybody’s intentions, even the noblest ones, if they don’t produce good consequences and dams, in her eyes, have only generated pain and suffering to Indian people (Solomon 279). Therefore, she is determined to drown herself, literally – to stay in the water until it immerses her, for the protest against dam projects and their created social injustice.
The controversy between Indian society and the dam technology is strongly escalated by the history of their culture, especially because their beliefs. One has to understand the importance of water in their rituals and customs. It is considered as divine as its numerous Gods. Narmada (called the daughter of the moon), like Ganges that was a celestial river and helped to earth by god Shiva, is considered sacred and the pilgrims circumambulate it to purify themselves for three years, three months, and thirteen days (Dehejia 128).
Fighting against modern technology has become very much symbolic in their society – “To someone looking through an Indian perspective, their prayers, songs, dances, and dress no longer seem rooted in a living culture, but rather in a desperate attempt to cling to their ethnic identity” (Fisher 286). And even though, ‘the western world’ often coincides its technological superiority with moral supremacy, Fisher specifically makes a point to say that the ‘white man’s methods, techniques, media’ - his technology (Fisher 285) - are the means of the technologically stronger – though not morally superior – aggressor (Fisher 286).
However, to argue that it is not the dam technology what is detrimental to people, but the human factor that handles the technology, Leslie has depicted the third example for his book "Deep Water" from Australia. Yes, like other indigenous people the Australian Aboriginals were and are also susceptible to the same resettlement and ecological problems; but in this case we can also see some progress toward better common good. They have found the middle way and are trying to use the same dam technology that damages rivers also to fix and sustain ‘a healthy working river’ (Leslie 256). Their water recovery program consisted environmental flows that gave the water back to the river, went into effect in August 2002. Its long-term aim is to restore twenty-eight percent of the pre-dam downstream flow from the Showy Hydro dam (Leslie 269).
In conclusion I would like to ask if this fight between technology and society is a cultural or technological confusion? While the twenty-first century is bringing us the globalization and the aims for sustainable development, we seem to get more and more reluctant to accept those same scientific and technological advancements that are supposed to help us to take care of poverty and world hunger. Concurrently, we also see ourselves as superior species who have ability to rationalize over moral and ethical principles; and, yet, cause increasingly more destruction in the biosphere from the harm to our own species to the extinction of hundreds of others. Poverty and water scarcity are huge disadvantages for the countries who wish to achieve the goals of sustainable development. How can anyone, for example tell to China, India or Africa, who struggle with their huge increase in population and need to accommodate their economic ambitions, that you are not allowed to have cheap energy and build dams so you could bring the essential necessities to the villages and towns. Yes, we all support the positive asymmetrical power relations between developing and industrialized countries and try to reduce the patterns of enclave[2] economies (Goldstein 399); but we can not stop these countries from pursuing the capital accumulation that is utmost necessary for economic development. The electricity brought us the industrial revolution and so do developing countries need this basic utility to produce the economic surplus that is required to achieve the desirable balance of trade. It would be very hypocritical to condemn the hydropower, but meanwhile to use it yourself, thus my biggest hope is that we will find a balance between humans and planet, otherwise it could happen as Jacques Leslie has said, “Dams. They’ll be reminders of an ancient time when humans believed they could vanquish nature, and found themselves vanquished instead” (Leslie 347).
Consider: on this blue planet, less than 2.5% of our water is fresh, less than 33% of our water is liquid, less than 1.7% of fluid water runs in streams. And we have been stopping even these. We dammed half our world’s rivers at unprecedented rates of one per hour, and at unprecedented scales of over 45,000 dams more than four stories high. (WCD i)There is no argument against dams as a splendor of human accomplishments and it is not like we became narcissists who thought that they could control nature over night. We have tried to divert the rivers for thousands of years all the way from the ancient Mesopotamia. Roman Empire was prominent for its elaborate system of aqueducts, like superb El Puente in Spain that was built during Emperor Trajan in the 1st century AD. So, here we are in the 21st century and not shy to admit that dams manifest our desperate conquest over nature – as Don Blackmore, the chief executive of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission declared proudly in his radio interview, “I haven’t had one drop leave the Murray and go into the sea since November,” referring to more than a year (Leslie 237) - they are grandiose, magnificent and make us feel like Greek Gods on top of Acropolis. Or as 2002 Lukas Prize Winner[1] for "Deep Water" Jacques Leslie has said himself, “Take away Hoover, and you take away the American belief in technology, the extraordinary assumption that it above all will redeem our sins” (Leslie 4). In that case, China has begun the biggest atonement project in the history of mankind, The Three Gorges Dam on the scenic Yangtze River, estimated to cost at least thirty billion dollars (Three Gorges).
