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Break the dams and save the rivers
Source: The Independent (UK). Published: 12 March 2006
Redraw the maps. They no longer give an accurate picture of our damaged
planet. As we report today, great rivers no longer reach the sea. There
could hardly be a more potent symbol of how we are altering the natural
order. Rivers have long brought life to the continents. They were the
midwives of early civilisations, as people settled on them. And they
provided the first routes for transport and trade. Now these arteries have
been turned into giant plumbing systems, collecting water and delivering it
to thirsty cities and intensive agriculture: reservoirs now cover almost one
per cent of the world's land surface. Rivers' role in keeping the planet
healthy has been forgotten; wetlands are drying, and one fifth of the
world's freshwater fish species are either extinct or on the way to
oblivion.
Historically rivers have played a vital role in providing the natural
services upon which we all depend. It is desperately late to save them. The
first step is to reverse the rush to dam every feasible stretch of
watercourse. The rate of dam-building has dropped to less than half of its
peak in the early 1970s - partly because the best sites have been used - but
hundreds of dams are still planned or under construction. The process must
begin, as a UN report will suggest this week, with ensuring that no big dams
are built on the rivers that have so far escaped them. The next, as the US
has been doing, is to remove them where they are doing more harm than good.
Small-scale dams and projects have proved to be as beneficial as large ones
are harmful: we need to concentrate on them.
Image Hover Dam, Colorado River