In his book, "Deep Water," Jacques Leslie tries his best to be unbiased by showing his willingness to not underestimate the importance of dams in our lives and their contributive significance to the development of human civilization. Leslie depicts three distinctive cultures with similar socioeconomic struggles and consequences to show the entanglement of the national and social contexts around the dams. To fairly explicate the battles between the World Bank, governments and the people of particular country he has chosen an Indian environmental activist, an American anthropologist, and an Australian water resources manager to each share their reservations and convictions (Leslie 9). And there is no doubt that the managing of water resources is a highly sensitive and multifaceted subject. Just consider the predicament that by the year 2025 thirty-three percent of the internationally shared river basins will be under high or very high water stress; what that means is the tension over scarce water resources will become even more competitive between the nations and therefore exert even more pressure on their social structures (Alcamo 4). To show himself as a proponent of dams, he briefly even tries to attribute the victory in World War II to the dams (Leslie 3), but then very quickly he tumbles off that superficial ‘status quo’ ladder and turns from the mastering of technology to be mastered by technology. I would agree that it would be difficult to imagine our days without toasters, televisions, air-conditions, coffee machines, stoves, refrigerators or clean water running out of the faucets, but would one contribute the whole human history with its inventions and consequences to just dam technology would be questionable. One would also yearn to counter- argue the significance of hydropower by saying that there are many other ways you could acquire electricity; but then again, as we know, not every country has the knowledge base for creating nuclear power plants or simply lack resources for scientific research in the alternative areas, like geothermal, wind, solar and biomass energy.
"Deep Water" leads the reader to a deeper understanding of the complexity of anthropology by untangling the feasibility of globalization and the micro-level sustainability. From the sacrifices of the tribes around the Narmada River to the disintegration of Tonga culture and to the disarray of the Australian aboriginals Leslie forms and reforms every valid opinion to an ‘anti-dam’ declaration. Unfortunately, when the disputes rise over the detrimental factors of the infrastructure projects we rarely sacrifice the development projects over natural or cultural assets. In the beginning, the professor Thayer Schudder, the world resettlement expert, is hopelessly trying to find that one ‘good’ dam which would reinstate his belief into viability of hydropower. Leslie follows Shudder’s every attempt to increase his influence on contractors and governments in restoring the resettled tribes from the African dam projects to at least their previous living standards (Leslie 129). Essentially, one would think that if government makes a petition on its citizens’ property it would compensate them accordingly or you would expect to find vigorous research to justify such acquisitions. However, according to Leslie’s accounts, often, opposite is true as the hierarchy in the society and in its organizations poses multidimensional challenges. Although, Shudder was well respected in his field for assessing the dams’ effects on the indigenous people he frequently struggled in persuading the dam and government authorities to conduct adequate enough research-assessments (Leslie 158). Like the science of environmental flow assessment that Shudder strongly supported, but it was often disregarded as a valuable tool for understanding the socioeconomic impact of the dams to the downstream inhabitants (Leslie 159). By using the ideas of the flow assessment, Leslie and Shudder try to analyze the dams and practicality of technology through the society’s failure in resettling the indigenous people and the detrimental impacts caused by altered river flows. The negative tone of the information alone could be the reason why the authorities are reluctant to accept this kind of reasoning and probably the reason why governments avoid these assessments. While, for example, Sri Lankan professor Malik Ranasinghe uses a bit more positive approach of the economic feasibility analysis. In his argument about infrastructure projects he determines whether the project can be expected to create more net benefits to the economy than any other mutually exclusive alternative, including the option of not doing it (Ranasinghe 1). Instead of pointing out every damaging fact about the dams, he tries to measure the economic value of the environment through its amenity, bequest, aesthetic, altruistic and other values (Ramasinghe 8). Leslie himself has also used positive technique while writing about the magnificent Okavango Delta (Leslie 166). His page after page extremely detailed descriptions of its biological diversity would make anybody scream for ‘damnation’ to infrastructure projects or in this case would actually change an exploitive multinational corporation to a saintly research initiator; as we can follow De Beers from the Orapa diamond mines, threatened by the slogan “Diamonds are for death” (Leslie 169) to its astounding enlightenment as one of the major donors of the Okavango Research Center (Leslie 178). By the end of Leslie’s African defense you would certainly find yourself empathetic toward thousands of villagers who struggle to survive their “rehabilitation,” but also puzzled over Leslie’s pessimism about the resettlement failures of the tribes since proving the repetitive nature of the disastrous socioeconomic effects seemed to be the main purpose of his narratives? While you are drawn to Shudder’s stubborn faith to technology and his new found enthusiasm over The World Bank’s newest project, Nam Theun 2 dam, in Laos and its possibility to grow from the hypothetical to realizable light in the darkness of failures (Leslie 217), all you get from Leslie is the voice of dissatisfaction from the countless tribal meetings, as he admits, “I finally grew tired of it, and asked the Voice leaders what they wanted from the government and the Bank” (Leslie 214).
Leslie’s strongest argument against dams comes from India and the Narmada Valley projects. It would be difficult to find a better example of controversy between technology and society. In India Medha Patkar has desperately tried to prove how detrimental the ubiquity of modern technology can be and how pursuing of globalization is not in any way in the best interest of indigenous people whose resettlements often strip their human dignity. The common argument is that most of them never see the benefits of the dams and instead of promises for variety compensations end up as forgotten people in extremely worse conditions than they were originally. She values absence of materialism (Leslie 89) and seems to detest everything that is connected with dams, and even after Leslie’s comprehensive description of her every action, belief and argument you would still feel strongly ambiguous over her objectives - if she is against the advanced technologies all together as such, or just hydropower. The perception you get from Leslie’s interpretation over every account of Medha is that she would detest any kind of contemporary technology despite the benefits it could bring to millions. Her Andolan’s Gandhian/Chomskian/feminist/Mother Theresan worldview that denounces everything from the dams to globalization (Leslie 20) reflects in many ways the consequentialist moral theorists who never believe into the goodness of mankind unless their actions result ‘good’. She would probably never accept Kant’s position on priority of the good intentions, because she would not be able to see anything good in anybody’s intentions, even the noblest ones, if they don’t produce good consequences and dams, in her eyes, have only generated pain and suffering to Indian people (Solomon 279). Therefore, she is determined to drown herself, literally – to stay in the water until it immerses her, for the protest against dam projects and their created social injustice.
The controversy between Indian society and the dam technology is strongly escalated by the history of their culture, especially because their beliefs. One has to understand the importance of water in their rituals and customs. It is considered as divine as its numerous Gods. Narmada (called the daughter of the moon), like Ganges that was a celestial river and helped to earth by god Shiva, is considered sacred and the pilgrims circumambulate it to purify themselves for three years, three months, and thirteen days (Dehejia 128).
Fighting against modern technology has become very much symbolic in their society – “To someone looking through an Indian perspective, their prayers, songs, dances, and dress no longer seem rooted in a living culture, but rather in a desperate attempt to cling to their ethnic identity” (Fisher 286). And even though, ‘the western world’ often coincides its technological superiority with moral supremacy, Fisher specifically makes a point to say that the ‘white man’s methods, techniques, media’ - his technology (Fisher 285) - are the means of the technologically stronger – though not morally superior – aggressor (Fisher 286).
However, to argue that it is not the dam technology what is detrimental to people, but the human factor that handles the technology, Leslie has depicted the third example for his book "Deep Water" from Australia. Yes, like other indigenous people the Australian Aboriginals were and are also susceptible to the same resettlement and ecological problems; but in this case we can also see some progress toward better common good. They have found the middle way and are trying to use the same dam technology that damages rivers also to fix and sustain ‘a healthy working river’ (Leslie 256). Their water recovery program consisted environmental flows that gave the water back to the river, went into effect in August 2002. Its long-term aim is to restore twenty-eight percent of the pre-dam downstream flow from the Showy Hydro dam (Leslie 269).
In conclusion I would like to ask if this fight between technology and society is a cultural or technological confusion? While the twenty-first century is bringing us the globalization and the aims for sustainable development, we seem to get more and more reluctant to accept those same scientific and technological advancements that are supposed to help us to take care of poverty and world hunger. Concurrently, we also see ourselves as superior species who have ability to rationalize over moral and ethical principles; and, yet, cause increasingly more destruction in the biosphere from the harm to our own species to the extinction of hundreds of others. Poverty and water scarcity are huge disadvantages for the countries who wish to achieve the goals of sustainable development. How can anyone, for example tell to China, India or Africa, who struggle with their huge increase in population and need to accommodate their economic ambitions, that you are not allowed to have cheap energy and build dams so you could bring the essential necessities to the villages and towns. Yes, we all support the positive asymmetrical power relations between developing and industrialized countries and try to reduce the patterns of enclave[2] economies (Goldstein 399); but we can not stop these countries from pursuing the capital accumulation that is utmost necessary for economic development. The electricity brought us the industrial revolution and so do developing countries need this basic utility to produce the economic surplus that is required to achieve the desirable balance of trade. It would be very hypocritical to condemn the hydropower, but meanwhile to use it yourself, thus my biggest hope is that we will find a balance between humans and planet, otherwise it could happen as Jacques Leslie has said, “Dams. They’ll be reminders of an ancient time when humans believed they could vanquish nature, and found themselves vanquished instead” (Leslie 347).
Häly Laasme
Works Citied.
Alcamo,J., Henrichs, T. and Rösch, T. World Water in 2025 – Global modeling and scenario analysis for the World Commission on Water for the 21st Century. Report A0002, Center for Environmental Systems Research, University of Kassel, Kurt Wolters Strasse 3, 34109 Kassel, Germany.” February 2000 Accessed: 24 Oct. 2006, http://www.usf.uni-kassel.de/usf/archiv/ dokumente/kwws/kwws.2.pdf.
CU. Columbia University. The Journalism School. "2002 Lukas Prize Winners." Accessed: 15 October, 2006, http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/events/lukas/2002/
Dehejia, Vidya. Indian Art and Architecture. London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1997.
Encarta. "Aqueduct." Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia. Accessed: 24 Oct. 2006, http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761557948/Aqueduct.html
Fisher, William F. Toward Sustainable Development? Struggling Over India’s Narmada River. Columbia University Seminar Series. New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1995.
Goldsmith, Edward and Nicholas Hildyard. The Social and Environmental Effects of Large Dams. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1985.
Goldstein, Joshua S. International Relations. Brief 2nd ed. American University, Washington DC, Westford: Courier Corporation, 2004.
Leslie, Jacques. Deep Water: The Epic Struggle over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.
Ranasinghe, Malik. Analysis of Unique Natural, Environmental and Cultural Assets threatened by Infrastructure Projects: The Case of Upper Kotmale Hydropower Project. Research Studies: Energy & Environmental Economics Series No. 8, April 1999. Sri Lanka Institute Of Policy Studies, 1999.
Solomon, Robert C. The Big Question. 6th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth Group/Thomson Learning, 2002.
Three Gorges Dam. A Great Leap backward for China’s electricity consumers and economy – part 1. Campaign Archive, 16 Dec. 1999, Accessed: 24 Oct. 2006, http://www.threegorgesprobe.orge/tgp/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=1054
WCD. World Commission on Dams. Dams and Development. The Report of the World Commission on Dams. United States: Earthscan Publications Ltd., 2000.
[1]Columbia University Journalism School and Nieman Foundation at Harvard, 2002 Lukas Prize Project Awards for Exceptional Works of Nonfiction.
[2]An historically important form of dependency in which foreign capital is invested in a third world country to extract a particular raw material in a particular place. The capital is not reinvested back to that country, but goes to some other country according to the investor’s interests.
Labels: "Jacques Lesliedam, "Medha Patkar", assessment, environment, globalization, hydropower
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